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The Jallery in pictures

Although I initially wanted to build this from scratch with wood, I was actually glad I used cardboard boxes instead as it made me think about installation artwork as a whole. If I was to do this in real life, I wouldn’t be building a gallery from the floor up and then creating and installing the art in to it, I would most likely be creating an installation for a space or installing a piece of artwork around a space which is what I have done here. I let the size of the cardboard boxes I had available to me dictate what pieces went in which room according to how much space I had which is reflective of what would happen in ordinary galleries and I feel probably much more insightful than if I was to have attempted to build myself one.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CATBSw8txD6hgNRjz6_bH6Omb0e8f3X0/view?usp=sharing

Here is the video of my hamster Jerry in his very own art gallery! As suspected by my hamsters love of burrows, I was not too surprised to see that the room he spent the most time in out of everywhere in the gallery was the the circle inspired room, he also seemed to enjoy interacting with the paper chain I installed too which totally reinforces what I had imagined. He seemed least bothered about the replica paintings on the wall and I have to wonder if he could actually see them or not in all honesty. He did interact with the canvases but I think he was generally distressed by their presence as they fell over and made sudden noises when he interacted with them which is something that no hamster likes. I have to say that I was overall disappointed in his reaction to the gallery and yet I also find it quite funny that he didn’t really seem to care about it even though I have now invested a lot of time and emotion in to it myself.

I really struggled with actually filming him in the gallery, I only had access to my mobile phone to record with which I primarily used mounted on a selfie stick to avoid distracting my hamster from the environment as much as possible, despite not having my hands in there, he did often follow the camera around anyway which skews my documentation of his reaction. With a lack of proper lighting in my accommodation, the shadows sometimes make it hard to see what's going on which is a shame. If I had more time, I would have filmed this over a series of days to see how his reaction evolved with time as hamster are generally a little frightened when placed in to new environments for the first time and so I think he would have been more inclined to interact with things if it wasn't all brand new to him although it’s definitely charming to see him discovering everything for the first time. I also wanted to put the art in his actual cage to see how placing it in his ‘natural’ environment not only altered the context of the work but his reaction to it; hamsters are very territorial and so often, placing something in their cage will increase the chances of it being destroyed or played with. Sadly this was another thing I did not get time to do.

I used stock Jazz music for the background as I discovered whilst doing some research for Hamtasia that hamsters like classical music and I thought this was fitting for a gallery. Ideally, I would have had Hamtasia playing in the background to see if Jerry would have a reaction to music and if so, how it influenced his behavior both inside and outside of the gallery but I unfortunately ran out of time to create the soundtrack itself.

I used Premiere Pro to edit together the software, speeding up some parts of it as I took a lot of footage that was somewhat boring to sit through otherwise. 

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The Audience ❤️

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Creating artwork for the Jallery (Part 4)

Honestly, the idea for this pieces came simply from the fact that I had accumulated a bunch of empty toilet paper and kitchen rolls and a sellotape roll, all of which are circular shaped which fits in with my theme of circle inspired artwork.

I did some brief research on mandalas during my ‘Digging Deeper’ research task and I personally enjoy them anyway so naturally was drawn to creating one from these circular shapes.

I started off small with the design but as I was cutting the toilet roll tubes with scissors, I noticed they actually produced a more pointed oval shape due to the way I was bending them whilst cutting them which I had to straighten out back into circles. After creating this initial design, I decided to add some of these pointed ovals to expand the design and I was really happy with the result.

Inspired again by circles and the materials at hand, I created this ‘circular’ abstract sculpture with the leftover tubes although I think it looks a bit like a pencil pot. I decided I would put the slotted circle cardboard sculpture I made previously in this space also and have this be a whole circle themed room in the gallery.

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Coding Workshop

Here are the notes I took during the coding workshop with Steve. I found this workshop difficult to follow live as I didn’t have access to a computer at the time it was on and so I revisited it later when I did and was able to better understand what was being taught by completing the practical steps as set out by Steve in the workshop.

We learned about P5*JS including how it was started, what it’s function is and some basic techniques and resources to get us started with it. We learned how to code shapes, adjust the stroke weight and color, adjust the fill color and transparency before moving on to more complicated things like making shapes move both according to a command and following the mouse. 

