Print Contemporary Practice
Anna Gleeson
Coming Up & Out of Sorrow
Coming Up & Out of Sorrow shows a journey of emotions through a period of the artist’s life. Music is a very important component in how Anna deals with emotions. Through this period, Anna created many sounds and music that directly correlated to the emotions she was feeling each day. In tune with the music, she kept a diary expressing her feelings on the given day. These words were then transcribed to create laser cut wood pieces. These pieces were then used to create blind embossments to make back into a diary. After putting together this diary there was a clear journey from sadness to happiness in the words, Anna felt that making one all-encompassing piece of music to go with this made more sense than a piece for each day. Utilising the wood pieces not just as a matrix happened after they were cut, and Anna was drawn to them as pieces on their own. Having the woodcuts on display while a video of the same words is projected onto them makes it difficult to read, just like the blind embossments. Having everything be hard to read without concentration was intentional as this is Anna’s diary and private thoughts. Only those willing to do the work to read it may be privy to the information.