Final Minor Evaluation.

For my final major piece I produced a poetry and illustration zine expressing a renegade, sentimental perspective on taxidermy exhibits in museums.  
I began my research by searching out animal and plant decay in nature; things such as carcases, bones, skins, feathers, fur and dying autumn plants. After a visit to Anthony Bennett's Swarfhorse exhibition, I felt that this pathway was already at a stalemate because I felt I could not communicate anything with my animal decay drawings in the same way Bennett flipped our perspective on traditional fairy tales with his snow white in a casket sculpture.
I turned to museums to try and find inspiration in something that offered me more of a backstory to work with. I was particularly affected by the taxidermy animals and mounted insects I saw. I found the moth and butterfly mounts particularly interesting. I wanted to capture their fragile, dusty forms and so experimented with different media to try emulate this. I found monoprint on antique paper was particularly effective in showing their paper-thin, withered forms through the hazy quality of line it can achieve on the thin, fibrous papers. I took inspiration from the natural form photographer Karl Blossfeldt and old scientific illustrations in field guides to show a high level of detail in my illustrations. I was pleased with the technical outcome of my prints but I felt they had no narrative.
I focused on my initial reaction to the taxidermy; the feeling of disquiet. I thought back to my research on the artist Kelly McCallum; who combines jewelry making and victorian taxidermy in her art pieces. I found it strange that all it took was a plaque or a piece of metalsmith to transform the animals from something that was once living into an artefact or a thing; and the process that led to the animal being in the state is never thought about.
With the intention to create more sentimental and communicative, I researched artists such as Marco Mazzoni, Hazel Lee Santino and Socar Myles, looking at the way they use beautiful detail and natural forms to create a narrative in their work. I also studied the work of Joris Hoefnagel; I was inspired by his floating compositions but it was his inclusion of biblical quotes in his work that gave me the idea of presenting my illustrations alongside text.
In my original client brief; I was deciding between displaying the text alongside the image or including it within the artwork somehow. I chose to include only the latin names for the animals and plants on the drawing itself, copying the style of old field guides. I decided the text should appear beside the corresponding image, in a clean typed font framed within a neat border in the same way a plaque would appear beside the animal in a museum.
I combined all I had learnt through my experimentation of different media- watercolour, fineliner, graphite, colour pencil, ink and monoprint, to create my series of small scale monoprint and watercolour illustrations with fineliner text on natural paper to create a time-worn effect. I focused the dark line of the monoprint around the eyes to give them a hollow, haunted look and highlights to give them an extra glassy, almost teary look. The flowers both bring the animal back to the nature it was removed from and has connotations with funerals.
The ideas explored within the piece were very personal and were completed almost with no intention to be seen by many people. It seemed most logical for my pictures and text to be presented in a zine format; something small, handmade and personal that could be distributed museum shop or nearby cafe.
I think the formatting of the zine was successful, consistent and appropriate. I worked closely with the poet, discussing themes and the kind of atmosphere I wanted the images and text to evoke, and I think they have turned out the be very complimentary of one another. If I were to do this piece again, I would try and come to some kind of conclusion at the end of the zine, I think it ends quite abruptly without any kind of closure or resolve. I think it should end on either a short, abrupt statement on the last page, or one final art piece that would leave more of an effect on the reader.