Innovations in Illustration - Annabelle Schurhammer

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, ...

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 i...