Responses to Shrunken heads

I decided to do some responses to the Shrunken heads, as I found them so interesting! :D 

(from left to right, top to bottom) Stitched into brown paper using thread, linear pencil drawing, latex heads.

I created these heads by making a mold of a dolls head, the first one was made by a clay mold, the second by a mod-roc cast, and the third was made slightly differently, I dipped the dolls head into latex and dried each layer one by one, it has about 8 layers in total. When the latex was dry, I was able to peel it off, revealing a hollow latex head! I prefer the shape of the last one for the front of my hand-made book, because it is shaped more like a shrunken head, however I may have to weigh up the pro's and con's when deciding which head use, as the others would attach more firmly onto the book but are not the shape i was aiming for.

Pitt Rivers Museum

So basically.. I am super lucky and got to visit The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which I HIGHLY recommend anyone visits whether you're an art student, a history student.. or what have you because it is sooooo cool and amazing and so interesting! Basically the reason why I went is because of the theme I chose for my current project, I chose to research tribal fashion, and lifestyles, which has proven to be a much more challenging topic choice than I had first thought. However, I have learnt a lot from this, not only about the tribes, but about myself too, the main one being "keep calm and carry on" which I say to myself a lot more recently than ever before!
The Museum was quite a lot smaller than I expected as it was on the back of the Natural History Museum (which I sneeked a cheeky peek at too might I say) but it was however 3 floors high. I found it really interesting that I could look at what they had in the cabinets, but also there are drawers underneath which you can pull out and look at all the little things in there aswell. Really quite amazing.. you should go! ;)
The main thing I went to see were the 'Shrunken heads' which I found quite beautiful in a disturbing kind of way, as it was hard to believe that those heads were once on someones body.. eurghh! I took a lot of photo's in there, and here are a few I chose to share..

 Shrunken head

 Small thai shoes, the women wore these to make their feet look smaller, which was thought of as pretty, and the men wanted their women to wear them because after years of binding your feet so small, they begin to deform and it is very painful for the women to stand or walk, so the men made them wear them so they had to stay at home.

 Beaded drinking water bottle holder,African.  (It is so amazing how advanced these people were back then)

And THAT my friends.. is what you call research.. ;)

Bye bye Prada.. hello leather!

So after destroying a no less than perfect Prada bag, I have the real leather i have been after for a week! Okay.. well it was a lot less than perfect actually.. it had a broken strap.. and without that you cant really call it a bag.. for something that was suppose to sit on your back, and most definitely was not a clutch! However.. it did still hold things.. so technically it is a bag but the magnet was gone.. and that's a vital piece I guess when making sure nothing escapes!
Well this bag.. i mean "bag" is now in shreds.. and ready to be stitched up into a lovely book with my 'rafia' so that it can 'explore the worllldddd' with a little imagination.. as it'll be going no further than the distance between my class and my room, but it'll look like it's travelled the world with a little distressing of fabric, punching into it and carving shapes and lines into the beautifully cut leather by Prada, at least it'll be a damn expensive book! ;)

Researching all week into the life of the African tribes and the Burmese women left me with the idea of creating a "Fashion travel back in time journal" exciting huh! Looking at how fashion now has been influenced by fashion back then, I thought it was the perfect thing to do especially as everyone is so into this Aztec/African prints and lines and shapes and things at the moment, they're all over the catwalk! - talking of which, check out Issey Miyake spring/summer 2001 .. so beautiful! I know its not fashion of right now, but it all tributes..


I can't find a clip of it to show you from you tube, but here's a photo I found (:

Tomorrow I'm off to the Pitt Rivers exhibition which is in/ part of the Natural History museum.. I believe.. correct me if I'm wrong, I have not done my research yet, please forgive me. But I'm ever so excited! Gayle tells me its amazing.. She wont stop going on about the shrunken heads! Although I am also just as excited about these and I haven't even seen them yet! However I have been making some of my own out of latext at college! I'm planning to sew into them on the front of the leather bound book, and I'm hoping for dear life that its all going to come together, as today i had a pretty 'shit' day to say the least, I was so into this project at the start but today I just kind of lost my train of thought.. although I'm hoping that the Pitt Rivers exhibition will put me back on track!- I'm sure it will.
First experiment with creating "shrunken heads".

I made this by dipping a dolls head into a pot of latex, and drying each layer as i took it out, i really like the shape of this head to be a shrunken on the book, although the features aren't defined enough, so I tried 2 other ways, one from making a clay cast of the dolls face, and one from making a mod-rock cast. these 2 came out really well, however they are drying at college so I'll post photo's of them in my next post hopefully!

"Hello"

In the post before last, I talked about how we had to create the video about how the Brittish say hello.. etc etc..
Well our group created this video, unfortunately there is no sound.. but enjoyyyyy...!

I'll add our collage which we put up on the window at college at a later date, to this post.

3 week project: Booking a charity

well firstly we got our essay grades back and CHRIST i was not expecting that.. with the amount of slating Gayle gave me during the talk about the essays I was expecting something along the lines of a referral.. but oh noo.. she was feeling generous this day (one of very few ;) ).. M+ yeahh buddyy, just need to do some minor changes and hopefully i will bump up my grade :)

So ANYWAY.. I shall make the title of this post relevant.. Our New Project was to source an item/object that we connect with.
I went into Brittish Heart Foundation in Portsmouth and I was looking at the shelves of ornaments and objects for a good 10 minutes, thinking.. this is eating into my lunch break there MUST be something here (get it.. eating ;) ) just as I was about to walk away I spotted this little guy..

 I was really drawn to him, I knew what he was, but I knew absolutely nothing about him, for instance was he made in england.. or was he made abroad, what tribe is he from? what clothes does he wear? what does his jewellery mean?.. It gave me a lot to expand on and so I thought he was the perfect little man for this project.

Today I began to draw him.. it's not finished yet OBVIOUSLY.. but I'm excited to see what he may bring to my work.. unless he is cursed ofcourse, in which case.. I'll be taking him back and swapping him for a beautifully decorated tea-pot perhaps..

First day back

So as you can tell by the title, today was my first day back at college after Christmas, and.. Surprise surprise I'm already tired.. No matter how much practice you get at waking up early it doesn't get any easier.
So anyway today we got split up into groups this morning and discussed our new project brief, we have to create a a film of how the British say 'hello' and also what we would associate with Britain. We came up with the whole aspect of hunting and how they wear tweed, smoke pipes and carry hip flasks which are all British things. However we want to create something humorous so we came up with the idea of having footballers running past them as the huntsmen are in the woods, and then the postman walks past and just generally things to do with Britain but not things you'd find with hunting and especially on the woods. At the end of the film I think we're going to have the men go back to the pub and have clinking of glasses and a 'cheers' to finish off.
I forgot to mention that at the start of the video we will have the 'huntsmen' meeting and shaking hands as a form of hello. Haha

After lessons we had 2 and a half hours of life drawing, and this was my final piece for the session