Evaluation
For my research, I started by planning what I wanted to focus on throughout my project, to which I decided to focus on nature. After considering all the aspects of nature I could focus on I decided to focus on undergrowth as I think it is an aspect of nature that is often overlooked, which then led me to make the title of my project “Undergrowth” and I created the tagline “an investigation into how artists, photographers, and craftspeople use plants and vegetation to create contemporary artworks.”
From this, I then looked into artists who use undergrowth in their work and from this, I found four artists that interested me. Those artists are Rachel Dien, Al Mefer, Robert Peek and Jacek Gonsalves. For Rachel Dien, I was inspired by her plaster casts, so I built upon this and did some mini plaster cast experiments with flowers to see what worked well and what didn’t then to finish off I made two big plaster casts, one with wax, one with plaster, however, I feel as though this was one of the weakest parts of my project. Moreover, for Al Mefer, I was inspired by his use of colour and how he changed the feel of nature by just changing colour, within my work I spanned from close-up photos of just leaves, to landscape photos that have nature within them. I then tried to adjust the colour of flowers and plants using gels to further my project and I tried using numerous colours and seeing how different colours worked together and seeing what effect that has on the plants. Furthermore, for Robert Peek, I tried a range of techniques, first, I tried taking photos of flowers and smoke and I liked how these turned out, I then took photos of flowers in a milk bath, and I also think these were successful, finally, I tried out some digital edits, from which I played around with colour, inverted the images etc. Lastly, for Jacek Gonsalves, I tried a range of cyanotypes, some on paper, some on fabric and some with acetate. Therefore, throughout my artist research I have tried a broad range of techniques, these techniques are plaster casts, digital editing, cyanotypes and photography.
From there, I decided that I should mainly focus on photography as my photographic work was my most successful throughout my artist research, I specifically decided to focus on natural and unedited photography throughout my experiments. Within my statement of intent, I decided to focus on film, photograms, macro photography, landscape photography and video work. To review and refine my experiments, I looked at what types of photographs were working and which ones were not, for example, my macro photographs were my best, however, at the start they were bright and quite basic, so I decided to go down a darker route with my photographs. Within my experiments, I decided I wanted to try some traditional techniques, these were photograms and film, and I like how these turned out, however, after doing them, I determined that they were not the route I wanted to take my project down. In addition, I also tried some video work, I made a timelapse of mushrooms growing, which didn’t turn out too well as it wasn’t as clean as I hoped it would be due to me not using a tripod, I also took some videos of me moving around the forest floor and for the most part these work successful, however, this too was not the route I wanted to take my project down. Within my experiments, I took a broad range of photographs to see what worked and what didn’t, these include, macro photos of mushrooms, moss, flowers and leaves, forest images, and lens ball images. I think for the most part I followed what I said I was going to do in my statement of intent, but, there were certain aspects I decided wouldn’t work or were not working so I decided to focus on them less, however, there were some aspects, such as macro photography, that were most successful so I decided to focus on, and develop more, my work in that area.
For my final piece, I did make the piece that I intended to as I feel that my macro photographs were my most successful, and my mushroom and moss photos were the most impactful into the route I decided to take. Moreover, I think having all these aspects within my final piece highlights the aspects of undergrowth I feel are underappreciated and noticed less than other pieces of undergrowth, such as flowers, that are often noticed and celebrated. Furthermore, in the middle of my macro photos, I chose to include a landscape photo of a tree that has fallen over, as I think that it’s an aspect of undergrowth you wouldn’t exactly see every day, in addition, within the image the forest floor is covered with moss, which I also find particularly interesting. Additionally, I chose to use a grid format of nine images as I think nine photos fully allows me to show all the characteristics of undergrowth and show a lot of different aspects, rather than using one image, that shows one aspect. My piece is meaningful to me as I’ve always enjoyed nature, and I have an interest in mushrooms and think they are an overlooked piece of nature. If I had more time throughout my project, I think I would have tried more traditional techniques within my experiments and maybe tried more staged photography with flowers as I think that was also a successful aspect of my work that I would have liked to build upon.