anthropology project!

[justinfinite.livejournal.com]

When my anthropology teacher asked my class to creatively interpret and (with due cultural respect) recreate Aboriginal Australian paintings, I jumped on the opportunity to bust out the sewing machine.

I don't know about you all, but I like to combine my love of crafts with the necessity of schoolwork. Maybe this might inspire those of you still (unfortunately) in high school to get creative with potentially boring projects.

Before you look at these pictures (I feel kind of weird even posting them) the very least you need to know is that the paintings I "copied" are beyond important to the people who made them. They depict stories and rituals that are secret and incredibly sacred to them. This project was done with the utmost respect for that and only in order to understand their culture better. Also, although Aboriginal cultures are similar, they all have their own stories and these paintings are not all from the same group.

Some Aboriginal Australians began painting with acrylics on canvas in the fifties, but these designs come from ritual paintings done both on the earth and the human canvas for thousands of years before that. I thought it would be interesting to try to bring those designs back from the acrylics to something wearable, and more physically closely attached to the person.

Okay, I'm terribly sorry for the long-winded explanation but felt it was necessary. Aboriginal culture is absolutely fascinating to me and there's no way I could begin to do it justice in a couple short paragraphs, but I couldn't post this without the tiniest bit of background.

I did three paintings. None of them were in any way perfect, but I found it wasn't as easy as I thought it might be to recreate paintings in fabric. I couldn't get a good picture of the whole outfit (mirror pictures never work out for me), this is the front of the shirt.


It's based on this painting:


Back of the shirt (and skirt). Pardon the awkward camera positioning and hideous curtains.


Better picture of the back


Painting it was based on:


Front of the skirt


Painting it was based on (which is actually of a hairstring skirt):


And the fabric I used for the skirt:


I was actually quite proud of myself because I found it at Mill End and thought it looked absolutely perfect for this project, and when I took it home I saw that it had actually been designed in Australia's Central Desert. CRAZY!

Thanks for reading/looking! Sorry there is so much text, but I really do hope you read it.