Working title: I am here – I exist – Making marks as a diaristic form of expression
The aims and objectives:
Aim One: Making – Autoethnography – expressing the female experience and the process of recording this experience through using my own life, thoughts, feelings, and my own visual language, symbolic language, and mark making, focusing on drawing and embroidery as an extension of drawing. I hope to also explore, through this the split between the inner and outer self, and the complexities of the female experience and its many facets, especially those which are personal, how this adds to the feeling of otherness and being an outsider, and also the expectations set upon.
Aim Two: Research – To Look at the diary as form of female expression, a way of stating your existence and a way of feeling seen, with an extension to things like samplers and female crafts that have been undertaken privately as a way of making note of the way in which the individual related to the world, as a sort of phenomenological exploration of experiences from the individual, and specifically female, self. The focus is on the visual and drawings within the diary as an act of psychogeography, a relating to and expressing of the world from a self centered viewpoint, as well as the written documents.
Objectives:
- Autoethnography – Phenomenology – Psychogeography – I plan to use these three topics as ways of exploring the inner and outer self // the lived female experience through my own experiences. I am hoping they will enable me / give me a language with which to express, what it is I am doing. It is my hope that they will be a path through which I can better understand research through practice when applied to the lived experience.
- Female crafts. I will carry on exploring arts that are traditionally relegated to the categories of female or hobbies and crafts. By channeling and adding to the long history of female creative practice passed down through the female line I will be better able connect the medium with the message.
- Drawing as a physical, tactile and honest exploration, through mark making and play, with ideas. Drawing as a visual record of ideas and thoughts.
- Research female artists and track where their work ideas intersect with the issues I am exploring of the inner and outer self. To record their discoveries in the blog and produce works that are in conversation with the work of others.
- Reflective practice using the blog to record internal discussions on my work and process.
- Research of the inner and outer self, craft, female artists,gender, and any other topics which arise throughout the project, recorders in the blog.
- Creative exploration and experimentation, testing out new ideas, materials and mediums where appropriate. To continue to find items that can be used in my practice that relate to the female experience.
Context I feel connected to female artists and would like to look at how their work relates to the topic of the diary:
- Simone de Beauvoir – Woman as a construct, created through history and myth, the inner and outer self.
- Sylvia Plath – self, inner worlds, identity, the weight of the gaze.
- Grayson Perry – Large works, textiles, femininity, gender as construct, personas.
- Cindy Sherman – The created self, Playing the part, putting on personas.
- Frances goodman – femininity, costuming, role play.
- Ghana Armer – Textiles, traditionally female crafts, sexuality. #
- Tracey Emin – Lived female experience, honest, no judgement, confessional, textiles.
- Louise Bourgeois – mocks and plays with sexuality, use of the body, femininity, volition and intense.
- Juno Calypso – Hyperfemininity, fantasy, play.
- Helen Chadwick – sexuality, desire, female forms.
- Nan Goldin – honest, emotional, lived female experience, documentation.
- Sarah Lucas – Bodies, femininity, fun and play.
- Nancy Spero-Woman as myth, rewriting, drawing, text.
- Fiona Rae: Drawing, performance, engaging, gestural, decipher, active participant in generation of meaning.
- Gillian Wearing- Masks, little performances, inner self.
I also have an ongoing list of research subjects, books, and possibilities, which I plan to work through alongside making in order to further my understanding of various subjects relating to the diary which can be found here: https://chelseaswancsm.wordpress.com/2024/01/26/research-topic-dear-diary/
Methodology: I will record and keep track of my practice through the blog. I will use drawing and mark making as a way of recording and exploring. I will use embroidery as a female coded language and an extension of drawing. I will use mind maps when I get stuck and clear my mind. I will read the books, journals and articles on the list above and explore subjects in order to expand my knowledge.
Tactility and interaction are important. Appropriateness to the subject is important. Space and composition are important. I am trying to make something bigger, that hold the gaze longer, Involve interaction and movement to see, in order to engage with and take notice, to see me and my existence. Almost everything I use is from charity shops and second hand stores. I like the connection with other women and their lives, the lived female experience, wants, desires, consumerism, ways of expressing themselves, hopes and plans. I use play as a way of processing and subverting ideas.
Materials I use (and their connotations);
- Sequins-found, lost treasures, childhood, how can they see with sequins in their eyes.
- Spirograph-childhood, ADHD
- Lampshades/ Doilies/ Household items relating to women as decorative-women and consumerism as objects, buyers, producers.
- Buttons-lost treasures found, function and decoration.
- Beads- Decoration, adornment, glamour, preciousness, lustre.
- Rhinestones- cover the pain in sparkles, distraction, caught your eye.
- Nail Foils-self maintenance, adornment, decoration, shiny distractions.