I was really inspired by the basic ‘drawing tool’ that Steve showed us how to create a code for, I saw ellipsis being used a lot in this workshop which also crop up in my work as I have discussed making circle inspired work to represent hamster burrows and I was reminded of my circle tiny canvas paintings whilst watching this drawing tool being created. I originally created this code which has a red background and a white circle which changes to yellow when you press the mouse, I did this using the ‘if or’ command we were taught during the workshop but I had trouble with getting it to change to another color after it had done one. The thing about my paintings is that they were made up of a lot of different colored dots, and so I wanted to adapt the code of my own ‘brush’ to allow you to change the color when you click it so that I could recreate this effect digitally. I learned how to make the circle change color using code I found on the Reference section of the website which we were shown by Steve; this platform is open source meaning that the community that uses it contribute to the content which is on there and it aims to provide all the tools to teach anyone how to code. Using the website and applying the logic that Steve taught us during the workshop allowed me to create exactly what I had wanted which I was really proud of having never really coded before and thinking I was going to find it really difficult. This is the result!

Here are some cropped screenshots of drawings I created using my coded brush tool! The colors generate randomly according to the code that I altered from the Reference list however, they do sometimes appear to be almost in a scheme as you can see in the last three photos. I experimented using the tool in a variety of ways, I figured that changing the speed in which you move the mouse at allows you to create different marks, moving it slowly gives you a more continuous line which I used to create the wavy shapes you see in the first two images wheras moving it quickly creates the more dotted effect you see in the middle two. Combining a range of slow and fast speeds allows you to create almost like a gradient which I have experimented with in the last three, also mixing different colors as I go along.

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Creating artwork for the Jallery  (Part 3)

Having completed the paintings, I added cardboard framed and fixed them to what will be the wall of the ‘Jallery’ along with their respective labels and QR codes. Seeing them framed and on a ‘wall’ completely changes their context from being almost a bit of a joke drawing to hanging up like ‘real art’ which I noticed myself as they felt much more finished once I had done this.

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Creating artwork for the Jallery (Part 2)

Here you can see in progress photos of the final pieces I created for my miniature art gallery. I started off with the recreation of ‘Mona Lisa’ using the exact same technique I did in my initial sketch which I forgot to document before moving on to ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ which you can see some in progress photos of below.

In the gerbil version, the face is painted white, longer and the eyes are smaller and further apart. I painted mine in grey tones with some tan around the eyes to make it look more like my hamster, Jerry. This is my favorite of all of the pieces because I think it looks the most realistic out of all of them.

As suspected, I found it much easier to paint this hamster version of a Van Gogh than I did to draw it, it was simpler to create the wavy lines that you see in Van Gogh’s work with paint and a brush and I had a lot of fun experimenting with mixing the different blue and green tones required to give this piece more dimension. Whilst I do think it’s cartoonish appearance is charming, I recognize that adding more detail would make it look more realistic in comparison to the original but I’m still happy with how this turned out overall.

To conclude the paintings, I moved on to ‘The Scream’ which I found to be the most difficult one of all, I think the main problem with this for me is that I painted this as a square in order to follow the gerbil version but the original version by Edward Munch is a long rectangle; this means that I couldn’t fit as much of the detail, especially in the sky, as I would have liked. I also really struggled with mixing the colors for this as there is a wide range of different tones compared to the Vincent piece I did which is primarily made up of greens and blues. Despite these factors, I think this is the funniest out of all of the pieces which I’m happy with as I do believe that humor has become an important element in my work; I think the original painting itself is quite funny and I have seen many recreations of this paintings with different things in place of the screaming man and I believe it is in fact quite a popular painting to imitate and yet it’s something that I have never tried to do so it was nice to be able to have a go at doing my own version.

Finally, I created these tiny gallery labels complete with fake QR codes to go alongside the paintings, giving each painting a hamster themed name based on the original titles and adding the years that the original paintings they are based on were created in. If I had enough time, I would have made these working QR codes that linked to a website that would provide more information about the artwork just like when you visit a real gallery.

