Lord Whitney Nonsense Brief

Lord Whitney recently visited our college and set us a brief about the poems of Edward Lear. The exercise was to help us relax about the way we approach our work, have fun and think outside the box. I chose the Edward Lear poems ‘Two old bachelors’ and the ‘Pelican chorus’.  Lord Whitney is the collaboration of artists Amy Lord and Rebekah Whitney. They develop visual ideas and concepts for projects that include editorials, photo shoots and interiors. Their work focuses on set design, costume and prop making and with this in mind I tried to bring a fun, 3Dimensional approach to the brief. I researched tunnel boxes as this was a common practice at the turn of the last century and I thought it was appropriate to the age of the poem. My design for the ‘old bachelors’ was produced from drawing a scene from the poem, extracting the characters and designing a visual surrounding. I copied the design several times and cut out varying segments’ which was installed into the folding tunnel box. This gives the look of looking into a theatre set in which the poem can play out. For the pelican chorus poem, I took the opportunity to play with materials such as wood, old books, drawing and paint. The poem was more child- like in its rhythm and I believed this medium was apt for the written text. I so enjoyed this quick brief and did them in one day. Although the final designs are not fantastic,  the experimental side of the designing from text was well worth the time to relax and just play. After sending my finished designs to Lord Whitney they very kindly responded with the email below.

Hi Sam

Thanks for sending through your response to the Nonsense brief,

How did you find the project? We loved the work you sent through. It was great to see you having a try with a few styles and we liked them all. The little theatre set looks great, it has a real style to it which is lovely to see. It's great to see a mix of 2d and 3d styles Was there any way which you preferred working?

Thank you so much for taking part in the brief. We really enjoyed working with you all and really hope you got something valuable out of it.

Good luck with your work & keep in touch,

Bek and Amy