Shop Ec.

 

Clash of gender roles.

 

First introduced in the United States during the 1900s, the scholastic system felt it necessary to prepare young boys and girls for their futures. Boys were trained to be laborers in shop class and women were trained to run a household (i.e. cook, clean, balance the checkbook) in home economics. While boys learned to use table saws, girls learned how to bake pies.

 

This series combines these two worlds. Showing the slicing of a tomato with a saw or smashing an egg with a hammer. Among other combined imagery that utilizes objects stereotyped as "masculine" and "feminine", each narrative is breaking the segregated gender roles that traditional US society has forced us to accept.

 

--

 

This series began as a collaborative project with the Department Chair, Graphic Design at AiMiami International University of Art & Design, Maragret Gonzalez, who began working with the tools from her parents' garage: tools such as saws, hammers, screwdrivers, etc. She began by outlining these objects and reducing them to their basic shapes. Although they became cardboard cutouts, they still held a masculine form.  These cutouts were the catalyst for this photogram series.

 

 

 

Artist Bio

Amanda Francoeur

 

Primarily trained in digital arts and graphic design at the AiMiami International University of Art & Design (2008), she has since fallen in love with the tactile nature of the photographic darkroom. After extensive exploration of alternative photographic processes, she came to appreciate the rawness of the photogram.

 

Afforded by her opportunity to work in both Italy and the United States, she started to focus on the intersection of shared personal and social experiences as translated into an international language; the still image. Expanding into sound, video and digital processes, she continues to delve further into the exploration of human interaction

and behavior.

 

Though politics and language vary between nations, our experiences of life, love, and the desire to communicate are collective. Through visual explorations we learn to celebrate the similarities and differences that make each society unique.

Quale Quaglia è Quale

 

This series of photograms were created in the darkroom at SACI school in Firenze, Italia.

 

The quail were purchased from Mercato Centrale down the street from the school.

 

Although the quail are no longer alive, they each deliver a unique personality, as if they are dancing across the paper. Sold as meat from the local butchers, this photogram series causes you to look at your food differently.

Death of Goldie

 

A reflection on routine and repeating habits

we create in our daily lives.

 

We go through the motions and experience

new things with the inevitability of death lingering heavily above our heads. We clutch

at ephemeral pleasures, desperate to assuage the crushing monotony of existence. The

various risks or changes we make for love, murmurs of joy, or happiness only suffice for

an instant in our otherwise blip of a lifespan.

 

Illustrative of our own evanescence, the betta fish and goldfish are commonly recognized as short-term pets.  Destined to sit on a shelf

or a table, confined in a glass display, hoping

the owner remembers the only required task

of feeding them in order to continue their instinctual act of swimming in circles.

 

Unlike fish, our desire and ability to achieve happiness, no matter how short lived, dwells inside us. We take leaps of faith in the self-serving pursuit of happiness. Everyone dies

and life is full of events, some beneficial,

some debilitating. Having the ability to digest

those incidents, we deduce which direction to

take next. When it ends, one venture is over,

but others continue. We each go through our separate journey seeking our own sublime path.

Lingua Italiana

 

This series of photograms were created in the darkroom at SACI school in Firenze, Italia.

 

The items were purchased from various places in the area.

 

These objects were chosen as a personal reflection on the influence of the Italian culture, and were used and/or consumed on a daily basis.

 

And Misc Works

 

© Copyright Amanda Francoeur. All rights reserved