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Creating artwork for the Jallery (Part 1)

Inspired by Filippo Lorenzin and Marianna Benetti’s gerbil themed replica’s of famous paintings, I decided that I definitely had to do some of my own but centered around hamsters instead. In their gerbil museum, they recreated the Mona Lisa, Girl With A Pearl Earring, The Scream and The Kiss; I chose to do my own versions of all of these except for The Kiss as I honestly didn’t recognize the original painting, instead opting to do an interpretation of a Vincent Van Gogh self portrait. I chose Vincent’s work as I am both familiar and fond of it, his art is widely recognized amongst a lot of people like the rest of the works that I am recreating which makes it fit in well and I decided to recreate one of his portraits as I thought it made more sense to add a hamster face to an existing body much like the way that the gerbil artwork has been done, rather than trying to add a hamster in to one of his landscapes like Starry Night. 

I opened up all of the images I wanted to work with into Photoshop so that I could resize them on screen and make sure they were all in proportion to one another.

I had decided that I was going to use card for the final pieces, primarily to make them more sturdy but I sketched out the artwork on a piece of A4 paper first, starting with the Mona Lisa recreation.

I traced the basic shapes of the paintings from my screen in pencil mainly because I wasn’t confident in my ability to freehand them, and I wanted to make sure that I was getting them all the right size, but also because the only real thing I am changing to make these look like a hamster rather than a gerbil is the length of the nose and facial features such as the eyes.

Following the gerbil version of this art, I went over my pencil lines with black pen to make them stand out. I started with Sharpie originally but I didn’t think the thick line it produced did the details, especially the eyes, any justice and so I redid it using fine liner which I much preferred. 

Finally, I added color and a background using colored pencils in place of crayons as I didn’t have any. The downside of this is that I feel like the pencils give less of an interesting texture to the drawing and so to counter this, I placed the paper on top of cardboard so that when I drew with the pencils, it picked up the texture of it underneath, giving it more interesting detail.

You can see in the two photos above how I have altered the facial features from the tracing compared to the rest of the drawing to make it look more like a hamster rather than a gerbil. This includes shortening the length of the face and nose as hamster have rounder faces than gerbils do and also making the eyes bigger, rounder and positioned slightly closer together.

For this one, I traced out the shape of the body and the circle of the head and then used skills I learned in my hamster drawing workshop to add the facial details. I’m happy with how the face turned out but I found tracing over the lines of the body difficult as a lot of them are colored shading which I found hard to represent with just pencil, I chose not to spend too much time on this as I thought it would be easier to do in paint given that this is the original medium. 

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Gerbil Art Gallery

Having come up with the idea of creating a tiny gallery for my hamster, I started searching to see if anyone had done anything similar and was surprised to find a miniature pet gallery had been created as recently as the first coronavirus lockdown! I was initially a little disappointed to find that someone had already executed an idea similar to mine but the more I read into it, the more I found myself being inspired by their work and thinking about how I could use this influence in my own piece. Filippo Lorenzin, who works at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, his girlfriend Marianna Benetti who is also an artist created a miniature gallery for their pet gerbils. Their work went viral online being covered by various news outlets such as BuzzFeed, People and ArtNet. Across the various articles they talk about their shared love for museums and art galleries and how they were missing them due to closures because of the Coronavirus pandemic, in an interview with Boredpanda, they ask how this project came together and Filippo says:

“We visit museums and galleries whenever we can. We are interested in the artworks as much as in the way these are displayed. Are the QR codes to engage the public working? How comfortable are the gallery stools? Is there any audio guide? etc. When Marianna suggested to make a sort of doll house for our beloved gerbils as pastime for a lazy Sunday spent locked at home, I suggested to make a small art gallery. She is very good at painting and it was a nice opportunity to keep us busy with a fun project.“

I really like that they aren’t just thinking about the artwork but also the presentation and environment that it is placed in, their personal experiences with galleries and museums have informed the context of their art, allowing them to create these finer details such as the gallery stools and QR codes that really add charm and character to the work. Alongside this, Filippo explains in several of the interviews that  "Initially we wanted to remake less famous paintings, but then we thought it would have been fun to play with how famous and recognizable some artworks are" which is one of my favorite things about this miniature gallery. I don’t believe I am well informed about art or art history and yet I recognize all but one of these replica artworks in comparison to their original, I think if they had remade less famous paintings then the gallery would have become more of a niche project and would not have been able to be appreciated by as many people, potentially stopping it from becoming viral in the first place. I feel as though I am at a slight disadvantage in my work having only been to three art galleries in my life having seen little art in person at all however, researching and reviewing this project by Filippo and Marianna has opened up a new avenue of exploration for me and my project as I had not previously considered recreating famous artworks but this is definitely something that will inform my work from this point forwards.

