Project Seven: Yes....No...The possibilities are endless!

For this project we weren't given a theme. We had the choice of either working on a previous project brief or creating something entirely new.
I went with a new theme one I felt best suited me at that current time.
Sleep......or more sleeping problems. Something I've suffered from for years and have brief nights of freedom.
So I did more research into Sleep.

• What is it?
• Why do we need it?
• Sleeping problems?
• What are harmful effects of sleep deprivations?

The amount of information I came away with seemed endless. The best website I found to have in depth explanations and information was How Sleep Works

Thinking about if the other student's had sleeping problems too - I was going to set up a survey and record their problems to but then after advice from the lecturer. I came to realize that, that would be even more work for me, giving me less time to do development and finish the final piece.
So I turned to my own experience. I've had quite a few, spine tingling night-terrors through the years. It got so bad at one point that I would have them five nights a few. This caused problems, not just for me but my partner who witness these fits of frights.
I got help and they calmed down, after a few weeks they stopped. From time to time I have the occasional terror but not as horrifying as my previous ones.

So I focused on what my night terrors were. The ghastly form they took,well for one, they were usually phobia's - big creepy crawlers, spiders, daddy long legs and wasps oh and the one time with the maggots and flies, crawling from my eyes. I can still feel them as I think about it!

Thinking on it - how would I best represent it? I came up with the plan of a bed sheet and how these creatures invade this place when we are most vulnerable.

I started to search out images of creepers and made stencils. Above is a photo of the final silhouette - with it being completely blacked and out tracing paper wings. I thought this would add a nice effect to the final. The idea of these creatures seeping through the sheet.

I then started on a white, felt square. Using felt pen I transfer the stencil and colored it in - giving it the appearance of a silhouette.

I bought two single bed sheets. One for the final and the other for experiments. Once I was happy with the ink and stitch effect, I started on my final.

I took me a week days to just transfer the stencils and then paint the ink - I even had to take it home so that I could finish it on time.

Working on the sheet in blocks helped as I didn't have a lot of space. I started on the bottom, left sheet corner, then used newspaper to stop the sheet from touching - when I folded to do the next block.

By the time I was at the bottom right corner, I could start at the beginning dry and with no worry of the wet ink messing up other parts of the clean sheet.

I used water-soluble ink to give many shades of black and then once dry, I used Indian ink - not realizing that it wouldn't bleed like the other.

After all of it was dry and ready, I moved onto the next stage. I sewed around a few of the insects, to draw them out a bit more from the sheet.

There was these two flies that I had to build the rest of there bodies - I did this to give them a bit more life and that the bed sheet doesn't hold them, well not fully.

 From a distance, the use of stitch and ink complements each other as I thought it would in my experiments.

Once I had finished sewing, I got on with the wings. With there being 60 pairs needing transferred, cut and glued - this took me a further day because of the various sizes.

So on the last day, with a big tube of glue - I started gluing them on at home and then took it into the studio to finish.

Finally when all the wings were glued on, I nailed it to the wall. hanging one, dirty, discolored and disheveled pillow to the top - so that it wouldn't go unnoticed.

 I like very much how this has turned out - it's like these little creatures are trying to crawl up the sheet and anyone sleeping there will be at their mercy.

I think I'd like to do this theme again but spend longer on it. In my mind, it would look very interesting if the insects aren't at the bottom but more in the shape of a sleeping person or persons.