Cottingley Fairies..

The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Conan Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, but others believed they had been faked.

At the time of 1917, the victorian era, it was a very austere period in time and these photographs really evoked peoples imaginations as even specialists believed them to be real.  

This is what I hope to create, a small spark of belief inside the viewer and just for a second they can say they believe in something they haven’t since child hood.

Final Major Project...

It took me a while to come up with the theme for my FMP this year. I was out walking with my dog in a small enclosed field, walking the border, I came across a large tree with a tiny cove at the base of it. Immediately I could in vision small pebble stone steps leading towards a tiny wooden door, and a window  a short way above, with curtains drawn so no one could see who or what lived inside. 

So the next day I went back and took my camera and took pictures to explain what I would like to create, these are the images that inspired me... 

Here I could imagine tiny windows placed within the gaps of the bark made with stick frames.

 Here I can in vision a tiny door at the base of this tree, with a small window above it.

These are elements I could imitate when creating a minature woodland house

I then began to research artists of a similar specialism and could only seem to find garden centres who sold fairy houses, here is a few I found...

I found myself looking at this one for so long, just picking out the intricate detail shown with leaves, moss and wood. This is definitely something that is close to what I am imagining in my head. 

This one is beautiful and you can tell that the scale is so tiny. However, i want to imitate little windows and doors, roof tiles and steps... this is covered with flowers and moss, I would rather create something more similar to a house.

I then came across a beautiful website, unfortunately I cannot copy the images on there, so here is the link!

http://www.fairywoodland.com/

These creations are EXACTLY like I had imagined in my head, they make me excited to start immediately!

Photos of my progress to come...