Homage Evaluation.!

I had some idea of what I wanted to create for this project but I had no idea how to go about making it. For help and guidance and mainly some inspiration along with a sprinkle of motivation I turned to my alexander McQueen book which is full of quotes and fashion advice wether it be making or wearing. McQueen being my favorite fashion designer I took one of his quotes on board and started my project.

Before I created my outcomes for homage I decided to look at two artists, Louise Richardson and Jenifer collier.

Louise Richardson makes objects with an ethereal quality that hint at the fact she almost became a ballerina.

It's difficult to know what to call Louise - she is more of an object maker than a straightforward artist. Her work has been described variously as dark and morbid. I took a lot of inspiration from Louise and her approach to dress making, she takes a handful of old memories and personal experiences when creating her work, it makes the audience stop and question their emotions and feelings. I wanted to do this in terms of my memory dress. I wanted to have a conversation between the book and the pictures so that they created an illustrated story through words and documentation. Prior to this I researched old photograph throughout my family tree, and used an old childhood book which was already falling apart, both Louise and Jenifer use old house hold or memorial objects that have become unable to use and ready for the trash and transform them into art and this is what I have tried to achieve.

In reference to Jennifer collier, I created two dresses made out of both padded envelopes and paper envelopes. Prior to the start of my homage project I took it upon myself to collect a various range of envelopes and stamps, making sure that they had previously been used. Taking my envelopes into textiles I sewed and created a dress template and cut out the finished dress. I collected a lot of pictures and inspiration from Jennifer I researched her personal blog thoroughly and had a look at her online exhibitions and installations. Jennifer’s work was a breath of fresh air, its quite diverse to Louise Richardson in terms of the use of materials but there is still some sort of underlying connection with the both of them. Her work is mainly paper based and she only ever uses a sewing machine to bind them, she created items like paper telephones and lamp shades her work seems to have no limits.

Louise Richardson’s work is diverse because she uses a range of materials such as wax and led being her main ones. Her outcomes are really astounding, it makes you take a step back and really admire the quality.

My favorite part of this project was delving back into old times and photos, and also my old childhood book, like Jennifer these were things left in cupboards probably never going to see the light of day again and so I think my outcome has brought a new leaf of life to my personal items.

Working on my sheets was great fun; I experimented with different drawing techniques and processes. I definitely pushed the boundaries in terms of presentation for this project. I have never produced sheet outcomes this successful yet.

One thing I realised while doing this project was the amount of respect I have for both Louise and Jenifer as artists because creating a these three dresses took a serious amount of patience and concentration, it really was a tester for me, there were times were I thought I wasn’t going to achieve anything

I placed my outcomes and sheets in my portfolio, it starts off being the Alexander McQueen quote and follows on to my dresses and design sheets, the sheets and dresses are coherent and have a certain relationship, I think you can clearly see this.

This project would have been impossible if I had not researched before, it really helped me expand my idea and created my outcomes. I hope to further homage in FMP and research into Louise Richardson and more of her work, I definitely y want to create work in the style of Louise in the future. This project has been a steppingstone of realisation for me and possibly were I want to take my work in the future.