Setting Fire to The Pope...

Sometimes, a silk screen can decide to be such a bitch.  Which is exactly what happened me when I went to print my second image of the Pope where he is walking away.  The prints just didnt want to come out right for me....it was one of those days :P

So seeing as they didnt come out necessarily usable, I decided to alter um so that I could use them.  I decided to destroy a few of them by burning, tearing, cutting etc.  Seeing as it was all images of the Pope it can show a reaction to his resignation and also a reaction against religion.

Also did a bit of a Sinead O'Connor on it....my mother will be so proud :P

Pope Benny farewell

Seeing as the Pope resigning fits in so perfectly with my whole "people leaving the church" theme, I decided to use his image in the second part of my screen print.  I worked with two images, one where Pope Benedict is looking all powerful, arms out, at the height of his "career" and another image where he has his back turned and is hunched over.

After making a series of prints on lining paper, I then decided to try printing on other materials, in this case tshirts.

I then blackmailed my 5year old niece into helping me with a photoshoot wearing the tshirt.  I wanted to show how kids are so accepting of what the church says, so easily influenced and how they can be wearing something that means a great deal but they have little or no understanding of it.  Which is exactly what happened when the niece saw the tshirt. "Who's that?" I was asked.  Then when I tried to explain what a Pope was, she couldnt understand it so we settled on "He's a priest".

Golden Week Workload :P

So in the main self initiated project, I'm working with the image of the Sacred Hearts that I found in a shop.  I decided to use this image for the three tone screen print.  Basically this process involves a lot of Photoshop which, seeing as it involves technology, is not my strong point.  The image has to be separated into three tones: light, mid, and dark tone.  

Everything black will be the lightest colour when printed

Mid tones of the print

This will be the final colour, so everything black will be the darkest colour

For my lightest colour I chose a golden colour, midtone was a brown colour and then I finished with a black.

I lost quite a lot of the mid tone brown, the print itself actually looked a lot better before the final colour of the black went on.  There was also a lot of white so I decided to add text to get rid of some of the white.

Since a lot of people say they've left the church, no longer go to mass etc. and even the Pope himself deciding to leave, I decided to make it look almost like there's a sale on and add the words "75% Reduction".

Half tone prints to be done next, perhaps the Pope will make a final appearance?

Photoshoppy Stuff :]

For second semester Photoshop class, we were given a brief in which we had to pick a site/place associated with our main studio practice and document the space, with the aim of creating prints that would then be placed in the chosen space.  Because my main studio practice is on religion, I didnt fancy having to spend hours in a church, drawing, taking photos etc as I'd been doing that already.  So I decided for this project to still use religion but in a different way.

I started to look at routine in someone's life, the things they do religiously.  For this, I chose a hairdressers because there are those women who go every single saturday without fail.  So the lovely Kathleen O' Keeffe of Trendy Locks Salon, Abbeyfeale, kindly let me use her salon as my chosen space.  Having gone to the salon for years and having worked there, I knew the place pretty well but it was interesting to just sit there and watch everything.

I started with doing simple sketches of the salon and taking photos of everything there.

 

 

Once the documenting stage was done I started to question why people go and enjoy going to the hairdressers so regularly.  It couldnt be just because they get their hair done or its done out of necessity.  For some customers, especially elderly, you could see that it was the company they enjoyed, the human interaction, the chat over a cut of tea.  That chat with the hairdresser as they do your hair is quite poignant.  People do end up just opening up and telling things to someone who in a way is a stranger to them.  Its been proven that hairdressing is a cheap form of counselling.  Hairdressers in Austrailia have actually been trained to recognise signs of suicide or just plain unhappiness in customers and shown how to help them. 

 

So going with that thought I created some small posters showing how people open up to hairdressers and the counselling aspect of it.  I plan to place these around the salon and see people's reactions when/if they come across them.

 

 

 



Pope - Y U resign!

Soooooooo for Semester Two we have to work on a self-initiated project, where its ourselves who come up with the brief rather than being set one by our tutors.  I decided for my one to continue with the Religion theme seeing as I enjoyed it so much last time.  For this time around, I wanted to get other people's opinions about what religion means to them, what they think of the Catholic Church etc. seeing as my views are quite negative.

I got a group of 12 - 13year olds to fill out a questionaire of a few questions asking them their opinion on religion.  The results I got were really interesting to see.  The majority of them just seemed to accept religion in their lives with no real questioning of why they were believing in God or the church etc.  This really showed how great an influence parents and teachers have on them and how a young child's mind just accepts something because their Mam or Dad said it.  Their opinions of the Catholic Church were also quite innocent and somewhat sheltered.  To me, it seemed that they knew nothing of the controversies in the church as when asked for their opinion of the Church, quite a few said "Mass is a bit boring" and "The seats are too close together."

Aswel as that I started an online survey in which I asked two Questions:
(1) What does the word "Religion" mean to you?
(2) What is your opinion of the Catholic Church?

And the response I got was really good.  The majority of the people who answered showed that they had a very negative view of the church and of religion itself.  I also noticed that people seperated the two.  Religion meant something completely different to them than the Catholic Church did.  Children see these as the same thing whereas someone who is older and possibly would have actually questioned their faith at some point showed that the two werent related in their minds.  I also got a few positive answers, in which people stated a strong connection with God but a negative view of the church on a account of the scandals.  Some answers were a bit out there, others didnt go at all....to whoever answered "sex" to both questions...sound lads :P

So with that I could start to find my image.  On a casual stroll through town I came across a display of Sacred Heart pictures that for some reason I loved...I think I'm getting too into this whole religion craic.

I played around with compositions before deciding to just stick with this image.

And THEN the Pope goes and decides to resign...in the MIDDLE of my project...How inconsidereate of him :(  So i'm definitely going to have to get a Print done of him before the next lad comes in.  I doubt I'll get the same comic evilness out of the new one as I did from auld Ben himself.

 Dougal for Pope!