Carmen McNally's Art

Evaluation  My final piece is a cutout lightbox titled Walk With Me , inspired by the idea of taking the viewer on a visual journey. It is made up of 38 layers of intricately cut card that generate a mystical land the viewer can imagine themselves walking through. The image is a composite of sketches drawn from memory and photographs of hikes and countryside walks with my children. I was exploring the concept of what cannot be seen behind Victor Pasmore’s gate. The overgrown vines create a sense that you're peeking into a secret space. I wanted to explore structure and depth through layering, using light to cast graduated shadows that reveal hidden elements and guide the eye through the composition. During the development stage, I created a test piece using different materials to see how light interacted with them. I aimed to create a sense of depth and atmosphere by finding the right level of transparency for the layers. This helped me select the appropriate thickness of card that...

 How it all looks

Framing my layers Below shows the process of the frame being built. This video shows the stacking of the layers This video shows how the frame looks. The next slide will show my final result.

  Artist research-Jeff Wall What I really like about Jeff Wall’s work is the way he uses layering and light to bring his photographs to life I believe he has made a 2-dimensional image feel like a 3-dimensional immersive experience. His images are carefully constructed, often staged like scenes from a movie, which gives them a strong sense of depth and storytelling. The way he layers different elements in the scene-foreground, background, and mid-ground-makes the photograph feel rich and detailed, like you’re looking into a real moment frozen in time. This is something that I admire about Wall's work and is what I plan to capture with my own piece. Wall often displays his work in large lightboxes, which allows light to shine through the photograph from behind. This not only makes every detail stand out, but it also creates a glowing effect that draws you in. The light helps to form soft or dramatic shadows depending on the scene, which adds atmosphere and helps guide your eye arou...

  Adding my children Below is the process video of how I added my children. I'm really glad that I didn't add the children into each layer when I was creating it as this was what I was planning on doing.  Photoshop has stopped working on my laptop so I'm back to using Procreate instead. Tracing things on such a small scale was really tricky as I couldn't get the refined clean lines I wanted that I was getting with PhotoShop. I only had access to PhotoShop on the college computers but unfortunately, only a mouse is available to work with, when I really needed a stylus to work on the screen like I have with my own laptop.  I  still need to add the line drawing of the children sitting on the gate. It got completely frazzled and I need to laser cut another.

Adjustments for the layers   Below is a video of how and why I wanted to create some depth between the gate and the pathway. The video below shows what and explains why I worked on the hills in the background. The next stage is all about the very reason I created this scenery in the first place—the cherished memories I have shared with my children during hikes and our country walks.