#Those guys I googled for references of the peeps in the background

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In the city!

Commission for  missyuniverse_ for her fanfic at Wattpad! ( account: Kittens_escapism or juanitasuniverse ) 😊😊😊

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Digging EVEN Deeper

In order to add another layer of depth to my research, I looked back over my list of favourite subjects from my personal mind maps and began expanding my knowledge on those topics.

 I started with topiary, kicking off another mind map by jotting down anything I already knew, I then entered the term into Google to gain a brief overview on the subject before taking it further, here’s what I learned -

Historical Context: European topiary dates to Roman times. In Far Eastern culture, Chinese penjing and Japanese Bonsai are both related forms of topiary with Japanese ‘cloud pruning’ being the closest to the European art.

I then used the list of alternative search engine suggestions provided to us in order to find broader references across a wider variety of mediums and discover less established practitioners. Not all of the websites listed turned up relevant results but I did get some interesting finds from doing this.

Richard Saunders

The first thing I came across was a news article on the BBC website talking about a guy called Richard Saunders who creates surrealist artwork depicting cats as topiaries. He says his inspiration came from a topiary at Hall Barn in Beaconsfield that reminded him of a sleeping animal. He then took a photo of his cat and superimposed it into a photograph he captured at Hall Barn, changing the colour of the cat to match in with the shrubbery ultimately creating fantastic altered reality imagery. This artwork really spoke to my personal interests having studied surrealism and photography in school and being a cat lover myself, I think his work is something I could recreate using my own ideas relatively simply and so I hope to revisit this inspiration for use in my own project.

Marc Alcock 

A search on ’Domus’ led me to discover Marc Alcock, he is another practitioner using photography to document the environment around him. His series ‘California Topiaries’ according to this article, looks at the relationship between houses and gardens “his projects often deal with the visual language of environments. Through sequencing and an attention to the unique form, colour and texture of a place, his images hint at stories beyond the frame.” The context of this series is interesting as Marc is a British photographer who moved to California giving an interesting geographical perspective. He says that a lot of his work is influenced by him moving and travelling to new places which makes me see this work as a documentation of his journey, almost like a travel diary. It feels personal and I think this really shows in his use of subtle warm earthy colours in his photographs, they make me feel almost nostalgic even having never visited myself.

I think that creating a photo-series with a similar concept in and around Birmingham would be fascinating. Being in a city, it often seems as though there is not much nature here but, when you look a little closer, you can see the subtle ways in which nature has reclaimed parts of itself like when you see moss peeping through the cracks in the pavement or ivy creeping along a wall.

Philippe Jarrigeon

A search on ‘It’s Nice That’ led me to discover the work of Philippe, ordinarily a still life and fashion photographer, he took some amazing pictures of a beautiful topiary garden whilst working on the cover for Snoop Dogg’s album ‘Bush’. Being a fan of Snoop Dogg myself, I was quite excited to learn about the research that went into and the context behind the album cover. I struggled finding much other information about the creation of the artwork but I can say from personal experience, it serves it’s purpose perfectly as an album cover. It’s bright and playful with a bold green background featuring topiary trees and a contrasting bright blue dog who appears to be eating one of the bushes, sending the perfect subtle message of marijuana usage often associated with Snoop Dogg.

Stanley Donwood

I was really enthusiastic to stumble upon an article about Stanley Donwood during a search on ‘Dazed Digital’ as he is one of my favourite artists and someone I researched for my portfolio when applying to university. This article is around his book which talks about his artwork, including how the original concept for Radiohead’s album cover ‘Hail To The Thief’ was that “the plan was to smuggle 12 rolls of astroturf and some chicken wire into one of England’s National Parks and erect a series of giant topiary cocks across its stately grounds”