The Two Leaves Art Blog: February 2013

SOUL MATES

Making a CD Cover

I love music. It motivates and inspires me. So when I was asked to design a cover for a song writer's EP I got stuck in.

I analysed the lyrics to his songs and found a common theme - attachment and letting go. it reminded me of a Greek Legend I'd heard once. Zeus was afraid that humans were becoming too powerful. Humans had two heads, four arms and four legs. To put the humans at bay Zeus split the humans into two. As a result every person had only one head, two arms and two legs.

For the rest of eternity these humans ran around like headless chickens trying to find their other half. And this is where the idea of soul mates comes from.

“I was still on this side, here. But another me, maybe half of me, had gone to the other side…I've felt like this for the longest time – that in a ferris wheel in a small Swiss town, for a reason I cant explain, I was split in two for ever” (Sputnick by Kazuo Ishiguro, p172).

Another old Greek story I took inspiration from is from Metamorphosis. It is about a couple called Baucis and Philemon. Zeus and Hermes wanted to test man kind. They dressed like weary travelers and went to a small city. They knocked on many doors and were turned away every single time. The last house they came to belonged to Baucis and Philemon. They welcomed the two men gladly into their homes. Although they were poor and had next to nothing to eat themselves they prepared a big feast for their guests. The Gods revealed themselves just as Baucis was about to kill his last cock. They told them they had come to test man and had decided to flood the city because of mans insolence. But they would save Baucis and Philemon. As well as this they would grant them one pleasure or wish, whatever they wanted. Baucis and Philemon thought long and hard. They could have had riches, immortality, strength - anything they could dream up. Instead they asked the Gods that when it was time for one of them to die that the other should die also.

The two lived happily into old age in a monastery the Gods gave them and when the day finally came for one of them to die the other did too. They merged and grew together into a tree.

"As their bodies sprouted leaves, the crowns of trees grew over their heads." (Ovid, Metamorphosis) With their branches intertwined, they remain forever together.

I did some research and found some images I wanted to work with:

I worked with this last one here primarily. I wanted to change it slightly though so, again I did some research:


Looking at a photo shoot from Love Magazine. Togetherness and unity.

Looking at a photo shoot from Love Magazine. Togetherness and unity.

I sketched and manipulated some of the images I had found:

I worked on various layouts but decided I wanted to to create a CD cover that could fold out to reveal the entire picture. So I taught myself how to use Photoshop. I needed to layer my images so I chose this image of a tree and the one of Baucis and Philemon. I also chose a font called 'Birth of a Hero'

The CD cover folds in half so the right half is the front cover and the left half side is the back cover.

FASHION

I've always loved flicking through a fat glossy magazine admiring the fashion photography, the clothes, the make-up and the setting. However I've never really know what to do with any of it. It's been too out of my league, a different world and one I don't feel I'm invited into anyway. I see the beauty and luxury of it all but first and foremost what I used to see was a skinny girl. That and clothes exclusive to size zero models and at a price I would never be able to afford. However this changed...

I used to work as a display assistant at Harvey Nichols, one of the leading window designers in the fashion world. The store sells high end luxury fashion brand such as Lanvin and Stella McCartney. When I started my job there I did some research into the fashion industry, specifically the designers behind the clothes. I watched a documentary on the American designer Mark Jacobs and I watched fashion shows by the British designer Alexander McQueen. These two fashion designers are true artists. They use their inspiration and emotions to create their clothes. They don’t see the clothes the way I did, they see them the way I see theatre – as an outlet to design and a way to physicalize their creativity “I don’t think the world needs reality. It needs fantasy. There is enough reality in the world.”

Alexander McQueen uses the runway as a theatre space. He starts his collection by deciding on a theme for the entire show. He then designs the clothes and then designs how the clothes will be modelled. His runway shows could be described as works of Theatre of Cruelty. Theatre of Cruelty is a form of theatre that originated in the 1930s by Antonin Artaud; it tries to show its audience the things that they ignore by affecting them emotionally and physically. It's name is not supposed to imply cruelty on stage but rather to show the cruelties of life.

In researching Theatre of Cruelty I developed an idea for ‘Ultimate Theatre’ . A theatre that makes you feel the way you might do in a situation where life and death are impending by creating adrenaline in the audience and cast. In one of Alexander McQueen's shows, he dressed his models in bandages and staged the show inside a glass cube. At the end of the show a smaller cube inside the large one opened and shattered to reveal an overweight woman hooked up to a hospital breathing apparatus while moths flew out from within their glass prison. McQueen wanted to make a statement about accepting what life is in the end, that life isn't perfect, we are all damaged and don’t look model perfect.

Mark Jacobs is famous for introducing grunge to the fashion scene. He has an obsession with contrasting rich and poor, ugly and beautiful and is a designer who is extremely stylish and un-pretentious. He is again a true artist in the sense that he creates from feeling. He feeds on fashion, music, art and daily encounters and it is in all these places that he gets his inspiration for his clothes. “I don’t have a separation between life and work…I don’t know how to define success. If I can continue doing what I love then I’m successful”.

JW Anderson is another Designer who designs emotionally: “I based one collection on somebody who completely screwed me about- and it was the collection I loved the most; it all meant something. I designed completely emotionally. I don’t hide from any of it”.