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Fun Fact
Tumblr posted its first advertisements in May 2012 and subsequently earned $13M in revenue.
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Rationale
My illustration of Flora Mackenzie tries to convey a fundamental sadness to a chaotic, lonely individual. Flora suffered from alcoholism, suppression and was smited in society. Flora is illustrated in colours that depict quite a sallow individual, whose beauty is hinted at but drawn away from in the colours. The surrounding imagery displays what her life is and was, hints at her career, alcohol, her brothel, religion and the time she was in. The choice of using a blue palette overlaid on this is both symbolic in her sadness but also around the mystery that her life was, hints but no straight answers to her full personality, just a jumble of assumptions around one woman.
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Week 6
Upon reccommendation, I began colouring the piece digitally, this involved scanning the original drawing and relining the body and face digitally using digital watercolours and using a textured paper to try and get a realistic watercolour feel. I felt the colours ended up bringing alot of emotion to the piece and I initially planned on doing the entire background in a blue haze but found it almost too bright and cheerful for what was fundamentally, quite a depressed individual.
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Week 4 and 5
I started working on my final illustration. This was an A3 Pen and ink piece working with 0.3 and 0.5 fineliner pens. I wanted to push and see how I could fit in symbolism and imagery with the background and create quite a chaotic and busy piece, suited to who she was as a person. This took a lot longer than anticipated and consumed the best part of a fortnight to complete. Hints of alcoholism, her fashion career, jesus, and the 40s floral wallpaper all ended up in the final piece which I sent across to the interim presentation.
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Week 3 Analysing physical traits
I went through my notes on Flora Mackenzie and pulled out all the physical and symbolic traits I could pull in to an illustration and how they might fare.
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Week Two Concept Sketches
For Week two we did a series of character sketches based on our chosen figure, I tried to work completely analogue to try and get a feel for the direction I planned to go in for my final illustration. I focused primarily on the face and determining how Flora Mackenzie might have looked when she was younger. Approximately in the 40s or 50s
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Podcast Notes
Madam: The Story of Flora Mackenzie
Flora was the most famous brothel keeper in the history of New Zealand
Christian
Interview when prosecuted when she was 74.
A real character, crazy stories.
'Famous Flora' Play named after the brothel that Flora ran
A fictionalised play but has some direct quotes from her life.
Born in Auckland, 1902*
Mangere, mostly farmland at the time. All horse races, introduced to the queen. She was a society girl.
Crossed her legs instead of tying her legs by the ankle
Mum was quite absent, Dad was a bigwig in manly business circles
She was chaperoned until she was 28, taught sex was for marriage
Trained initially as a nurse, wasn't a good fit. She didn't like authority
Left NZ and spent time with the bohemian crowd in Sydney
She developed a talent for Fashion Design, opened Ninette Gowns
It was high fashion, had a particular market she knew how to cater to. She came from that class and she could cater for it. Fitting rooms had great glamour.
She took care of her customers, purchased the best, sent drawings
Some of her gowns are in museum collections
1930s - Shes a successful business woman, unmarried and determined to be a business success
How did she become a hard drinker/brothel keeper in the 60s/70s
Sex work in Aotearoa
Was very different to European
1869 Contagious Diseases Act, police got women with contagious diseases as a criminal sanction - Called instrumental rape
Flora came on to the scene when the law had been overturned
1973 - Domestic Purposes Act
Forms of contraception could be employed but there was a huge stigma
Attitudes in early 20th century was complex
Flora - it happened by accident in the 40s
Flora’s Lifetime
Lived in apartment in ring terrace
She rented some of the rooms to people
Girl was a 'business secretary' Flora wanted help and girl told her she was a prostitute
Flora decided to keep her on, before long there was a few sex workers and Flora started taking a cut of it.
Boardy house - old name of brothel
Overseas men were greeted with more than just fresh milk, were interested in New Zealand women. They treated them differently, spent money and chivalry on them.
Women were surprised by an articulate form they provided
She became a madam by fault, she didn't see what was wrong with it - one opinion
another opinion was they thought she started before the first world war, working within the society circles.
Many servicemen thought they were good time girls, sending money back to floras.
She was known as 'Flora' to men coming over from overseas.
