Shannon Fennell Artist

I've been roughing out the sculpture for my interactive display. As outlined in my proposal for my year one project, I'm creating a "Venus figure" based on Palaeolithic sculptures that I will be making interchangeable accessories for. The original figures are usually very small. Venus of Willendorf (the top image) is only 11.1 cm long. I've decide my sculpture will be 25 cm - it has to be big enough for me to drill holes at various spots for the pegs on my accessories to fit into, and I need all the accessories to be a size that is easy for people to handle. Once I get my armature finished, I will test that - make a few of my planned accessories out of polymer clay - to see if the scale will work. I can then scale up the figure if I need to - can't be too heavy or awkward to hold though. I did a few sketches to nail down a composite figure, and am now getting my armature made. Then I'll add clay and sculpt the details, such as they are, in. I was thinking ...

Today was our Screen Printing Workshop. It was a long day - a six-hour workshop on my feet the whole time. But it was really satisfying. Turned out I was able to get my Skull printed on acetate at the print shop. Mike, the tech there, used Photoshop to manipulate and separate the design for me so I could do a two-part print! Also, the materials were included in the introductory workshop so we didn't need to pay for any of them. If we book in for our own projects, we'll have to pay for what we need/use. We did every step. From applying the emulsion to the screens, drying it, then laying on the light table to expose the screen with our acetate images to UV light, then hosing off the loose emulsion from under the black image... all the way to cleaning the film off the screen entirely so they were clean for the next use. It is a physical process, plus standing on my feet for six hours. I'm pretty tired. I didn't take a lunch break as I wanted to keep working (and I don'...

Tomorrow the four of us (year one) are doing our introductory workshop in the Silk Screening studio. We had a brief intro with Jo (the technician) on Thursday  - she explained what we need to prep and have ready to go. The workshop is six hours (10-4) so it is a long process! What we needed to prep is the image we want to silk screen. If we want to do more than one colour we have to make each different colour part on another layer, meaning separate images for each colour. It all has to be printed on acetate in solid black as creating the screen uses light - the black image stops the film from solidifying on the screen, and once you've prepped the screen (removing what hasn't set) the ink goes through... well, more involved than that.  We could get a digital image printed on acetate OR hand trace on specific tracing paper. There wasn't a lot of time for prepping this: I had eye treatment on Friday morning, Saturday was a bust due to residual pain and blurred vision. I did go...

I was reviewing the course notes and was reminded we are supposed to post on our blogs at least weekly, so here I am! There is 90's Christmas music playing on my TV... I like to have background noise; a holdover from living alone for so long. It usually would be 70's Rock but that show was a repeat. I just finished watching the last of the induction videos and doing the quizzes for the studios/introduction workshops I signed up for. I'm very excited about tomorrow's session in the Ceramics Studio as I need to get started on my project and that is where it is going to happen. Been working on my reading for my research, bit by bit. My eyes haven't been very good this week so I didn't get as far as I had hoped. I had a meeting with a Disability Advisor yesterday and it appears there are tons of options available to make "reading" easier. I have to go through the assessment process to find out what will work and/or be available for me. I've got my next...

I decided to upload several of my Fine Art Diploma program projects to my YouTube channel, because... why not? As I am fervently avoiding any of the technology based inductions offered here in the MA program, I felt I should show that I have actually used the equipment, software and processes previously. I worked hard, was happy with the results BUT DID NOT ENJOY IT. I tend to use programs I know if required to produce a presentation as a video, etc.  I can use Word and Excel to create, edit them in the Windows photo editor, put them in Powerpoint, add narration, then convert that to an MP4 file... voila! That works for slides, etc.  I do digital art that way too - impressed the heck out of one of my professors by using Word to create work.  The project was analog to digital so I took a selection of photos of my work, then used Windows photo editor to crop, then pasted into Word in various configurations, saved as PDFs, converted to JPGs and repeat... took a bit of time b...

Upon review, I’ve realized that the scope of my original idea for my MA project is massive, so I’ve narrowed my focus for my first year proposal. My original concept is a comparison of women’s reproductive rights being controlled by the patriarchy to conservation/environmentalism and the control humans have on the planet’s resources. My thesis for my Fine Art Diploma was on threatened species and why they are threatened was part of the project, which is called “Anthropocene of the Crime.” So I have already done a lot of research on human impact on the planet. I started thinking about the theory that humanity was originally a matriarchal society, with the Goddess being the power figure. Figurines, referred to as “Venus” figures, found throughout Europe and as far east as Siberia, are plentiful (currently there are over 200 known) and have been dated to the Palaeolithic Era (which spans 1.4 million to 10,000 years ago.) Many of the figures have been reliably dated to around 30,000 ye...