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Final piece in progress- tapestry of the life of Simonetta Vespucci

I have looked at the comments made in previous crits and am now expanding on the idea of layering years of history with visual layering of images, using cyanotypes, using less text so that isn’t the focus of the image, merging the photographic part of it with the painted so it stands out less

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Zoe Leonard and Cheryl Dunye- ‘The Fae Richards photo archive’ 

I’ve discovered this work in the previous article by Giovanna Zapperi that I have read- it’s really similar to my own work, with the creation of a fictional female character and then making artwork about the imagined story, except with photographs.

‘The photographic narrative charts the life of the fictional character Fae Richards,  better known as ‘The Watermelon Woman’, an African-American actress born in the early 20th century through to her old age and involvement in the civil rights movement.’

‘Leonard staged photographs of Richards throughout her childhood and adult life. These then act as props that form the basis of Cheryl Dunye’s film ‘The Watermelon Woman’ In which Dunye takes the leading role as a young African-American lesbian video store employee who is researching the life of the 1930s starlet Fae Richards.’

"The Watermelon Woman came from the real lack of any information about the lesbian and film history of African-American women. Since it wasn't happening, I invented it."

The artists looking at the re-discovery of the life of the imagined character is similar to what I am looking at with the introduction of the photographic process into my tapestry-like pieces. I think that the anachronism of the 15th century references and then a photograph, as if it had been rediscovered in the early 1900s  (I got this idea from watching a documentary on ancient Egypt being rediscovered in the 1920s, and was thinking about how the old sepia coloured photography of the pyramids being excavated is now linked in people’s memories to ancient Egypt)

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Article: ‘Woman’s reappearance: rethinking the archive in contemporary art- feminist perspectives’ by Giovanna Zapperi 

This description of the three artworks the author goes on to talk about is exactly what I want to do with my work

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This is a test I’ve done with layering images and text and using the sun print paper- I really like the outcome, because it solves my problem of wanting text and image together but both being a bit unclear as if it were a historical object made ambiguous by the years of wear/ damage on it. I want to take this further, by layering more images and drawings and photographs- I have ordered some cyanotype chemicals because mixing them myself will mean I can paint them on huge surfaces and experiment with that.

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Sun print paper tests- it wasn’t working that well and I found out why

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I watched “Portrait of a lady on fire” written and directed by Céline Sciamma- the ideas of the female gaze, female artists and how they were limited in what they could do in their art and how they could exhibit/ what they could explore in their art is really relevant to themes I’m looking at. The guardian film review- “What follows is an intellectually erotic study of power and passion in which observed becomes observer, authored becomes author, returning time and again to a central question: “If you look at me, who do I look at?”...We hear it echoed in a historically accurate discussion of the way the art world keeps women in their place by proscribing their subjects of their gaze, their inquiry.”

I like how subtly the film makes a statement about women in art, and women in the 18th century- there isn’t huge Hollywood dramatic feminist moment, there’s lots of small details which are still confident but more casual about changing the usual period film stereotypes. For example the three women smoke a pipe, wear the same clothing throughout which is much more historically accurate, discuss periods and abortions, discuss intellectual literature together, help each other with their art and their problems throughout the story.

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(On the left is a notebook where I’ve written all the facts I could find about Vespucci’s life as a reference, and on the right is my own fictional version and surrounding research I’ve done on the 15th century)

In the pin up on Thursday, the idea of presenting more clearly that there’s a difference between the real history and my own fictional version was talked about. I don’t want to make a piece about the two combined, because my idea is to create such a convincing new history that most viewers would almost believe it were true, yet they would also know that it couldn’t be because most of the events in the story would have been impossible for a 15th century woman to be permitted to do. I chose the use Simonetta Vespucci to base my imagined history off because very few people, probably art historians who know her in connection with Botticelli, would know who she was- therefore, this gives her a chance to have a new life and go down in history for different reasons.

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This is a piece I’ve made experimenting with using text and images to tell a story. I’ve chosen the opening lines of the history of Simonetta Vespucci that I’ve written, and used imagery from the start of the text. The two torso shaped figures in the middle are meant to represent the difference the disparity between Simonetta having the recognition she would deserve if my story were true, and the fact that she is a woman so she wouldn’t have actually been able to reach that point, even though the difference between the two shapes is very little.