- Embroidery cottons-bought from charity shops, connections to other women, other ideas and projects, potential no fulfilled, craft as feminine art history, relegated, passed down.
- Shapes-Childhood, identification, symbolic, semiotics- I am in the process of making a key of the shapes and symbols I use as I forget them sometimes and look back at old pieces and remember and can’t think why they disappeared.
- Inks- pretty
- Drawing- expression, movement, tactility, honest, the body in the process.
- Colour- Pink as feminine colour that was masculine, Blue as masculine colour that was feminine (absurdity of gender constructs) and Yellow, sunshine to irradiate the darkness, also the gender neutral colour of choice.
Outcomes: There are three sets of outcomes I would like to pursue. The first is research, the second is the large work, which will consist of Lampshades as my diary, studying the female lived experience by using myself, my life and my experiences, and also a set of smaller outcomes, some spontaneous, as I find it hard to work on one thing at a time and work best when I am intuitive.
Outcome One: The body of work (so far) will be based on a list I have of things I want to do or have planned to do. These include:
- An animation- when artists make video pieces you go in the little room and they have you right there, you have to pay attention, there are no other distractions. I want to be seen.
- I have a Victorian child’s night dress I want to embroider on.
- I have some photographs I am working on from when I was a child.
- I have two masks and a head I have plans for
- I wanted to make medals
- I love the idea of making a marriage globe
- Other lampshades not connected to the larger set.
- I want to make shields
Outcome Two: a larger piece. I have been working quite small but as Judy Chicago says when you feel small you work small. I want to feel bigger. I want to shout things. I want to make a whole bunch of lampshades where each panel deals with a different issue, like a diary of my lived experience and the things that have connected over the years to make me who I am from an entirely self centered point of view. It will be all that resonates with me in my practice so far. It will be like a collage and include sparkles and text. The things I have sofar found important to this practice and have deepened my understanding of what it is I do are Psychogeography / autoethnography / phenomenology and I will continue to deepen my understanding and use them to better understand where the idea of the diary fits around my work. The plan includes The inner and outer self. The histories, mythologies, complexities, Childhood, calories, dancing, BPD, ADHD, consumerism, the gaze, bpd, adhd, seuality, and so on, everything all at once. The inner and outer self with blurred boundaries. The plan for the lampshades can be found here:
https://wordpress.com/post/chelseaswancsm.wordpress.com/1463
https://wordpress.com/post/chelseaswancsm.wordpress.com/1190
Outcome Three: Research, as mentioned above I will look into various topics and artists relating to the idea of the diary. I also want to be more outgoing and talk directly with artists who work in this way. They don’t have to respond but I have to try. https://chelseaswancsm.wordpress.com/2024/01/26/research-topic-dear-diary/
Work Plan:
As the lampshades are time sensitive I will make sure that they are alloted time as well as time to study but I would like any secondary outcomes to be instinctual. I also think I will decide what to research in stages as I like To follow tangents so I have only placed in when I want to start. Play, exploration and experimenting are huge parts of my practice so I in no way believe I will actually follow this plan and am using it more as a place marker for now as I follow my instincts and tangents.
One-Three: Course start, getting settled.Four-Six: Gathering sources, looking at what interests me and what direction I would like to go in, information gathering. Explore ideas visually eg. Consumerism and women’s bodies lampshade, or childhood and Spirograph.Seven-Nine: Mind maps, collect in all the ideas I am interested in, expand, develop and think about possible pathways. Work on the Study statement in order to focus direction. Also continue to experiment with materials and techniques.Ten-Twelve:plan out what I want in the big piece. Test out ideas and decide what format it will take. Source materials and start to gather what I need in order or there to be continuity. Make piece for interim exhibition.- Thirteen-Fifteen: Lampshade One Research samplers, Read the diary of frida Kahlo listen to audiobook of The dress Diary of Mrs Ann Sykes
- Sixteen-Eighteen: Lampshade One
- Nineteen-Twenty One: Lampshade Two
- Twenty Two-Twenty Four: Lampshade Two
- Twenty Five-Twenty Seven: Lampshade Three
- Twenty Eight-Thirty: Lampshade Three
- Thirty One-Thirty Three: Lampshade Four
- Thirty Four-Thirty Six: Lampshade Four
- Thirty Seven-Thirty Nine: Lampshade Five
- Forty-Forty Two: Lampshade Five
- Forty Three-Forty Five: Lampshade Six
- Forty Six-Forty Eight: Lampshade Six
- Forty Nine-Fifty One: Lampshade Seven
- Fifty Two- Fifty Four: Lampshade Seven
- Fifty Five- Fifty Seven: Lampshade Eight
- Fifty Eight-Sixty: Lampshade Eight
Bibliography:
This is an ongoing bibliography of my time at CSM and as such is still in the process of being populated. Please find the Bibliography here:
Chelsea Swan 
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