I don't think that the artists intended for their work to go viral, sharing it online began on Reddit which is generally considered to be a social media platform above all else. Many of the articles surrounding this work headline it as the result of ‘quarantine boredom’ which I personally think is a bit derogatory and lacks respect for the creativity and effort that went in to making this, but Filippo says himself in their interview with People that they did it just for fun and that “We would have spent that Sunday making the art gallery no matter if in quarantine or not, it wasn’t done out of boredom” which I feel is important to bear in mind with my project, in my group tutorial, my tutor Joe advised me not to loose sight of the humor in my work and it’s been helpful for me to remember to have fun with my project as I go along rather than see it as a task for University.

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Design For Performance Workshop (Part 3)

Whilst waiting for the Design For Performance set to be free, we realised as a table that Peter had built his own set as part of his project and so we took the opportunity as a peer group to photograph our figures together within his set just as a mini collab, we had good fun doing it, creating little narratives for our figures within the set as we positioned them together.

I also took a couple of quick photos of my figure next to my bird model from the 3D cardboard workshop just to better illustrate the sense of scale between the two. I like these because the way the bird is facing down makes it look as though it could be about the eat the little figure which I find quite funny.

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Design For Performance Workshop (Part 2)

I then got to design my own miniature set using a small lighting setup and props provided by Lee Cadden from Design For Performance and capture some photos of my figure in it using my mobile phone. I chose to keep mine relatively simple and continue with my skiing theme by placing my figure on this wooden looking plinth with a sky effect backdrop.

The first couple of photos I took had quite warm lighting and which I didn’t think looked that good so I asked for a blue filter to make the lighting cooler which fits better for the skiing theme as it gives a more icy wintery effect.

The photo above is my favorite, I really like how the way that the light is hitting and creating really interesting highlights and shadows across the tin foil and the wooden floor. I also like how my camera has focused directly on the actual figure, blurring the background like you'd expect to see more commonly in professional portrait photography. I've ranked the rest of the photos from here on out in order of which ones I like best, finishing with the one I like the least.

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Design For Performance Workshop (Part 1)

To start, we were given this handout with the step by step tutorial for the workshop to read over, two pieces of wire and some tin foil.

We started out by converting our heights in to cm and marking them out on a 1/25 scale which are the vertical lines you see in the photo above, Lee Cadden who was directing the workshop then demonstrated how to draw a proportionate body shape and had us draw 5 different versions of our own; he then came around and selected the best one for us to work from mine being the one on the far right which had been my first drawing. He then talked us through the steps on the sheet demonstrating with his own figure as we went along, I didn’t get to document any of this as we had to follow along as a class but the exact steps are marked out on the handout. During the workshop, Lee kept walking around and advising us on how to improve our models and things to think about to make it look more realistic such as making sure the hips are thinner than the shoulders. 

Once we had completed the wire construction we covered the frames with foil to again make them slightly more realistic and less skeletal.

After we finished our models, we got to photograph them using a miniature stage set with removeable pieces that we could pick and choose from to create our own narrative and backdrop. I got a bit creative whilst waiting for the set to be free and created some accessories for my figurine from used Quality Street wrappers leftover from our Christmas sweets from the tutors. We had been joking amongst our table whilst making these figures about how the excess wire that helps them stand looks a bit like ski’s and so I tore a small strip of plastic wrapper, twisted it to give it some extra shape and tied it around my figurine to fashion a little blue scarf. I really loved how this looked because the way the wrapper sticks out almost looks like a scarf blowing in the wind which would definitely happen if you were skiing and overall adding to the impression of this in my model.

