It's been a while...

Bonjour,


I know its been some time since my last post, but its been a very, very, very, very busy time; especially as I am still being a clown. Juggling uni, application, essay, life and so on.


Anyway, since last time I have been developing my project on Why One Should Never Under-Estimate a Handsome Bear? And from taking Fred around the local streets to making the DVD, I have progressed to Gun Crime, Gang Culture and so on. I know it seems a mahusive leap- and yes it is, if I explain my train of thought, bears and gang culture do actually connect. So How did I get there?


So with some advice, I was told to 'think more outside the box' and not to continue solely on the bear theme. When researching bears I came across a sentence that stated 'they will fight till death to defend their own' and this got me thinking about how I can relate this to modern day society. Hence I came up with the connection of gang culture and how each gang will fight 'till death' to defend their members.


On that note, I began researching gangs and their culture, and found the sentence 'children are killing children'- Once again I began thinking about the loss of innocence and how youths carry weapons around as if they are toys. It has become a part of daily life. I wanted to express this idea and show the sinister side of living within these communities aswell as the loss of childhood. I decided to experiment-


I tried to build a gun from little toy soldiers, and then painted them black. From afar it looks like a weapon, yet close up, the figures can be depicted. 


Typography has always been an important part of my work and therefore I wanted to incorporate it. For this reason, I decided to construct the letters 'G', 'U' and 'N' out of various children's toys, including action men, cars, jumbo pens etc. I wanted to continue expressing the viscous and violent lifestyle these gangs possess yet show how young children get caught up in it- hence losing their youth to crime. Much of this work was experimental, unsure exactly where I will end up...

The above image is my three constructed letters. I put them against a concrete wall to represent the urban locations where gang culture is most common. 

Its definitely been a fun artistic, developmental journey, yet once again, I have come to a bit of a brick wall myself, unsure now, where to take my letters? Anyway, as they say and as I have already said...its all a learning curve.