Experience, Create, Review, Repeat

Check out Pg 17 of the a-n Degree Shows Guide.
Full page article about my up coming degree show!!

http://issuu.com/anartistsinfo/docs/an_degree_shows_guide_2015?e=0/12563264

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Microscopic Images Created From Body Swabs
 
I’m really pleased with the images I’ve managed to amass from the few samples that were taken.  Experimenting with the different dyes has enabled me to develop a great diversity of colours in the images which is exciting.

Now, my main concern is how to display them.  I have cropped them to a circular shape as I like directness of the connection to the view down the microscope.  I have toyed with the possibility of heat pressing them onto some sort of board so that they can stand alone, hung on the wall as discs.
However, another idea is to frame them, floating in box frames.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these ideas.  A friend told me that she leaves her prints unframed as she likes the simultaneous strength and vulnerability this gives to the image.  I like this idea and how it links in with the power and vulnerability of woman in society but there’s something in me that likes the ‘housing’ of the images in a frame.  It reminds me of an air-tight seal, clinical and clean which I think of as empowering.  ‘This is clean and undiluted fact, untainted’.  Yes!  That is why I want them to be sealed.  My initial desire to create this project was driven by a search for some way of depicting woman in a form entirely untainted by masculinity.  The beautiful complexity of the female is demonstrated through the qualities of the image, sealed in its contained environment, untainted by misogyny.
 

Having managed to create some pleasing images from the tester slides available in the uni lab, I’ve been keen to get on with taking my own swabs to create new slides and images.
With the DIY kit I’ve been supplied with, I’ve taken a couple of swabs for testing: vaginal and urine.
Once the swabs are taken, methylene blue dye is added to highlight any cells etc to view.

The image below is of a few slides I prepared the evening before the lab session.

Home Slide Creator Workspace

Back into the laboratory to get on with creating images of slides made from my own swabs.

Obligatory Lab Coat and Gloves
 
Images from the slides I prepared at home were ok but just not as interesting as I had hoped.  At this point I began experimenting with different chemical dyes (regardless of chemical properties and uses) to try and create more exciting, colourful images.

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Slide Creation Workspace

The process went on for hours but mainly because it was so exciting being able to mess about (pretty literally as seen in the images above) with the different dyes to see what came out.
The slides in themselves are a pretty attractive by product of the image experiments.

Resulting Slides

Now to get back to the ‘editing suite’ (my study) to have a proper look at what’s been done……..

Having done a few tests, trying to find the best way to create my elaborate beef curtains, I’ve decided that slicing, then vacuum-packing the meat is going to be a good way of getting the result I want.

– buy beef
– freeze
– slice
– vac pack
– roll out
– stitch in lengths
– stitch in widths
– freeze til show
– hang

Vacuum-Packing Process

Style of drapes to aim for

 

For the doorway I want to dress with the beef curtains I have calculated that I will need 150 individual vac-packed pouches of sliced beef.  So far I’ve got approximately 70.  So far so good.  keep on vac-packing!!!

Curtain Measurements
 
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-SaVU6cJ70

Stitching

As a progression of the idea I had posted earlier about feminine complexity, I have been in touch with the science department at UCS.  Amazingly I have been able to use a digital microscope which takes images at the touch of a button and loads them onto an SD card!

The idea behind this practice is to demonstrate the endless complexity of woman in a purely feminine form.  I hope to some extent to comment on the contrast between misogynistic views of women as simple, sexual objects and the truth that woman is a complex and extraordinary being.

After an introduction session (including making slides for beginners and cheek swab testing) I have been practicing a bit with taking images.

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Microscopic Photographs, Hannah Maynard, 2015

 

These are just a few of the test images I’ve taken so far.  They are mostly fungi and bacteria on slides that were available for me to look at in the lab.

 

The plan is to collect body fluid samples from myself to then make my own slides to inspect and take images from.

 

I have been packed off with my own little slide creation kit including swabs, droppers, slides and dye.

 

This so far has been such an exciting process.  It’s allowing me to investigate new techniques and ways of developing my practice which is always an invigorating thing to do.  Although I’m still investigating the same subject of misogyny and objectification, doing so in new ways opens up new avenues of endless possibilities!