Art Progress Report

Ah, some pictures.

Also, clearly I have lied about keeping these posts short and readable. Whoops.

Right now I'm almost finished with the lithography element of the project. I've done lithographic editions of the elderly women (nine so far--but I'll be adding another three or four to the project in January) after which I will try to learn screen-printing in like ONE DAY and print their costumes (on separate pieces of paper to be either collaged or chine colled in some manner or the other).

Of course I should be doing the research for an essay right now instead of posting. But I figure that since this project is school-related, it's not too horrible of a distraction. Right? Fack, I'm totally the cause of all my own stress...

Here we go:

This is one of the litho presses we use at school. I totally own litho press #1. It's my favourite, and I'm superstitious so its the only one I use.



Meet some of my ladies:



This is Wonder Woman and Snow White, getting all ready to be printed. I should mention that in this project I did not reference any actresses who may have actually portrayed some of my figures...I am not interested in reproducing those faces as much as I was interested in aging the characters themselves...So don't expect Wonderwoman or Xena to look like Linda Carter or Lucy Lawless in their 80s. That isn't the point itself of this project.

Moving on...

Prints Galore!


In the tatami natural paper, I've made editions of ten of each lady, which will remain untouched as a lithograph. I've also made editions of five on this brown linen wrapper paper over which I will screen some text under each figure as well as collage on their costumes. Yep, that's the plan, anyway.


Snow White.


Wonder Woman.

Moving on...


Xena, Warrior Princess and Princess Jasmine. I had done some nice tonal work on Princess Jasmine, that I ended up over-etching, which I am totally disappointed about. At the point that I was working on this stone, I was feeling overwhelmed by a seeming lack of time so I didn't try to counter-etch and redraw (which I would have to do later with another stone anyway), which I now regret, as I have no intention of "whitewashing" these characters, but I think what I will do, when all twelve women are completed in January, is go back in and give some colour to every woman with some hand tinting. I'll either go with a pochoir or pastel technique or maybe some watercolour. I'm going to have to test how those mediums will work out with my paper first though.




Princess Jasmine


Xena, Warrior Princess.

A new stone, a new set of drawings...



Introducing Storm, Vixen and Pocahontas:



Once again, due to using a pencil that wasn't greasy enough, when I went to do a second etch, all the skin colour I did came right off. What a horrible limitation of an artist; who can't portray colours of skin! Bullshit! What a weird way for racism and art techique to collide. Calling myself on my own bullshit--this having happened before with attempts with tusches and cross-hatching--I decided to take a step-back, counter-etch, redraw and carefully etch yet again. There was no way I was gonna let this mistake go uncorrected.

So here I go again...


Time for a brand new etching...


And now, to introduce Max Gueverra (Dark Angel) and Foxy Brown:

Yes...I've been double-stoning...




Dark Angel


Foxy Brown.

I'll be printing off these two stones over the next couple of days, barring me running out of paper, anyway. The second etches on the last two stones seem to have come out okay so far, and my images look pretty stable, so I'm hoping for the best.

Because I've had some issues with the etching of skin colour (recently and even in past projects) I've also been thinking about how fucked-up it is that many of today's notions of race are predicated on skin colour, making it so monolithic with no nuances. Such an obvious observation, yes I know. But I can't help think that notions of "people of colour" is that...colour and not colours, not to mention all the politics, history and social practices that we attach to this notion...What scares me about this project is the potential for merely reproducing hegemonic notions about race, gender and age and how freaking easy it would be to do so...and I wonder for myself, how many people would really care to notice if all I did do was re-produce and not venture into something critical...

Art Progress Report

Okay, so that proposal was submitted some time ago, and this project is due in a couple of weeks. I have to admit I've stagnated BIG TIME with it, in part at frustrations with my drawing abilities but mostly due to ideological insecurity surrounding certain issues that I noticed as I was working on imagery. I decided to reach out to Carmen at Racialious for some help. She posted my email for me today on the blog, and it generated quite a response, so I'm re-posting my email here. I've also decided to use that email, and it's resulting comments as my artist statement for this project, since one of the aims of this project was to start a dialogue about the subject in question. I can only hope my final results will yield as much discussion as my email did over at Racialious.

Hi Carmen,

I am a visual arts/women’s studies student in Toronto, Canada. I am emailing you in the hopes of generating some advice or reference material about how to address some issues I am coming across with an art project I am working on.

My project is about the lack of visibility of aging women and also how in Western iconography of women, vitality and strength are directly linked to their attractiveness and youth. So my idea was to take fictional, iconic female characters, i.e. Wonder Woman, Buffy, Xena, Catwoman and so on, and age them with their costumes intact, and hopefully also, their dignity and the wisdom I like to think that comes with age. I have these subcategories: Film/T.V, Fairytales (which is really Disney depictions–which for some reason kind of irks me that as visual, recognizable icons they all come from there), Superheroines.

