Workshop
In this Weeks workshop with Tim, the theme was “Time travel”. He started by handing out seeds to everyone in pots, to symbolise life and growth and the beginning of Time. Then he brought out five hundred thousand year old mud from Ethiopia, which I think was to represent how old something can be in time and still be relevant today. In comparison to the seeds which are just starting out in life.
We also had to bring an object in that had a relevance to time for us. I Brought in my Great Grandmothers ring which she had in the 1920s. It was passed down by my grandmother when she saw it was black and gothic looking and she new I liked that kind off stuff. I never met her but it’s a nice little momentum. I also brought in my Sally Keyring from The Nightmare Before Christmas. My Mum bought it for me as a gift when I passed my driving Test Two years ago. It’s a time in my life where I was very proud of myself.
We spent the last hour of the Workshop creating ways to incorporate our objects and Time Travel. So I drew the objects and the backstory behind them. I then decided to create a tree from clay as the next step from the seeds, to show the progression of Time. I then drew a little picture of myself as a child feeding ducks with Mackenzie Crook, I took it from a childhood memory I am very fond of. My parents used to work and a birds of prey sanctuary called The Welsh Hawking centre in Barry, South Wales. I did not know who he was and I demanded that he fed the ducks with me and would not leave him alone.
Takeover Prep
Artist Research
Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory”
Salvador Dali, born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali y Domenech on May 11th, 1904, in Figueres, Spain, died January 23rd, 1989, was a Spanish surrealist painter. Known for his explorations of subconscious imagery.
As an art student in Madrid, Dali acquired a vast number of artistic styles and unusual painting techniques. I wasn’t until the 1920s however, that his mature artistic style develops when he discovered Sigmund Freud’s writing on the subconscious memory and his affiliation with a group of Parisian artists looking into the greater reality of the human mind. Dali started to include hallucinatory states into his work.
The persistence of memory is one of Salvador Dali’s most memorable paintings. A large characteristic element is the use of clocks. Dali was inspired by watching a slice of cheese melt in the sun over a period of time. The vision transferred to clocks, and he started painting. The landscape is of his hometown in port Lligat, Spain, where he lived with his wife. The melting clocks dominate the scene with the feeling of relativity of temporal perception. On a watch in the foreground is a group of ants, signifying the decomposition of time, the inevitable fear of death.
In Dali’s own words, the painting “confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality”. The Clocks “are the camembert of time, here time loses all meaning”. A common theme is death and decay in Dali’s work, linked well with time and the unfamiliar.
Project
After spending the workshop this week time travelling into my memories, I have decided what I want to do with my project. I will be creating moments from my childhood out of clay and paintings to represent a time of innocence and happiness. After making the tree from clay I liked the idea of continuing with this medium and just started off making small things from the memories I could think of. I started with making a little tree and the body pieces of ducks.
