Context

'A small print on a mailbox becomes something really precious when you remove all the noise around it and isolate it from it's setting.' ( Merel Karhof, Project two). Explore familiar or alien surroundings by isolating, documenting and displaying anything you think will create a new awareness of the landscape.


For this project I decided to look at shadows around Bournville, the different shapes they cast and how they change and move as time goes by. I started by tracing shadows that had been cast on the ground  e.g. bins, trees, gates, buildings. After doing these I decided I wanted to trace then on a bigger scale as they were too small and I wanted a larger impact to be made, so i traced a shadow of a large tree.
I wanted to take them from there original place and put them in a different setting, which is why a placed the large shadow of the tree in the middle of the room on the floor. This meant that people could either walk around it or over it which would make it feel as if it was real shadow cast.

I chose to continue this project from the field guide and take it further.




MICHAEL NEFF

Michael Neff, a NYC street artist, decided to shadows that many outside objects make to create street art. Michael only uses chalk and stone sediment to outline the shadows into stencils looking like figure. The rule that Neff uses for his work is that the shadow or the empty space where the shadow was has to catch someone’s eye.

I believe that this simple art creates such a large impact to observers as shadows aren’t usually seen and noticed as something spectacular and unique.

“As for why I chose chalk, I have been interested in graffiti for a long time. I used to photograph Shepard Fairy’s wheatpaste and sticker work as far back as 1998. I knew that working in the street was going to equate me with graffiti and street art but I didn’t feel pressure to use spray paint. In fact, I recognized that a lot of the best shadows fell on buildings. People’s homes. And I didn’t want to deface people’s homes. I wanted to share something beautiful and surprising. And if someone didn’t like it they could wash it away or wait for it to rain. The photograph is an important part of the work so the fact that the drawing is very fugitive doesn’t bother me. In fact, I think it’s great when people tell me they’ve run across the drawings in person. There haven’t been that many and they don’t last very long so that is a special experience.”

I love the way that his work is very simplistic but creates such an impact to the people who look at it, another aspect of his work that I like is that he creates his work in public places, this makes people stop and think about what the artists was thinking when creating these traces of shadows as they would not have been noticed as just a normal shadow.



Movement of shadows 


I have been focusing on the different shapes that are cast from certain objects and also how they move according to the positioning of the sun. i started by taking photos of shadows at different times of the day to show they movement and how they can change in shape.

Shadow cast from a tree trunk

Shadow cast from a bin