Could have been between 30s-40s for coming in to the prostitution circle.
1943 she appeared in court for the first time. Charged for being in possession of 3400 cigarettes. Men had left them. She was fined $25 pounds.
Cigarettes used as a form of currency. Dodged heavy time war taxes
Makes sense she got involved with sex work in world war II
Love story between Flora and an American serviceman.
He died in the war and never came back which broke her heart and sent her to drink - one opinion
She became a sad woman because she drank too much, or sad because she was trying to numb the pain.
I dont think she smoked? - opinion (I think she definitely smoked)
Definitely shunned by polite society.
by 1958 she shut down her fashion business and worked in brothel
Became alcoholic, tried to get help from AA
Mixed milk with spirits and kept in the fridge, drank in front with AA
When arrested she suffered badly
Had vice policeman, through whisky in his face because she couldn't drink too
Two dearest friends, Anna Hoffman - Billy Farnell - (Shanghai Hills some of her furniture is there) Quite protective of her memory.
Alec Layland - Did an extensive interview when she died. He was the head of the Auckland vice squad and busted her three times.
'She would never see anyone in trouble'
A trap was laid and money given to young detective, he had to signal police when she took her clothes off, didn't and an hour later and walked out. He spent the money
Wasn't unusual at the time, police understood at the time and didn't really want to interfere.
She had an inside line on the criminal underworld. Bit of fraud going on.
Alec introduced her to his boss and she introduced them to a line of girls, offered them to the boss.
Dealings didn't always go smoothly, appeared in court 6 times, only twice in prison
Premises had undergone a transformation to cross in the living room, bibles, single beds, large ornate bible, Jesus saves pamphlets. resulted in a hung jury.
Newspaper article, cars parked outside famous flora was going to be announced but there were some quite important people outside.
It was a luxurious, Japanese aesthetic
Girls were sometimes dressed up in gowns she had designed
Revolving bed, built in sound system, mirrors above the bed.
Lots of positive testimonials about her.
Flora was pro choice and pro contraception, saw her business as part of the feminist cause
She saw herself as someone who helped women who were in peril
She saw that sex should be before marriage. She was also hesitant about single mum benefits
She reckoned the government was running a brothel
She had strict policies, only hired europeans, or half or quarter cast Maori - she was racist
She'd hold on to the girls bank accounts
Trafficking - You don’t have control over your money.
Possible that the women who worked for her were totally okay with it but that might not be the whole story
Becky Bennett - First NZ Police Officer - She never tried to close her down, Betty said she was invited to Floras,
Becky used to put her to bed if she was off her face.
Had a couple of big Alsatians.
Floras drinking got the better of her, she became unwell and unkempt - the famous name went to a different location.
Died July 8th 1982 at 79 years old.
Tried to donate her house to Salvation Army, they wouldn't accept it. Rumour is she gave it to the man who delivered her whisky.
Was a black sheep in her time but today she would have been a legitimate business woman.
Lot of her life is mysterious.
Mystery woman.
Did she/Didn’t she - it was her final private moment.
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Week One Overview
Illustration Studio Week One
This week we had an overview of our first assignment and analysed a range of political editorial illustrations and how illustration can be used to highlight the characteristics and history of a person to inspire, engage, entertain and create a story to share with an audience.
For the first assignment we're taking the Black Sheep Podcast hosted by Radio New Zealand that looks at the controversial and 'villainous' characters of New Zealand history. There are a range of historical figures to choose from, alternating between fundamentally catastrophic and entertaining people that have a history of wrong doing.
After doing research around some of the podcasts and who was featured. I tossed up between the Baby Farmer; Minnie Dean or Flora Mackenzie who was arguably New Zealand’s most famous brothel owner. Flora Mackenzie is a wild character with a colourful and entertaining history and I felt that she had a fantastic story and elements to both her character and physical appearance that would be fun to illustrate. I took the time this week to research further in to her history, take note of her physical and visible characteristics that were immediately available and the time in which she was most notable within New Zealand history to gain an understanding of the time, location, style and environment of the time.
I decided to create annotated moodboards to help depict Flora as a character in a visual capacity and also the illustration precedents I found that had interesting qualities to them that made them successful.
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