Alice in Wonderland

An Analysis of The Pool of Tears by Sparks Notes

Alice becomes confused about her identity as her size changes, mirroring the confusion that occurs during the transition from childhood to adulthood. The reality that she is too large to fit into the garden produces confusion over who she is, which Alice responds to with bouts of crying and self-reproach. Unable to accept the changes she is experiencing, she questions her own identity. Since she cannot remember her own lessons, she believes that she must not be Alice anymore. At first, Alice assumes that she may in fact be someone she knows. The comparisons she draws between herself and Mabel show her class-consciousness, as well as her ties to the material trappings of the Victorian world. Though she tries to use chains of reasoning suited to the aboveground world, the paradox of Wonderland is that she must accept the logic of nonsense or she will go mad with contradiction.

Alice tries to deal with her predicament reasonably, but the episode in the pool of tears illustrates how easily Wonderland distracts her from reason and causes her to react emotionally. The sea of tears is like a punishment for Alice’s giving in to her own emotions. Alice vacillates between crying and scolding herself, going back and forth between emotion and reason. However, as she swims, she doesn’t notice that the landscape has transformed around her. The great hall has become an ocean, while the floor has become a dry “shore.” Instead of reacting to her predicament by rationalizing the problem or starting to cry, she distracts herself by trying to figure out how to address the Mouse. Alice has started to react with total detachment to the absurd situations in which she finds herself. As she proceeds throughout her journeys, she will continue to encounter problems that cause her to react with extremes of emotion or reason. However, in this scene, she has begun to take the absurdities of Wonderland at face value, allowing herself to become distracted so that she ignores the real problem at hand.

Nb: this is not for extra credit Assignment

Series

Project Speightstown Complete and Improved

                                      

Project Speightstown Complete

Project Speightstown Continued

Getting somewhere fast

Getting somewhere

Project Speightstown

Speightown continued with garbage tyres

Some of the garbage will be drawn in black and white and washes of colour will be added.  As soon as I can get my prints I will be putting the composition to gather by hand with several drawings over the photographs.

Speightstown Project continued

This another photo being worked on for the project

Speightstown Project

This is one of the pages I'm working on for my dairy documenting the trip to Speightstown.

Ideas for Images

These are images I found that I'm interested in for Speightstown Project.

New Idea For Speightstown Project

Called: A PAGE FROM MY DIARY

I plan to document our trip to Speightstown with different images that tell majority of what happened/ where we went during the trip. There will be a second message coming out of these images that pertain to garbage. Hidden garbage.

Art 21 Artist ELLEN GALLAGHER

Ellen Gallagher born in 1965 in Providence, Rhode Island, works and lives in Rotterdam, Holland and New York. Her main concerns are revision and repetitious treatment of advertisements that she appropriates from popular magazines such as Our World, Ebony and Sepia. She attended Oberlin College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and was initially drawn to wig advertisements. She then realized that it was the language that intrigued her and not the grid like structure and began to use these narratives in her own work. Their function was to achieve a chart of lost worlds through manipulation of the characters of the advertisements. The work appears abstract from afar but upon closer inspection detail is multiplied through caricatures; reconfigured wigs, tongues, googly eyes and lips. Gallagher's work influenced by Agnes Martin's paintings and Gertrude Stein's writing were often referred to as an examination of race by critics. Early works show that Gallagher glued pages of penmanship paper onto stretched canvas and then painted and drew on it. She carved images into thick watercolor paper in her own interpretation of scrimshaw as shown in "Watery Ecstatic" (2002-04). Emerging from this was the sea creatures from Dreciya, an underwater Black Atlantis.

Images from the Series "Watery Ecstatic"

Here is a video of Ellen Gallagher explaining her work (Art 21)

This type of work in my opinion is functional, in that it does its part and is executed in such a way that the point of the message is heard. A person after seeing an interesting visual of an advertisement would most likely remember it, especially if it is funny or intriguing. It is however said that Gallagher uses racism in her work. According to Jan Avgikos in the Artforum, Summer 2002 "Blubber lips, hot-dog lips, Sambo lips. They used to call them "nigger lips" in the South (and probably still do)--just writing the words brings back the pain of racism that's pervasive and in your face. Now, ironically, white people have their lips injected full of collagen to get that big-lip look; think of Angelina Jolie's "pillow lips." There's a whole lot of bite in the difference between "nigger lips" and "pillow lips," one an epithet of derision, the other of desirability. The defacing racial stereotypes of the Jim Crow South don't stop, of course, with cartoon renderings of bulbous lips, protruding eyes, and wild hair, but extend to tales of mythically proportioned genitalia and sexual appetite to match. ..... The freak show Gallagher creates is both wickedly hilarious and terribly poignant. There's no escaping the horror, the stigma, the self-loathing associated with being black and female, whether we regard the ads themselves as prima facie evidence or apprehend the idea of abjection through Gallagher's "erasures.""

Im not sure that Gallagher's intention was to be racist in any way. Her goal was to be funny and to create something that will be remembered.

 

Mr Terrific (2004-2005) E. Gallagher

This piece called "Mr. Terrific" from "Deluxe" was done between 2004 and 2005 and is of dimension 13 x 10 inches. The materials and methods used are aquatint, photogravure, and plasticine. Photogravure according to traditionalart.com is 'the image is transferred to the printing plate by means of light sensitive, acid-resisting chemical ground. The photogravure can reproduce an original painting or photograph with an accuracy of detail and tonal depth unlikely to be surpassed in monochrome printing. ...' Aquatint is an etching made by a process that makes it look like a water color.

There is something that seems a little frivolous about this piece that brings out the child in a person. Although the ad is to be taken serious, one can just not help smile at the playfulness. Gallagher seems to think to herself that although she does not use much paint in the piece she thinks of it as a built painting. The layering and relief adds to the 'building' of the painting.  It is aesthetically pleasing but it serves a purpose.

Speightstown Civil War

Located along the north-west coast of Barbados, Speightstown is one of the islands major towns and boasts a long and intruiging history.
Settled around 1630, its name is derived from William Speight who owned of the land where the town is located.
In 1649 Admiral Sir George Ayscue was dispatched by Cromwell to quell the insurrection in Barbados. However Barbadians were loyal to Charles 1 and for 6 months Ayscue was unable to land in Barbados as concentrated attacks on Speightstown were repelled by the small forts along the shore.

 

One idea is to reenact the war of 1649. Don't know yet how I will get that done, but its an idea.