"Pretty/Vacant"

For the blog tonight, a decidedly quick little piece of artwork which was completed in something of a hurry for an open call, for our friends at Cupola Gallery.  Periodically the gallery in Sheffield hosts open call shows, and we've entered a good few of them in recent years.  This one was for work themed around the quote "The Beautiful is Always Bizarre" (a quote by Baudelaire), and both myself and Amy thought we'd have a nosey at it (this despite our assertion after the stress of the "Alice" show we were going to have a break from this sort of thing). 

For a little while I'd been messing around with concepts of fashion photography without the model present, or presented in such a way that it was unclear if the model or the setting was meant to be the focus (under the provisional title "Pretty/Vacant").  It is still all very much at the experimental stage really, and given the turnaround time of this brief (feeling not unlike a First Year Uni brief) it was straight to work, and a quickly put together concept piece to bring the idea to life.

The background is a shot from the "Home is..." project, and a lake near Beddgelert, in Wales, with the figure a quick sketch copying the pose from an ad in the paper, and hastily cut-out from clear plastic with a few details etched in to provide a bit of relief (earlier experiments had been just for an outline, which lacked definition, or for coloured blocks with no details).  The idea worked and the gallery requested the bigger piece.

So the plan was for four seasonal images, multi-layered, the prints mounted onto clear acrylic (from dismantled Ikea A1 picture frames, of which we have a few scrap ones lying around) and back lit to bring out the etched details in the figures.  The final piece would still be a decidedly experimental stage in this project, which is planned to evolve a bit as I go on, but a suitable piece would at least be produced for the show. 

First job, choosing the images, which had to have certain criteria- be easily split into layers, not distract from the figures too much, but still be pretty:

First up, the Glaslyn path in Beddgelert for Spring.

Llandanog beach in West Wales for Summer.

Limestone Paving above Settle, in the Yorkshire Dales, for Autumn.

Ingrow Woods, near Keighley, for winter (struggling as I was for a winter pic with snow from my own collection- this one would be a bit of a sod to cut-out, particularly the tree, but oh well, what the hell).

This is where the first problem happened- placing the prints over the acetate showed that the available lights were not powerful enough to back-light and produce the desired effect, and there was no time to go get better lights.  So plan B, and the elements of the prints were trimmed out and mounted onto scrap mount card (of which we also have a ton of scrap hoarded), the layers separated by scraps of 5mil foam board.

One change from the rough concept piece, this time out came the pens and the edges of the card were suitably coloured to take the edge off...

And so onto the figures.

Back at Uni (and since) I dabbled a bit in portraiture and fashion-type photography, and decided from the outset of this project not to work from poses from models in magazines, but to only use my own pictures as reference (the above is from the "Happygoth" shoot in Carlisle in 2007).  Not exactly sure why, but really I wanted to be able to just work from my own stock rather than other peoples'.

The figures were deliberately stylised though, more like the concept art I draw for miniatures projects, partly because I wanted an air of anonymity but also because I wanted just hints at outfits and clothes (again, the traditional 'focus' of the fashion photography).

With the drawings done, I had to work out how to make the figures.  Cutting out all of them by hand would be too time consuming, as would scratching-in the details (as the figures would also be larger this time).  Happily however, at work I have access to a laser cutter, after hours (as for a variety of reasons I have to hang around unpaid at work for an hour or so every day waiting for a lift home).  As long as nobody else is queueing for the machine, which is pretty lightly used at this time of year, I can use it.

Likewise, having hoarded materials for miniature builds for about 25 years, I have tons of my own acrylic, so I wouldn't be naffing any stocks from work.  So the images were drawn, scanned at home, then at work after my paid hours had finished, it was a hasty pass through 2D Design and onto the cutter over a few evenings... 

The figures- two per image. 

This shows a couple of the issues around the use of old, scrap material- scratches and scorch marks because most of my older clear acrylic has no carrier film.  The perils of using older materials, but at least it was free.

Likewise the material for the boxes- old stocks of my own 3mm MDF in varying conditions, but once cut-down at work (because it was either 5 minutes on a band saw or three weeks cutting by handsaw at home on the kitchen table...) and then spray painted in black it wasn't too noticeable.  The lights were a purchase from IKEA a while ago for another project, and have just sat around unused for ages.  They're decent little LED spotlights, and very thin, don't overheat noticeably, and the four of them were the reason for the four-seasons approach.

The above shot shows why the lighting was needed- I quite like the ghostly effect, but it doesn't really bring out the details too much.

Lighting under the figures definitely improves matters.

Provision was made under each figure for the lights to slide under them, with some room to reposition the light.  Only one figure could be directly lit to be the 'focus' of each image, but then I quite liked that effect.

With the whole-image light box idea abandoned, this is a nice compromise and actually makes for something I'm happier with- I gather at work they used to do a project like this for the mood light, with the same technique (plastic figure under lit by an LED).

And so this is what the final pieces look like- a 'main' model in traditional, fashion-model pose (based off my own old shoots), with a couple of other figures more subtly behind, against a multi-layered backdrop of my own landscape photographs.

For all its complications, I actually like the winter one the most.

What next?  Well, as a first concept test it has proved it as an enjoyable project, and I want to experiment with it further, maybe making smaller pieces too.  There is room to expand things a bit and try some new variants on the work, so something to play with over the summer.

The piece may be on display as part of the "The Beautiful is Always Bizarre" group show at Cupola Contemporary Art, Hillsborough, Sheffield, during the first few weeks in August if it makes the cut...

And finally, a summer image, given that it is something of a heatwave outside whilst I'm typing this blog entry.