New Year, New Website and The 1920's Borg Project

Just being able to type the numbers 2012 consecutively gives me a thrill! From the many conversations I have had with people about last year, the consensus seems to be that it was a shocker - traumatic, tumultuous and terrible! Personally I would describe it as the steepest learning curve of my life and although I do not regret it, I am happy to bid it farewell.

So to bring in my New Year I have rebuilt my website. It is still undergoing changes, but on the whole I am very pleased with it.

The primary image on my website is from a project I did last year with photographer David Shih. I dubbed it "The 1920's Borg Project". At the time I was more than slightly terrified at the task I had set myself - to create a 1920's half-human, half-cyborg that still looked beautiful.

My inspiration was the incomprable film 'Metropolis' as well as works by my favourite artist, H.R. Giger.  I created a moodboard which helped immensely in consolidating my ideas and I finally managed to amalgamate the chaos in my mind into a sketch, both of which are included here.

1920's Borg Moodboard

Final conceptual sketch for Borg Woman

My materials were two ripped up laptops, a lot of pros-aide, malleable metal, waxes, glues, pins and - of course - my canvas, the very patient model Stacey Fenton.

Amazingly, I succeeded in fully realising my sketch and I was very happy and a bit surprised at how the final work materialised almost exactly as I had visualised it. The main difference was that the symmetry in the drawing was swapped around (it worked better on the model that way), but other than that one could say that the sketch literally came to life.

This piece turned out to be what I consider my first successful 'artwork', and has inspired me to be more fearless and unconventional in my approach to makeup from that point on. Subsequent to this project I have worked on many more, which you can see on my website.

So, without further ado, it is my great pleasure to present to you Mrs Metropolis-Giger...the beautiful cyborg!

(Oh, and my new website, of course)...

No animals were harmed in the making of the 1920's Borg Woman!

Your feedback on my site is always appreciated.

Happy New Year xxx