An artist named Michael Vincent Manalo inspired me to create my art in a jar. Manalo is a visual artist who focuses on photography, photo-manipulation and installations because I really love the way it is inspired by the imagined memories of nostalgic and dream-like environments; his works documents their decline into post-apocalyptic, nightmarish creations. Having very vivid dreams myself, when looking through his work it really captured some of the dreams I have. The pictures below gave a great starting point for developing my ideas. It is from a series called 'A hermit's way of looking at life'.
Now I am not one to plan things, I prefer to see what I have and get inspired from what is in front of me. I had a rough idea of how I wanted my art in a jar to look. The picture below you will see the initial idea I had in my book, along with a little planning.
I had the idea that the lady would represent myself, dancing up a mountain with my head in the clouds. I loved Manalo's description of his series "A hermit's way of looking at life".
His photo-manipulations works show his recent experience of what life is like when breaking off from the world, trying to counter the system and living almost off-the-grid and looking at life from a different perspective. The artist chose to live in his hometown in the Philippines, stayed in their family’s house for 2 1/2 weeks without talking with anyone in person, with only the internet as his window, while doing his everyday life of just cooking, working on commissioned works, swimming, watching films, making guitar music and creating reflections on the life he experienced particularly related to the memories he had with members of his family.
During the artist’s reclusive and almost hermitic time, he argues that if you go away from all distractions and immerse yourself in a place where you are alone, from all the ups and downs of the modern world’s fast-paced society, you will see and remember things much clearly.
It reminded me of myself and how I need to be a hermit sometimes when the rush of life gets too much and i need to find some gratitude by taking time away to reflect. I also wanted the lady to dance like in one of his pictures to represent the freedom being a hermit can bring and for the Lady to be dancing up a mountain, as the mountain represents where I come from, the Lake District which is full of mountains.
A crystal to create the mountain worked well as I really liked the texture. Trying a green one in the picture below was a bit too big, so I went for a smaller one that created a more dream-like look, it also contrasted well against the background of the initial idea for a watercolour pencil sunrise.
I felt cotton wool was a great texture for the cloud and tested out what it would look like in the jar. I planned to attach it to the lid so it would hang down nicely giving the effect of her head being in the cloud like in the inspiration from Manalo's work.
Researching sunrise pictures I based my sunrise on a picture i found online. Soft pastels are my favourite to work in as they move around so easily and create amazing colours. They also blend well so felt they worked much better for a sunrise than watercolour pencils. Sticking the background in with PVA glue didn't really work as it made the soft pastels run on the back of the background.
For the picture of the lady I planned to draw myself on card and cut out and attach to the crystal with glue. I did some tests of drawing the miniature lady. Pictures below. I struggled to find the best way of drawing the figure. I needed her to be small enough to fit into the jar.
Looking at the jar so far I realised that adding something for inside the bottom would give my lady something to stand on. I was thinking along the lines of grass. I had a look in my craft box and came across some green cotton and placed that inside the jar which i think worked well. Trying to make the lady stand up in the jar was quite difficult. I had planned on sticking her to the crystal, however i found that she wouldn't stay.
Therefore I took a sewing needle and thread and threaded a hole through the top of her head. I thought about using cotton thread and attaching it to the lid however that also didn't work. She wouldn't stay in the same place. I moved on to using some jewellery wire I found in my craft box, threaded it through her head and wrapped it round the top opening of the jar on the outside rim, wrapped it round a few times and wound it together so it would stay.
Gluing the cotton wool to the lid and also around the wire that was visible on top of the figure's head was a good idea to cover the visible wire. I covered the cotton wool in glitter and pulled the cotton wool slightly so it covered the lady's head to make it look like her head was in the cloud, then screwed the lid on and it was complete. This was the final piece that tied it all into together with my original inspiration from Manalo.
The theme for the project was to create a piece of artwork in a jar using inspiration from an artist we had researched and the artist i chose was Michael Vincent Malano. Initially i was drawn to Manalo's work as it portrayed dream-like scenes of which i could identify with. His photo-manipulations brought emotions such as fear, loneliness, freedom and joy when looking at them. They also have a surrealist aspect to them of which i really like. I felt i could put my own mark and take on the themes he uses, using recycled materials and mixed media. When it came to researching into his inspirations for the series examples i used, such as 'the hermit's way of looking at life', I liked how he argues society's self-destructive addiction to faster living and how he wanted to explore this even deeper by immersing himself in a hermit's way of life for a while to rediscover his memories and gain more.
I found a few challenges creating in miniature and feel that my piece could have been improved by creating something on the back of the background so it could be aesthetically pleasing 360 degrees. This is something to bear in mind for other projects. I did attempt to make the lady out of wire to begin with however i found this didn't work as well as drawing her on card.
I felt i responded well to the theme of the project and you can see a true reflection of the inspiration taken from the artist. The feedback i received from the group was good and my peers seem to like my idea. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of researching, developing ideas and then making the finished product and would love to do a bigger version in a bigger jar!
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