Artist statement
In my final project of my degree I looked into my personal struggles of feeling isolated. I have created this piece to get a sense of self belonging, aiming to be a cathartic process to remind myself that I am not as alone as I feel. Taking the people that are in my life; my family, friends, college peers and group of local mothers from the school yard and creating a fabric collage. I choose to create a patchwork tapestry of all the faces to form that level of belonging that everyone gives me. It is reprehensive of a blanket to show that sense of comfort
Evaluation
Evaluation
One thing I always struggle with is coming up with an idea for a project, I often try to leave it vague as to not feel trapped with it by the time it comes to producing work. For this project I was struggling to even come up with a vague idea of what I wanted to do. This past year has been a big struggle for me physically and mentally, feeling even more alone than ever before. I decided I would use this feeling of isolation within my work and look at everyone in my life to show myself that as alone as I feel, I have many people around me to support me. I wanted to use many different textile techniques within this project as using textiles has always given me a sense of joy. As my dissertation was looking into tapestry from past to present, I wanted to relay the sense of importance of a wall hanging into my own work. Tapestry has been used for many reasons from a show of wealth, a celebration of life, religious meanings and other symbolisms of the time within the work, I wanted to bring that into my own work. A screenshot of time captured with textiles to show the importance of the people in my life. However, as I was doing my dissertation alongside the start of this project I really struggled to be able to split my concentration between the two. With struggles with my dyslexia I needed to put all my time and focus into getting my dissertation done to a professional level, this left my project abandoned and unbegun. Once I had completed my dissertation it was time to give my full focus and energy into my project. But with the time left for the project ticking away and no work complete I had to abandon my plan of completing multiple techniques. To get the ball rolling with my project I started with an experimental collage of one of the portraits I had collected. This was done using scraps of fabric glued into place on canvas backing, I then stitched with my sewing machine to add in details over the top. I was really pleased and proud with how this technique had turned out, so I decided that I would continue to create more of the portraits in the same style. For the portraits I had collected photographs of close friends, family, college peers and the local school mams that I consider friends. Where I could I took the photographs myself, a front faced photograph of all the previously mentioned people. There were a few people that I wouldn’t be able to see before the end of the project but they gave me permission to take a photograph of them from their Facebook profile. This was more difficult to do as some people didn’t have many front facing photos of themselves so I had to find the best one that I could. One of the people included in the needing to get a photo off of Facebook was a friend I have known for many years who lives in America, when it came to making her collage I had done the same as everyone else’s with the canvas being left plain for their skin colour, I had made a tester piece where I tried to do a paint wash over the top of the canvas but this didn’t look quite right. My issue with my American friend was that she is a person of colour, so I didn’t want to seem insensitive and almost ‘whitewashing’ her by leaving her skin the colour of the canvas, I talked to her and she told me she understood that with everyone else’s piece being left plain and uniform hers would stand out and break the uniformity, she gave me her permission to leave it unpainted. The process of making each of the pieces began by projecting the photograph onto the canvas and drawing the details, the next step was to cut out the shapes from various different textures of fabric to make up the faces, I then glue gunned the fabric into place before stitching over it to add in more details that hadn’t been added with fabric. Once I had completed all the faces I then spent time creating the layout that I wanted them to be in. I used black and white printouts to create the layout so that I was able to get the dimensions and the order I wanted, that was easily rearranged until I was happy. Once I had decided on the layout I then stitched them all together, first in the rows of five, then all the rows together to create the final piece. Due to an error in calculation I had one too many faces to go into a nice sequence. This then gave me the idea to take myself out of the main bulk of faces and to put myself at the top, on a row completely on my own. I feel this gave me that sense of isolation that I was talking about. Being on a row all by myself with no one to my side, however when you then see all the people in my life below me giving me support. I am pleased with the final outcome of the piece, I feel that the uniformity of the faces work well and I enjoy the style of the portraits that I ended up with in the end. Although I never met my intended plan of using many different types of textile techniques and processes such as batik, screen print, image transfers and more, the uniformity of all being the same collage technique works nicely as the final form of the piece.
Poster
Stitching the lines
Once i had stitched all the lines it was time to move onto stitching them together. i pinned along the line lining up the seams. once it was pinned along the line i stitched them together until i had them all together. once complete i laid them out to check them over. the final step was to add me to the top. much like what i had done with the rest i pinned myself to the centre of the top row and stitched it together. with the attachment of my portrait complete the final part left is to figure out how the piece will be hung. 
Stitching them together
One i finalised the layout i stitched them together in their rows of five. stitching them from behind to hide the seams. as some pieces had been cut a bit larger than others it was difficult to line them up, this was through my own error while cutting up the canvas.
Planning the layout
Taking print outs of all the photos i arranged them into the layout that i wanted. this meant i was able to move them about to make sure i was happy with the positioning. due to a change in positioning plan i had one portrait too many, i decided to take myself out and put me alone showing my sense of isolation but supported by everyone in my life.
Making the eyebrows
Taking a piece of canvas i mixed different shades of brow and painted it using the brow brush. this also included blonde and grey, i also made some darker shades of brown with the scraps after cutting from the original piece. looking at the photos i drew out the shapes of everyones eyebrows then cut them out. after cutting out the shapes i glued them in place. i stitched the eyebrows in the same way that i had done all the other details.
Eyebrow tester
Using an eyebrow brush and paint i tested out adding texture on the skin texter piece. from this i learnt that it was difficult to shape the eyebrows and this left it a bit messy. i also tried cutting out the shape using fabric, this looked fine but i liked the texture from the eyebrow brush. this gave me the idea to paint canvas separately then cut it out like the fabric eyebrow to get a neater shape.
Picasso self portaits
Picasso created many self portraits throughout his life time. pictured is just a few of these. you can see Picasso’s ever evolving style throughout each piece. you can see Picasso’s experimentation with the different mediums from drawings to paintings. he continued to produce work all the way into his 90’s.
Age 15
Age 20
Age 25
Age 56
Age 90
Maeve Dawson Art 