#contempraryartincontext

1.  Shepherd, M, (2001). Learn Calligraphy. United States of America: Broadway Books

2.  Whiteread, R. (1994) House

Retrieved 15 November 2015 from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/rachel-whiteread-2319

3. Giddings, W.V.  The House in Your Head

Retrieved 25 November 2015 from ;http://www.edgeoftheforest.com/house.htm

4. Robins, F.        Statement

Retrieved 25 November 2015  from; http://www.freddierobins.com/about.php

5. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. (4th ed.). United States of America: The University of Michigan Press.

 1.       During my project for drawing transformations I spent a long time studying the art of calligraphy and general penmanship along with the study of handwriting, it took many books to learn the art of calligraphy and one of the most helpful of these was ‘Learn calligraphy, The complete book of lettering and design’ by Margaret Shepherd. By reading this book I learnt about different pen angles and pen widths and how they make a difference to your marks and therefore your lettering. The most important thing I learnt from this book was this quote “Calligraphy is a fine art like painting, sculpture, print making, drawing and photography – a way of seeing life and of telling what you see. The well trained, intelligent, creative calligrapher can explore the world of visual art as thoroughly as any painter. Through calligraphy you can learn about proportion, colour and line, positive and negative space, depth perception and light.” This showed to me that calligraphy was an art in its own right and therefore could be seen as a drawing transformation.

 2.       Whilst looking into houses and art that had been made around houses I came across Rachel Whiteread’s house from 1994. This sculpture was created by casting a Victoria terraced house in London’s east end. She built this sculpture to create an awareness of the intrinsically human scaled design which we are surrounded by. She removes the objects function in order to show a sense of absence and loss. I found Whiteread’s work incredibly inspiring because for me it showed that when you take away the houses function you are left with something blank to project your own thoughts and ideals onto. This gave me even more reason to carry on with my gingerbread houses because once you took away their Christmas and edible aspects all you were left with was the ideals that you projected onto it, for me that was structuring bad relationships and how relationships change as we age.

 3.       Whilst studying more into houses and what they mean I came across a paper written by William V. Giddings who had written a metaphor using a house to show how we handle stress and also how we can improve our reactions to people in order to create better relationships, friendships and general interactions. In Giddings’ metaphor he uses three levels to the ‘house in our heads’ these are as follows; the attic, “In the attic we feel  resentment, rage and fury over what other people, events or situations have done to us. We feel victimised and are furious about it.” This means our reactions are often blaming others for things that are going wrong in our lives and we tend to be unreasonable and judging others as if we are sat on our own thrown looking down on anyone who dares to comment on our behaviour. Next down is the ground level, “On the ground level our judgements are fairly brief and less intense and we spend more time in the process of accepting and figuring out how best to handle the situation.” This means we are much more willing to compromise and find solutions rather than getting angry. On the final floor is the basement, “Here in the basement we feel hurt, depressed, guilt and anxious. We feel victimised and are sad and down about it. Our self-talk her is full of Shoulds that blame and put-down our Self and we wallow in our own misfortunes and inadequacies and deficiencies.” On this level we find ourselves taking all the blame but not really fixing the issue that lies in front of us. This whole metaphor made me think a lot about the different levels in relationships which is why I decided to lay out my piece in a structure where the top houses were current relationships and the lower houses were past relationships, I also decided to put ‘the pile’ at the bottom to show relationships that had broken down throughout our lifetime.

 4.       Continuing on my house journey I had decided to look at craft artists that used materials that were viewed more as a craft rather than an art. This is when I came across Freddie Robins.” Robins‘s practice crosses definable categories of art, craft and design. She combines these elements elegantly, and with playful wit subverts meaning and making, fusing a melting-pot of approaches to ‘craft’.” Robins was a great inspiration to me as she had used knitting to make houses that explores contemporary issues of the domestic, gender and the human condition. As I was using gingerbread and it just happened to be December I was aware that I would have to have a strong contextual background for using gingerbread houses so it didn’t look like I had chosen that craft as I was surrounded by Christmas advertisements however being surrounded by ‘the spirit of Christmas’ was a huge reminder that I did not have the ‘perfect’ family or home to celebrate in which made me question the relationships I had been through that brought me to the point of life I was in so it seemed only fitting to try and create a perfect gingerbread house to represent me trying to create the perfect relationship in which to have my perfect Christmas.