The Show Must Go Home: Senior Thesis Exhibition Spring 2020

Sophie Ungless

Out of Place 
Sophie Ungless 

Moving from Ohio, where the majority of the landscapes are mostly fields and flat, I was happy to encounter the change of environments in Southern California. Here, you can access a variety of terrains within a few hours’ drive. Two landscapes that I've been able to spend more time with since moving are the desert and the coast, which have provided me great solace and helped me develop as a person. Their expansive, wide-open horizons have helped me escape the physical and mental clutter that I experience day-to-day. The mental state that I'm put into when I'm in these places is similar to the meditative feeling I get when I fall deep into making a piece of art. Time seems to melt away. As someone who has tried to integrate meditation into my routine unsuccessfully, I find that spending time in these locations, focusing on my senses, and journaling while there is the best practice of mindfulness. 

Out of Place is a multimedia piece that combines cyanotype, handmade clothing, digital photography, and digital collage. My process started by creating twelve 30" x 36" cyanotypes, which were then transformed into four pieces of clothing, photographed, and compiled into a book. In this piece, I am exploring the physical and metaphorical impressions of the beach and desert, which I have communicated through cyanotype. At each location, I brought my sensitized linen sheets and laid objects from the natural landscape on top. In the desert, I used things like dead branches, dirt, and twigs found on the ground, whereas at the beach, I laid down sand, seaweed, and driftwood. Cyanotype is a UV-sensitive process, so the objects were left on top of the linen and exposed to the sun. Once the objects were removed and the fabric was washed, what remained was a physical record of the objects that were once there. By creating cyanotypes, I have been able to take home a record of something made by objects from the environment without actually removing anything from the original location. Once these large-scale prints were made, I sewed the six compositions from each location to make larger arrangements, and constructed garments from them. The cyanotypes can be seen as individual compositions, or together as full documentation of landscape. For this aspect of my work, I was inspired by Anna Atkins, who pioneered the cyanotype process and can be considered the first female photographer. She used cyanotype to document various plants for a scientific reference book titled British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Atkins fused art with science through her prints and did so as a female in a heavily male-dominated scene. Her work has substantial artistic and scientific merit, and Atkins's work inspired me to create documentations of landscapes through the same medium. 

Once my fabric was complete, I transformed the prints into clothing. My decision to use clothing as the medium of communicating these prints comes from the fact that I choose to express myself through what I wear. The pieces of clothing serve as surfaces for the prints to be shown in various situations. The title Out of Place references this concept, which I call “the here and there”. Whoever is dressed in the clothing wears it to multiple places, therefore always taking the beach or desert with her. When the pieces are worn, I am visually portraying the physical impressions of a landscape that has left a metaphorical impression on me. Furthermore, my work combines clothing and photography, two mediums that can walk the line between art and non-art. When thinking about this long-standing debate I was heavily inspired by German artist Joseph Beuys’s Felt Suit. By creating replicas of his suit in rabbit hair, Beuys's piece is questioning the divide between fine art and domestic objects. In an interview, the artist stated that he didn't care how the artwork was displayed; it could be hung on a wall or worn, even though the material is not entirely sustainable for everyday wear. In Felt Suit, Beuys is using clothing to make this statement, which inspired me to use my interest in textiles to communicate landscape. Additionally, I was inspired by Man Ray's Dada rayographs, which, similarly to cyanotype, are created by light sensitivity, as well as his surrealist photographs. Specifically, when I was thinking about the parallels between fashion influencing art and art influencing fashion, I looked to Man Ray’s 1935 photograph Hands Painted by Picasso, where the hands are painted to look like gloves. One year later, Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli created gloves that resembled a pair of hands with painted red nails for her Winter 1936–37 collection. When looking at these side by side, it can be assumed Schiaparelli was likely inspired by Man Ray's work, especially since she was active in the Surrealist community and a collaborator with Salvador Dali. 

The next major component of Out of Place is photography. I use digital photography throughout this piece to document the landscapes to have a record of where these prints came from. While I was able to stick to my original intentions with the majority of this piece, the photographs of the clothing on models had to change due to the national park and beach closures. My original intention was to go back to the specific places where I created the cyanotypes and photograph the clothing on the models. By doing so, the patterns on the fabric would have a context of where they came from, and the viewer could make connections between the clothing and pieces of the landscapes that created it. However, to adapt to the current situation, I utilized both clean and overlay photographs in the final collection. The photographs taken with against the blank background serve to showcase the details of the prints, which were shot with high-contrast lighting to signify the conditions under which the cyanotypes were made. The superimposed photographs act as a nod to my original intent and project the landscape directly onto the garments. I was inspired by Robert Heienecken's work, which questions the ideas of relationships between originals and copies. My combination photos are not made to make the body look as though the model is standing at the location; instead they emphasize the physical connection between place and impression. To make it clear that the subject of the compositions is the clothing, the models' faces are not shown. 

Finally, the photographs are compiled into an artist book, which presents the title Out of Place. The book serves to show the viewers the physicality of the process and how the various concepts behind the piece converge. The first thing the viewers see in my book is a digital collage of the artists mentioned prior, which visually communicates where my intentions of using cyanotype and clothing come from. Next, there are spreads dedicated to Joshua Tree and Laguna Beach with scanned journal entries from both locations, which speak to the feeling I mentioned earlier of relying on these places to escape and clear my mind. Whoever is reading the page can get a glimpse as to why I chose to create my piece surrounding these locations. The last section focuses on showing the finished products: the garments. There are images of the cyanotype prints before I cut them up to construct my outfits so that the viewer can see where they came from, as well as the detail shots and my superimposed photos. At the very end of the book, there is a spread with selfies of my friends in masks. This calls attention to the historic time in which this piece was created. I was able to craft masks out of the fabric that would have gone to waste. 

Not all clothing is art, but when these two intersect, it can feel like a performance. To me, clothing can be art because I can now wear these pieces as an act of self-expression. My garments are direct and tangible representations of their environments, which have left metaphorical impressions on me. These pieces have functioned as a reminder of the places that bring me peace, especially during such uncertain times.

To learn more about Sophie's work visit:
https://www.sophieungless.com/out-of-place

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