Donald Urquhart - Joan Crawford Alphabet

Donald Urquhart's Joan Crawford Alphabet is a fantastic piece that uses an alphabet and one particular character to illustrate her life through short statements and cartoon graphic characterisations.  (The print can be bought online at the Saatchi Gallery shop). This currently fits with my obsession/interest in all things font based. I have always had a fondness for text-based work, and have toyed with the idea of producing lightboxes with laser-cut text for many years, and have started to try to work these ideas up in sketchbooks, and on the computer. The problem I have is that I am not sure that I have something to say, or at the very least something that other people need to read or interact with. Maybe that is the answer, to say nothing or statements which are so bland and inconsequential that they might as well be on the cover of OK magazine, or maybe use these magazines for source material....I have creative copyright on that by the way!!

Tracey Emin- Fear

Jenny Holzer -You Are My Own

Jenny Holzer's You Are My Own  and Tracey Emin's Fear are both text based work but in very different scales and media, both women have worked in a variety of materials to get their point across, although Jenny Holzer, described as an American Neo-Conceptualist seems to have hit upon the ephemeral qualities of light and projection as her metier of choice. This large scale projections can be viewed for a short amount of time on prominent buildings, and they deal with philosophical questions,statements of intent, political positions. Tracey Emin works in the typical women's "crafts" of quilting, and uses the language of womens confessionals, coffee shop/3rd martini style highlighting inadequacies, fears, hopes and dreams of the average woman in the street.