Innovations in Illustration - Annabelle Schurhammer

My final hand in went well, i am proud of the work i have done. It was a shame that i could not present my work along side my peers in the exhibition. Something i would have liked to improve on is the quality of my filming skills as they didn't do the instillations justice and also polishing the sculptural parts of the instillations. 

I see this work being a long standing show at the Porirua Hospital museum with further instillations. An experience for people who visit the museum to learn about Mental Health and its History in New Zealand. 

The video was edited using premier pro with sound effects from Youtube free sound library. Overall i am happy with it although i wish i would have gotten better footage of the instillations. Below is a low quality version of the video.

I want to create a booklet that people would take when they go to the installation space, which would feature 8 sperate sculptures with projections on them.  Every second page will be printed on see-through, translucent paper to create an overlay.  Test printing:

Booklet inspo:

What i did: Using Qlab I projection mapped the videos onto the sculptures on the day. Then I videoed the result. I did run into some trouble videoing with low light, hopefully, this can be fixed in post-production. Qlap worked well. I had to cut filming a bit short due to being sick. 

Meeting with Jason I meet with Jason O'Hara. After telling him about my project he recommended a program called QLab to me that could help with managing multiple projectors and projection mapping. What does QLab do? QLab makes it simple to create intricate designs of light, sound, and video, which you play back during a live performance. QLab allows you to lock in exactly how you want the light, sound, and video to play during your performance. When you’re done designing, you'll switch to “show mode” and run your show just by pressing “GO”.

Test 1                                    Using found images. Test 2                                    Using my own video. It's not really working the way I imagined. It's really hard to line up the video with the sculpture. Feeling a bit discouraged right now.  Hopefully jason can help me out. I want to also use the whole body of the baby rather than just the head. or i cound use the blanket too?

Mable Sculpture:  Baby lying in a cot (like the one in the museum). Everything painted white except for wood on the cot which will be distressed (inspired by the beat up door of the seclusion room at the museum).  Projection: Childs face and torso. Normal smiling - more sinister -  eyes shifting -  eyes turning black - Mouth changing into monsters.  Sound: "Mable, a 40-year-old housewife threatened to drown her children and got as far as running with one child towards the sea." Ocean waves in the background, child laughter (normal and distorted), Child saying "mama, hello mama, help" "look at me", screams, whispers, screeches. Gertrude Sculpture:  Woman lying on a mattress. Made out of paper mache, no facials, painted white with a straight jacket on. Mattress not white, filled with straw. (inspired by mattress in a seclusion room at the museum).  Projection: Snakes crawling all over her body, biting, woun

Art I found in books, internet, galleries and my own. 

Idea 1 Sculpture inspired by Insulin and Electroconvulsive Therapy.  Idea 2 Sculpture/ installation Inspired by patients personal stories, installation found on Pinterest and medical brain. Wanted to do a first-person video to really put you into the patients' mind but that isn't really 'illustration'.  Idea 3 After talking with Kerry Ann she suggested using fewer patients examples so i can focus in on them more and not lose sight of the 'illustration' part. I chose my favorite 3 stories. These will be made into sculptures from found and made stuff and brought to life through illustrations projected onto them. I also want to use sound to add to the experience. These projections could take the form of GIFs like in one of my earlier explorations. These sculpture/installations are just fragments of the patients experience pieced together using found objects. 

  Site-visit The museum is the only original building left of the hospital. It is filled with donated stuff related to the hospital. The most interesting room for me was the seclusion room (pictured here with a bed and clothes hung up). The mattress on the bed is made of hay, the clothes hung up are old patients clothes including a straight jacket on the left. The door in the seclusion room was all scratched up with peoples names and had marks from the patients banging the bed against the door. I also found it interesting that there were baby cots displayed, the lady at the museum explained that many women with postpartum depression were treated here and came in with their babies. The lady that showed me around was a nurse here in the 80s. The skeleton is real and I found it interesting.  The nurse showing me around told me a lot about ECT therapy. She said people always thought of it as cruel but she said she saw many patients benefiting and being cured through it. I also

For this presentation I showed my 3 explorations of different media as well as proposing a sculpture for my final illustration.  Feedback from Kerry Ann: Your work in progress was well presented, clearly showing creative references and your three illustration mediums explored. I really enjoyed your approach using text/direct quotations to respond to in each of your tests, and would be nice to keep going with this. Your work in progress offers rich possibilities in exploring this blurred boundary between imagined and real. The animal/people were interesting and again, remind me of illustrator Sue Coe. Outside of your own themes of psychosis and confinement, How might the viewer connect these ideas and experiences with your site of Kenepuru Hospital in Porirua? Try and get specific using historic reference photos and sketches from your site visits, featuring details unique to the area. Also site visits to the area now, would be from ‘the outside looking ins

Top-hat man Inspired by pictures of the old asylum and one of my own hallucinations.  I call him the top hat man. Sculpture using natural air hardening clay, acrylic paint, fabric and lazorcut MDF.

Angle and devil Inspired by the quote: ''I am afraid that if it is the devil questioning me about my knowledge I may lose it, or is it the holy ghost?'' Lazorcut in MDF boord. Acrylic paint, fabric.

Don't feed the animals Inspired by the quote: ''In that situation you became an animal. You were treated like an animal and you became one. The staff seemed as strange as the patients. It was hard to tell the difference except for the uniforms.'' Acrylic  paint and pen on canvas paper that had photograph printed on it. Later turned into GIF.

I have chosen 2 'Texts' as inspiration. For each 3 i will explain what interests me about them. I will think about how I can use each one as inspiration in my 3 chosen illustration techniques.  1.  "If you were a woman walking along the street as a prostitute," says Shepherd, "you could end up in Porirua; if you were an alcoholic, you ended up in Porirua; if you were classed as being a bit strange and weird, you ended up here. You had your epilepsies, your senile dementias, your Parkinson's - a whole range." In two minds by Denis Welch I find it interesting how 'normal' people could end up in the Hospital if they did not fit into society. Prostitutes, Gays, alcoholics, other addicts, crossdressers, the elderly, people with down syndrome and autism, people of different religions and women that did not obey their father/husband.  2. Dorothy Turner's Diaries I find Dorothy's delusions and auditory hallucinations about

Out of Mind Out of Sight Book A great book all about the History of Porirua Hospital  with first-hand stories from workers and patients.  Here are some of my favourite quotes: Dorothy Rose Turner's Diaries This was an interesting experience. Three boxes full of Dorothy's diaries containing her everyday thoughts and experiences with God, mental illness and time at the Porirua hospital. Her writing was hard to read.