May Day

 

This image is from the Making Mischief exhibition. It's a Victorian photograph of some children dancing in the May day spring celebrations. I think this image would make a great motif. It's recognisable as a folk celebration and has many similarities with a lot of the imagery I've been researching. 

The above images are experiments, playing with different printed back grounds I've been producing.
I like the black and white images against the soft pastel background colours and soft fabric textures add femininity  and  context to the images

Playing around with the images by tracing a simple outline and layering on different backgrounds, with light spring colours and textures taken from textiles in direct prints.

Some of the may celebration costumes from the Making Mischief exhibition, putting the clothes and photograph into context. An idea maybe would be to use the dancing motif from the photograph as a fabric design or embellishment for a costume. I'm thinking of creating a soft sculpture that is representative of a costume in some way, its still just a seed of an idea at the moment.

A dress at the exhibition made from the instructions in this old dress pattern featured.

Here I've joined the dancers in a circle. Maybe to make something that spins like a carousel.

to mimic the motion of the dance. maybe it doesnt actually need to spin. the images on the circular structure alread give that feeling. this is a simple mock up just on tracing paper that allows some transparency of the image to merge together.

I want to develop these idea further. I like the layering of the figures and how the softer focus from the layering creates a haze distant effect on the figures in the back ground.
I also like the circular arrangement.