The second workshop – means that we have to figure out what we would like to do for the group project! Brainstorming…
My idea is to make some origami birds – because birds mean freedom as I wrote in the previous post. The feeling of displacement is something that we can change, it is not forever. We can change this feeling the way the birds change their location for some seasons. Even if the journey is very hard and tough, they still do it. We can change our fate and even if it seems impossible at the beginning we are able to do whatever we want with our life. In the end it is going to be fine and if not fine, at least it is going to be pretty okay. The next step in creating these birds is preparing some information about refugees and their stories that we will share in class, so it is going to be easier to understand what they feel. The last step is to put the names of those people in bird’s beaks. As if the birds would be a symbol of those people and a better future.
This week I bought some materials for my project – which I have not presented here before. I want to make I would say – patches in the shapes of cats and put them on everyone’s Takeover t-shirts. In one of the first posts, I wrote that cats feel like home to me and that it is the thing that comes to my mind first when I am thinking about this subject. So after some talking with Miranda, we figure out that it is a great idea to put them on t-shirts. IIn the beginning I wanted to make maybe some clothes, then I found an advertisement about selling carpets and I thought it was a great idea to make a couple. Unfortunately, I do not have the materials to do it but it would be awesome to try doing it. After that, we were talking about something more realistic to do and we came up with this idea!! Amazing right?
Now it is time for some research
“Though Andy Warhol is better known for his portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and Elvis, a large part of his oeuvre is also dedicated to cats, particularly through his series Cats Named Sam. Before making it as an artist Warhol worked as a freelance commercial and children’s book illustrator. He lived in an apartment on East 57th Street with his mother Julia Warhola and 25 cats who all shared the same name. In 1954 he published a children’s book called 25 Cats Name (sic) Sam and One Blue Pussy for which he produced 16 – not 25 despite what the title suggests – lithographs accompanied by his mother’s exquisite calligraphy. The original book is extremely rare but the prints have survived and are each unique, having been hand coloured by Warhol or his friends. These are some of the earliest works by Warhol on the market today and they offer a rare insight into his playful outlook and talent for colour.
The cats in the series vary from fuchsia pink – Sam 51– to bright yellow – the most famous feline from the series, Sam 58 – to elegant brick red – Sam 65 – to the more traditional tabby of Sam 54, startlingly contrasted by the One Blue Pussy of the title, known here as Sam 68. With this rainbow menagerie Warhol appears to be testing the possibilities of combining the simple and elegant lines of his sketches with the bright blocks of colour that could be added after the process of making the lithograph. With works such as Sam 66 we can see how the colour is often laid over the lines to create an offset effect. Warhol would exploit this technique further when he turned his hand to screen printing.” https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-andy-warhol/series-cats-named-sam