Brighter city project reflection

In this post I am going to reflect on my tales of the city project I have dubbed the #Brightercityproject, for this project I made teru teru bozu's which translates to shine shine monk in Japanese which are traditionally made out of white paper or cloth and resemble ghosts. The cloth or paper dolls are considered amulets that bring good weather (or rain if hung upside down) and were/are commonly used by farmers trying to insure the correct weather conditions for their crops. They started becoming pouplar for urban dwellers in the edo period, Traditionally if the weather is indeed good the day after the teru teru bozu is displayed then eyes would be drawn on them, this is comparable to the Japanese tradition of the daruma in which you have a daruma statue you draw in one eye when you have made your wish and draw in the second eye when the wish has been completed. So I made the teru teru bozu as a metaphor for bringing happiness and I tried to achive this by leaving encouraging messages and words of wisdom on pieces of card hung from the teru teru bozu.

So was the project a success? Short answer not from what I can tell. I attached a hash tag #Brightercityproject to the teru teru bozu but nothing has come up when I search that tag.

Do you think there is something you could have done to make the project more successful?
I could have made more and hung them in more heavily occupied places but I got too nervous to hang them in densely populated places. I liked what I did though putting them in less traveled places quite a few in darker corners of alleyways and places like that because it seemed more apt and like it made more of a statement.

I also made a video of all of the places I put them and hoping people can see by the video why I decided to place each message in the place I had put them. I am not disappointed with the outcome of this project in a strange way part of me didn't want to gain from it more than I have done by taking pictures and drawing from my inspiration to do this. It was supposed to be a selfless act if I got too much back from it, it wouldn't feel selfless anymore.

If I was to do it again what would I do differently?
I would probably think more about the construction because the string even though it looked pretty was so hard to get to work and on one of the teru teru bozu it kept coming undone. Apart from that I am satisfied with how the project went.

AVDWT Progression 15th of June

WARNING: If you believe in the Leviticus part of the old testament you may not want to read this post or be on my blog at all for that matter.

I'm currently on page 36 of Iain Bank's "The Wasp Factory."

 This first page you may have seen before in my last blog post, I have gone back to this page and started to work into the bottom portion with typographic transfers. I just couldn't stand the empty spaces and there is still to much empty space for my liking. So I'll be refining this page over the next few days.
 I used numbers, letters and symbols it represent this characters need for information. In the book he is and educated man, a man of science whom I would think craves knowledge and information. Since reading further into the book there this character has be described more so I plan on making a tracing paper overlay and re-designing his character over the top of the old one.


The next page is still in progress as well this page is currently full of extracts from the book I found funny or interesting. The extract I focus on is about a person named Leviticus, now this extract is obviously the writer having a bit of a not so sneaky dig at Leviticus which is part of the old testament, most well known for being against same sex relationships/marriage/sex.

The full extract reads "Leviticus Cauldhame, my father's eldest brother, emigrated to South Africa and bought a farm there in 1954. Leviticus, a person of such weapon-grade stupidity his mental faculties would probably have improved with the onset of senile dementia, left Scotland because the Conservatives had failed to reverse the Socialist reforms of the previous Labour government." The quote continues and shows us how much of an intolerant, closed minded dolt Leviticus really is.

In my sketch book I drew inspiration from Dada cut ups to make my own dig at Leviticus. A bit of background about me I am not a religious person and I believe very strongly in LGBT rights being bisexual myself, even if I wasn't bisexual I'm sure I would still be an avid supporter of LGBT rights. One thing I dislike about people who claim to believe in Leviticus is that they pick and chose what they do and do not take from it. I have seen many anti gay marriage protesters wear mixed materials yet that is banned according to Leviticus, and I'm sure they wouldn't blink an eye while eating mussels  when shellfish is also frowned upon according to Leviticus and is mention more frequently to be an abomination than being homosexual. Leviticus in my honest opinion is pure stupidity.