Using Art.

I have mentioned only very briefly in one of my previous posts that I am studying the amazing Joan Rivers as an occupational case study. This is for my life sciences module where we are studying the foundations of occupational therapy and occupational science and looking at development across the life span as well as many theories, models and frames of reference. For these sessions we work in learning sets, I am in learning set 2 :) To choose our occupational case study, there were 2 envelopes: one with the sex of the person and one with their occupation. My learning set chose a female entertainer! Wow! I still feel lucky to have picked that out. The criteria was that the person had to be over 70, who was alive or passed away within the last 5 years and had no on-going health condition. After a discussion my group decided we would use Joan Rivers. She has made our presentations and research so much fun! There is a a lot of rich material within her lifespan which we can use in our studies and assessments.

So as I've researched, read, watched and looked at Joan Rivers I have found myself becoming more and more inspired by her life and her occupations. She is an extremely interesting woman who has had a lot of ups and down's in her life. I found it particularly interesting looking at photographs of her when she first began her career in the 1950's-1960's comparing them to how she looked in the later years after supposedly hundreds of plastic surgery procedures! There are many times when Joan is interviewed and she revealed that she had never been happy with her appearance and her body. She claimed no man ever told her she was beautiful, and that when she looked in the mirror she would view herself as being fat.

I find her image and the reasoning behind it very powerful. I have created some images based on my inspiration of this topic.

Some really simple studies I have created:

I began by simply collaging some images of Joan. A bit of a 'then and now' if you like! Half of her face is before a lot of her procedures and the other half is the result of many procedures. I think these look really interesting and are quite a dramatic realisation of how much her image was changed through plastic surgery. To the naked eye, she never aged! Her huge personality never aged and neither did her willingness to work hard. Joan was 81 when she passed away earlier this year.

The next idea for me was to re-create these images of Joan's then and now portraits in a dramatic statement using the simple style of Pop Art. Why did I use Pop Art? Because in the 1950's Pop Art was a controversial art movement that emerged which challenged all the previous traditions of arts and traditional painting. It focused on imagery of popular culture and imagery that would publicly be easily recognisable through the news and media etc. At this time technology was advancing and TV became more accessible and manufacturing processes became more advanced. Screen printing was a huge method in Pop Art. It meant that many images of the same picture could be easily reproduced within a short time scale, getting away from the expressive brush stroke, and becoming more flat and manufactured with layers of block colour, rejecting traditional methods in a huge statement. I feel this mirrors Joan Rivers, as she too was emerging in the 1950's in her very controversial new career! The method represents Joan's appearance and how this was very commercialised by how she thought she should look from the media and other celebrities receiving plastic surgery. They all have that similar plastic look and have difficulty communicating through facial expressions. But I have not chosen to screen print my images, I have used a traditional brush and paint method. This is to represent that Joan was by no means manufactured, the was very much so unique and her personality shone beyond her appearance and she was a beautiful, one of a kind person.

This image looks at Joan's face before plastic surgery and the other half being the interior skull. This was to represent that we are all made the same on the inside, no matter how much you change your appearance, everybody goes through similar changes throughout their life span development. Also it represents that what is happening psychologically on the inside where nobody else can see can become physical and real through how someone changes their appearance. It could also represent the physical affect of many plastic procedures and how it could eventually take its toll on the body.

Finally just a simple quick sketch using charcoal. Charcoal is an expressive, bold material to use, Just like Joan Rivers.

These images were just some really simple ideas I had and felt inspired by. I felt I needed to bring the research I was learning alive visually. I love being inspired, it's fun!

Take it away Joan....