After unwrapping another sweet, I ended up with this twisted orange plastic which I thought looked like hair and so I put this on my model as well which makes it look very feminine compared to what it looks like without it, I decided that I would photograph it both with and without this piece to make it look like I had created both a male and female model.

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The Jallery: Jerry Good’s Art For Hamsters.

Whilst in progress of the rest of the gallery, the pieces I have already completed have been sitting on display in my living room as I didn't want to tuck them away and risk damaging them. They’ve ended up on top of my vinyl player next to my Himalayan salt lamp and Jade Plant  which I thought was quite ‘Bio Art’ appropriate and so I took couple of photos of them to document how I’ve been viewing them on a daily basis. I’ve grown quite fond of having these on display and I think I will continue to have them up in my home after the project is over as I have had several compliments about them although I will probably move them to be next to my hamsters cage rather than in my living room. I think having seen them in nice atmospheric lighting and how this changes when the sun is out or the main light is on will help me think more carefully about how they are lit and presented within the final installation.

I have decided to name it “The Jallery: Jerry Good’s Art For Hamsters.”

This is something that came to me whilst I was interacting with my hamster Jerry, I picked him up whilst talking to him and tried to say very good but instead came out with Jerry good, I laughed at myself before realizing I actually really liked the wordplay and wanted to use it. Shortly after this slip of the tongue, the idea of merging the words ‘Jerry’s Gallery’ which would be a very literal title for what I hope my end product will be, in to ‘Jallery’ came to me. I also used ‘Jerry Good’s’ as a brand name on the front of my ‘Hamtasia’ cover in replacement of ‘Mother Earth’s’ for the same reason and I think this is another good way of strengthening the connection between these parts of the project.

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3D Cardboard Workshop

In this workshop, we were tasked with creating a 3D bird primarily using cardboard. We were shown a range of joining techniques and encouraged to think deeply about the texture of the materials we were using and how these could be used to add detail to our models such as having jaggered edges in places to give a feather like effect as you can see I have tried to do below with the wings especially. The image we were given as a guide was of a crow but we were told that we could build any bird or something else relevant to our project. I did want to aim for a crow as it does actually tie in to the hamster theme that my work is taking due to the fact that in the wild, hamsters are eaten by a variety of different birds, including crows. Despite this, I actually found beginning the assembly of my 3D model to be quite difficult and so I turned to Google for a tutorial on building cardboard birds and found one that actually instructed on how to build one of the birds that we had been shown in the examples during the workshop and so I opted to follow that in order to create my own version.

Once I’d started following the step by step, I found the construction process really started to fall into place although I did feel as though I was cheating a little bit having not figured it out for myself. I put most of the bird together using the tutorial which I am a little bit disappointed in myself for but despite that, I am really happy with how it came out and I really enjoyed the process of making it. The one thing that I did opt to change was the legs, they had instructions on how to create wire legs which I did try and found to be unsuccessful, I think this is due to the fact that I seem to have built my bird much larger than the one in the tutorial. I had also bought in a huge amount of foraged sticks for me and my peers to share as they had been included on a list of things to bring to the workshop prior to us finding out what the task was, I massively overestimated how many of them I would need but wanted to make use of them anyway and thought that they would also make for a sturdier base than wire legs. I created the legs from two similarly sized sticks, I tried to choose ones with a slight bend in around what would be the knee area in order to make it more realistic, these were quite difficult to attach, I initially tried gluing them which didn’t work and so I secured them to the body with brown tape which doesn’t look the most attractive but is effective. To create the toes, I took a similar approach to what I did with the legs but using smaller twigs, I did manage to get these to attach with glue but I had trouble standing the model up and so I attached it to a white cardboard base to give it extra stability. I think the legs are my favorite part of my bird, sticks well represent the bumpy and bony texture of actual bird legs which I often think look like twigs anyway and I like fact that I am using an actual piece of nature to create a nature related piece of work; I also really like the fact that he looks like he is leaning down to peck like a real bird would to get a worm out of the ground for example. Overall, I enjoyed this workshop far more than I thought I would, especially once I had actually gotten in to building my piece and I think this will really help with my project.

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