Objective Family Portraits

Greetings from OZ Everyone!

I know it's been a while since I posted... believe me, I've been itching for something to post about for a month now! I've officially started back up at PSC again for the 2nd half of year 2 (out of 3). I'm over the 1/2 way mark! Woohoo!

Anyway, being back at school and starting to work on and think about my folio for this current semester made me realise most of you back home probably haven't seen the work from last semester. It was a bit last minute due to the unfortunate collapse of my original folio idea, but once I figured out "Plan B" I was on my way and ended up absolutely LOVING what I worked on. Big shout out to my American and Aussie family members for coming to the rescue and being so accommodating with my last minute requests! Particularly my American family who had only a few days to gather and post all of their objects. Thank you!

So for those of you who haven't heard what I was working on here it is:

I attempted to create a series of family portraits that used sentimental or personal objects that represented each person to tell the story of who they were and what was important to them. I found this project to be so fun and incredibly interesting to see what objects made the cut and which didn't. It really makes you realise what's important to each person and I think, and I hope you do as well, that the photos really represent the personality of each family member. For those of you in OZ who don't know my American family well, I hope the images share a bit of who they are and for those of you in the US who don't know, or haven't met my Aussie family, I hope this gives a nice representation of my wonderful family here in Melbourne.

Grammo

Padre

Madre

Twinnie

Drew (A2)

Meg

Kaela

Kate

Alfred

Andrew (A1)

Laura

Anna

Ron

Nan

Pa

I must admit, I was pretty nervous to present this idea and these images to the class and panel of tutors for our final presentation as it was so last minute they hadn't seen the images or heard the idea until the week before they were due, but I think they went over really well! People seemed to really like to try to figure out everyone's personality based on the objects. My image and Grammo's image even made it up on display for the PSC Summer Exhibition which is a really big deal for me personally because the whole time I was working at PSC, prior to becoming a student, I used to walk through the halls, admiring the other students work and wondered if one day I'd ever have anything on display in one of the exhibitions. It's a pretty cool feeling, one I hope to repeat again, if I'm lucky, during my remaining 1.5 years at school.

Also, Laura, my No. 1 Aussie sister, mentioned she might like copies of the Aussie family images. So, for her birthday, I gave her the mounted prints used for folio which I am extremely honoured to say are now hanging on the walls of her house! I haven't seen them up there yet but I hope they add a little something special to her already beautifully unique house.

This semester I'm working on a continuation of this project only using words of significance rather than objects of significance to try and create abstract representations of family members through quotes or lyrics that are important to them. Stay tuned for some work in progress photos as I work through them all! Very exciting stuff!