Week 3

17th March 2011

We were beginning to get to know each other by week 3. Kellee who was heavily pregnant had a week off as she was not feeling too good. We began the morning looking at the each other’s work from the week before. Below are some of the recordings.

In the afternoon we had the opportunity to draw a pregnant life model called Liz who had come over from Leeds for the afternoon. She was 37 weeks pregnant and amazingly agile and responsive to our suggestions for poses.  We organised the room with its amazing light to accommodate Liz. We all had easels and each participant asked Liz to do a pose which would resonate with some of the themes we were all delving into. Jenny asked Liz to pose with her pants around her ankles because that echoed her own birth and she was exploring making work from her own personal experience. Sue requested reclining poses so she could get decent drawings of the ‘bump’. Lisa was interested in the anatomical nature of birth. Having drawn from one particular YouTube video of the head emerging from the vagina, shot very close up and graphically portraying a protracted crowning, Lisa decided she wanted to explore this pose in real life. 
 

We drew in charcoal and graphite. Towards the end some of the poses were quite swift.

 

 

Week 4

24th March 2011

Left, mono-prints generated from the YouTube session last week.Right, a large drawing strip created in the same session.

We felt by this week that we had made a lot of work and it was time to concentrate our energies into finding a way forward. Deciding on the themes and ideas that had sprung up and working out which imagery to use and which to discard, we went around the room and talked about what we had found exciting, unusual and intriguing. There was discussion about the nature of the drawings from YouTube and from life drawing. What was different about them. It was generally felt that the life drawings somehow were more idealised, more stagnant and familiar. The YouTube drawings have a quality of movement and transition which was more ‘real’ to the birth experience.

Each individual is recorded talking here about the direction they want to take the work and also about the decisions for the images that they wanted reproduced onto the screens for the final weeks of screen-printing.   

Kellee


Jenny


Lisa


Lulu

Sue



These images below are what each individual decided to use. 

Jenny

One of Jenny's mono-prints

Jenny's life drawing from her chosen pose

Mono-print by Jenny

 Lisa

Image selected by Lisa from a book brought in for collage

Another photographic image from a book, chosen by Lisa

One of Lisa's life drawings, in charcoal

Another of Lisa's life drawings

Selected by Lisa from an old 1950s book

Lulu

One of Lulu's drawing strips from the last week's YouTube session

Another of Lulu's chosen drawing strips

 Sue

An image generated by Sue using photoshop and inspired by the sessions so far

Week 5

31st March 2011

Silk screen and print by Lisa

Kellee rang in the morning to say she had had her baby. A little girl, born in hospital, very swiftly. That they were doing really well and she was going to come in on the last session to tell her story!

I had made everyone’s screens up in the Hot Bed Press is Salford and brought them in to start printing with. Using acrylic paints and medium and working directly onto the floor. I showed those who did not know how to screen print.

This method of printing meant that images could be repeated and paired together, over-layed and mixed up. It also mean that if required one participant could use another’s image, changing how it might be printed. 

Lisa with screen

Clockwise from front to back: Lulu, Jenny, Alex, Jack and Lisa, masking screens

Lisa screen-printing

Lulu working with her screen

Masked screens and Lulu printing

Anti-clockwise from front to back: Lisa, Amy, Alex, Jenny and Lulu, with screens

Jenny with masked screen, Lulu and Helen in conversation behind

Lulu commencing printing and Jenny mid-print

Pristine screens

Alex mid-print with Lisa in front

Some of Jenny's images, soon-to-become silk screens.

Week 6

7th April 2011

Sue and Lulu holding up one of Lulu's finished prints

We continued with the screen-printing and worked on top of the now dried first layers. Kellee made an appearance at lunch time with her beautiful week old baby called Kaleea. Listen to her birth story here. Very inspiring for a first time mother. 

<insert audio>

We hope that this work will be shown in St Mary’s hospital on the maternity ward. 

Kellee and baby

Helen avidly recording Kellee's recent birth story

Kellee, baby and Helen

  
Some of the finished prints

Jenny's prints

 Lisa's prints

 Lulu's prints

Sue

Sue screen-printing

Sue

 Sue's prints