The photograph mixes up the timeline a bit because if this is referencing a medieval tapestry then it would be historically inaccurate to have a photographer her- however the entire piece is about anachronisms, the colours, text and abstract drawings all don’t fit into the 15th century. This mixing up of modern ideas of historical and how there is only one way to look at history is something I am exploring.

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Drawing to explore image first then text, and also what images I want to include on a tapestry- looking at detail vs abstract shapes, mark making/clashing of drawing styles and techniques, how much is handed to the viewer. Also looking at how much of this is inspired by comic books- limiting images to squares to separate them & show narrative- do I want to show narrative?

All the text and images in the drawing are taken from the first chapter of Simonetta Vespuccis imagined life.

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I want to make a visual piece that’s both text and image, so I’ve started looking at what images can occompany the story.

I’m interested in how much I need to illustrate the text directly, and how much I can reference other points in her life that I haven’t written about. Also, starting with the text for a visual piece is only one way of creating my tapestry- I might try and reverse this and look at layouts starting with images then ad the text later.

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I am looking at how I can use text to tell the story I’ve created of the artist’s history, to accompany painted/sewn images on the tapestry

I wanted the text to be regular and really readable so it didn’t get too lost when I placed images on top and around it, and so one way I discovered was to use a stencil

I didn’t have an alphabet stencil so I picked a font I liked because it was very bland/universal and didn’t give an indication of time period and created one using a scalpel

The text is the beginning of the story of Simonetta Vespucci’s life, which I’ve written with some historical facts being correct, some made up- for example she was actually born in 1453 in Genoa

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These are tests for using opaque transfer medium, which transfers the printed image to the fabric after 24 hours. I wanted to see how clear the image was, and whether I could draw something then combine it in a collage with the rest of a painted tapestry textile piece

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I’ve also tried making cyanotypes using paper that is bleached by the sun- I was inspired by this image from the V&A’s Instagram account:

I want to see how I can add these “sunography” prints into my tapestry as a kind of collage, because of the result making kind of ghost images, reminding me of a Victorian photograph

These are the negative images I printed on tracing paper, and the results.

It didn’t turn out as clear as I wanted them, so I will try again with some better quality paper, and leaving it for longer in the sun before developing them in water

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Tapestries- I have been looking at how I could use the format of a tapestry to convey the story of the imagined artist’s life. Tapestries are usually hand woven on a loom, but the use of a huge rectangle frame for my painting, and a brightly coloured narrative image, will still reference the format

This is the work of Alice Kettle, who makes huge machine embroidery pieces.

I experimented with using machine embroidery because it’s much faster than doing it by hand, and also more like drawing although it’s hard to make detailed images

I wanted to see if I could use machine embroidery for writing with because it could create the feeling of loose messy handwriting, which would add to the idea of this being a hand made found historical object

I also experimented with adding oil paint over the writing so that the image and text would be in different mediums.

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This is a drawing where I’ve chosen parts of the story I’ve written of the imagined history of Simonetta Vespucci. I wanted to explore how I can turn my writing into a visual piece and how ambiguous I can make it without losing the viewer completely

Done in: Pencil/ oil pastel/ fountain pen/ watercolour/ acrylic/ inks

I have also been inspired by Tracey Emin’s textile pieces in the choice of bright clashing colours- and also in her mixture of fabrics and disjointed sentences, which relates to my clash of different periods of time in the story and mixtures of patterns to represent this.

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The Rosetta Stone

Having a publication or a text piece to accompany my work is something that I am exploring- something that can help interpret or explain some of the written history, yet also not giving the entire story away. The Rosetta Stone interests me because of the way all three of the different languages have enabled historians to translate hieroglyphs- one object has allowed us to look at the whole of a period of history in greater depth. 

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Marcel Duchamp’s Travelling cases

These could be a way of documenting my new history of Simonetta Vespucci

They remind me of Joseph Cornell’s suitcases containing information about places, his boxes of little worlds

They link to my ideas of museums, curation, archives of information