My issue is that many of the icons I am referencing are white (as am I), and while I am addressing the invisibility of aging women, I don’t want to in turn make invisible women of colour in my project. In my women’s studies degree, which informs most of my art, we talk often of how race/ism is made invisible or ignored or not properly considered in both canonical academic discourse and pop culture: I don’t want to contribute to that. I can actually come up with a number of Black-American icons to depict: Catwoman (who I am actually on the fence about after researching since there have been so many incarnations of her, far more of them white than Black), Storm from the X-Men, Foxy Brown (Pam Grier) and so on. But again, I don’t want to address racial inclusivity as either token or as simply about black and white.

I have thought about including some more Disney characters as I am already including Cinderella and Snow White (particularly because of the idea of aging them potentially puts them on the same side as their stepmothers they so revile): Mulan, Jasmine from Aladden, Pocahontas–but this does not seem satisfactory to me. Particularly Pocahontas, as she is based on a real figure straight out of colonial history–there are many issues of racism that come attached with her that could not go without addressing. I thought too about the character of Miss Saigon but again I think there are political issues there too that I’m not sure how to deal with. I am adding text to these images that will describe these women’s lives as I have aged them–I could address racial issues there. But how? Who else can I use? How do I address why I am having trouble coming up with iconic characters of colour or the overwhelming whiteness of my project? How can I make the issues of gender, age and race/ism intersect in this project? Can you recommend to me some resources I can look into? Recommend some iconic characters even that I am just being blind to?

I’m sorry if I am coming across as ignorant but I really feel like I need to address this in my project, especially since it is about the visibility and iconography of (Western) women. I’m just not quite sure how to go about it.

Thank you for your time;

Maureen.

Pictures of the actual work I am doing will be up shortly as I finish up this project. I realize now that it will never be perfect, but I am making an earnest effort to make some art that is meaningful and that at least attempts to work through the issues I mentioned in the email.

Original Post Here.

Art Progess Report:Army of Age (Tentative Title)

It's my last year at York as an undergrad, and also potentially my last chance working in a print studio for an unknown time. So I've decided to document my process this year, as I work on my art projects, which are completely informed by what I learn in the Women's Studies portion of my degree.

Any other authors on this site should feel free to do the same =)

I'll try to do this in small-ish posts so they are readable and not too overwhelming. So I'll start with my artist proposal in this post, that I had to submit earlier this year.

Taking inspiration from pop culture images of women such as superheroes, fairy-tale heroines, villains and other icons, this semester I wish to explore both the invisibility of aging women in visual mass media, and the direct link to youth and sexual appeal that these iconic women of strength, like Wonder Woman and Xena, Warrior Princess must maintain for their popularity. What I would like to do then, is to dedicate my time in next few months, re-drawing these women, the Supergirls and Catwomen, in the image of my (or anyone’s) grandmother. I want to see what happens to the vitality of these sexy crime-fighters, fairy tale princesses and vengeance-seekers when I age them to about eighty years old. What becomes of their power when their youthful appeal slips away as they age like the rest of us? What becomes of their costumes, designed more to catch the eye than to meet the practical requirements of their work? Do these characters become ridiculous when they age? If yes, then why is that so?
It seems to me that we are surrounded by a cultural climate that does not like to see women age. We praise actresses and pop stars, as they get older, for their ability to keep approximating youthfulness. As well, actions that are seen as liberating in our youth become silly in old age. It seems like women’s strength, even in positive pop cultural images remains attached to the way women look, and the way that they look must always be appealing. What I would like to do then, is to take various well known characters from comic books (Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Sailor Moon), t.v./film (Foxy Brown, Charlie’s Angels, Buffy, Xena), fairy tales/legends (Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas) and so on and make various series of lithographic portraits of themselves as the elderly women of our society. I am interested also in how their stories must change as I age them. Will Snow White become the Wicked Step-Mother she spent her youth fleeing from? Will anyone want to see Wonder Woman in her halter-top costume when she is eighty years old? Will these new images I create be able to maintain any element of these women’s past feisty-ness?
I plan to print multiple images of these elderly women and superimpose their costumes through the stenciling process of pochoir. I would like to find a way to work some text, perhaps the continuing saga of these women’s lives into the work, though I am not quite sure yet how I will do so. Currently, I am reading Barbara G. Walker’s The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power in order to work out the direction I may want to take their stories. As well, I will be conducting further research into the stories and ideologies that already exist around these characters. I want to make large and varied editions of my elderly heroines and fantasy figures so when they are displayed, not only do they overtake the viewer’s visual plane, these older women are no longer rendered invisible.