Saturday & Sunday
Trying to put together and idea for my proposal… Trying is defiantly the right word.
I made lots of paper cranes out of different stuff such as plain paper, pages of text, wrapping paper, tissue paper, patterned paper etc. They’re easy to make once you get the hang of it. And they can be made very small.
I did some research into the 12 year old girl. Her name was Sadako Sasaki and she only 2 when she was affected by Hiroshima. She died on the 25th October 1955. They are two versions of her death – I don’t know which is true. One says she finished making the paper cranes and continued to make many more, the other says she only managed to make about 600 and her friends made up the rest after she died.
Either way, her story has travelled across the world. The Japanese Crane has been made by people across the world as a symbol of hope due to this little girl.
Friday
Birds. I had a sudden flash of something and I decided to follow it. I saw a feather on the ground and figured birds are universal – they are everywhere. And there are hundreds of different birds, thousands, but they are all still birds, they still have feathers and beaks and wings. And I thought that’s like people, millions of different people, but they are all still people.
So I thought I would follow this up a bit: see if it leads anywhere.
I went to the library and looked at lots of birdie books, not really sure what I was looking for so I searched for any strange birds or any really big birds. I found one bird called the Superb Fairy Wren which was very small, and another called the Red Crowned Crane or the Japanese Crane.
Turns out the Japanese Crane was what I was looking for. It has a story behind it about a little Japanese girl who was diagnosed with Leukemia due to the radiation from Hiroshima. This 12 year old girl vowed to make 1000 Origami Cranes because an old myth says if you make 1000 the Crane will grant you one wish. And she wanted to live.
Thursday
London. Busy day, I mean up at the crack of dawn kind of day. Saw the Tate Britain and the Hayward. Some weird and wonderful stuff present in both of the galleries.
I especially liked Richards Long’s exhibit from the Tate – I like the idea that no matter where he is he can do the same list of things, either forcefully of coincidently, that gave me few sparks of ideas I might run with. I also liked the way he always used the same stones but in no specific place but as it was still the same stones in the same place still counted it as the same piece of work.
The Walking in My Mind in the Hayward was quite surreal. Thomas Hirschhorn’s instillation stuck out in my mind, I guess because it was literally like metaphorically stepping into somebody’s mind, with the photos and pages of books and one thing leading to the next in. Very strange.
Wednesday
Spent the day trying to write my statement… got very frustrated. No idea what to write but I found some inspiration in the end.
Yesterday I followed a train of thought about the west bleeding into the east and came up with the idea of a traditional and easy to recognize eastern scene, e.g. a Japanese bridge, with something that would be well suited their, such as deer, but with an eastern twist, such as making the deer characters out of bambi.
Went to Southampton Bar Gate Gallery for a look around, there was some interesting stuff there vaguely along the lines of my own ideas, industrial chimneys casually painting into traditional style Asian wall scrolls.
Finally finished Statement, don’t know how but I think it looks finished.
I spent the day searching for any ingenious revelations; while flicking through arty magazines, looking in closer detail at anything thing that caught my eye that I could cut and stick for any inspiration.
I googled the definition of East, searched randomly for any connotations that could be of use, found a couple of interesting things. I did the same for West. Following some links ended up with a quote from Tolkien…
Using the thesaurus, I started on a random word, nefarious, went randomly from word to another; I ended up with love and sensitive on a list that started with nefarious, ended with nefarious and had a lot of evil in the middle. The idea behind that was exploring the way opposites are linked.
Went from there to look at a bit about binary opposition.
Went home.
