Damien Hirst of course is famously renowned for using animals, body parts and skulls in his work with a very conceptual meaning behind it. His piece ‘The Physical Impossibilities of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ is possibly his most well known piece, featuring a large shark submerged in a tank of formaldehyde. The shark has to be replaced after a number of years due to the eventual decay that the formaldehyde fights to prevent. He has also created pieces of great controversy following this, such as ‘For the Love of God’. It was created in 2007 using a skull, diamonds and human teeth, the skull was an old one bought from a shop and believed to be a couple of hundred years old. It was then covered in 8,601 diamonds making it a very expensive piece of artwork. The human teeth were also left on giving it the proper effect of being a human skull.
Another artist that I have been following the work of for quite a long time is Sue Reno, who at looked at when I was studying flowers and now is also relevant to my skull studies. She works as a quilt maker from Pennsylvania using nature and wildlife as much of her inspiration. She uses a lot of processes in her work, including monoprinting, needle felting and cyanotyping.
This is one example of a beautiful quilt she has created, the skulls are cyanotyped on the blue patches, this is a process I enjoy and have become quite familiar with. It begins with coating the fabric or paper with the developer solution in a dark room and leaving it to dry, then you choose objects or a design you want on the paper or fabric, this can include real 3d objects, such as leaves or flowers as this leaves an organic natural impression of them on the paper. I usually chose to make my design from a digital image, so I print the image onto see through acetate paper, and then lay this over the top of the now-dry paper or fabric. This is then exposed to light, which can be done in sunlight, as sometimes these can be called sunprints, but the more accurate and quicker method is to use an exposure unit. After this is done, the image must be removed and rinsed of chemicals so it stops exposing when subjected to light, this can then be dried out and is a completed print, always turning the dark blue colour. This technique was used a lot before printing was the most practical solution, whole blueprints were created using this method, hence the colour and the name referring to the blue colour that the chemical turns the paper or fabric it is printed on. This is a technique I am keen to try out for this unit, as a textiles artist I would love to use fabric in my work, combined with my love of photography and old, more traditional photographic techniques such as this. Photograms is a similar one to this as it also has to be developed with often unpredictable results, and while I cannot do this on fabric, it is an option to try out to create maybe my own stop motion booklet maybe.
textilesbytahlia 