During this project I was dealing with wood as a material for artistic expression. I used the traditional technique of pyro-graphy to burn lines into the wood. I created drawings that rely to the material and its appearances. They express the relations between humans and animals and arouse associations of trophies, hunting, woods and nature. The interplay of the drawings and the material intensify the perception of the viewer. 

Human animals

I illustrated my bachelor thesis ‘The Retro Phenomenon’ with photography of tactile illustrations. They refer to the different chapters of the paper, e. g music, fashion or television. 
I underlined the main topic, the attraction of the past to humankind, by using analogue craftwork to create the images. By arranging everyday items with the help of nylon thread, tape and a lot of patience, I transported the values of old fashioned handicraft into the images. There’s no need of complex digital 3D modelling to create an authentic artwork.

Das Phänomen Retro –The Retro Phenomenon

This book is about the fairy tale of “The little match girl” by H. C. Andersen. I developed it during my bachelor project. The whole process from the first scetches to the finished book took about a year.

The fairy tale is about a little girl trying to sell matches on the street at new years eve. But she can’t make a penny and so she uses the light of the matches to warm herself. In the flickering flames she dreams herself away into wonderful scenes. While drifting in her hallucinations she slowly freezes to death. 

I wanted to visualize the topic about physical and mental warmth with a supporting medium. Therefore I experimented with laser cutting to burn typography and images into paper. It was a long process of creating images and doing material research to achieve the wanted results. 

With regard to content the story can be divided into various sequeces. I differentiated those by using different papers and imagery. When reading the final book the tactile components, the smell of burned paper and the special rhythm of flipping pages create an unique and intimate experience of story telling.

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Kathrin Stumpe

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