I'm officially division III yipee (kai-o kai-yay)!!

Division III Contract

For my Division III project I will make an artist book and a film that are interconnected. In my Division II, I studied film and photography along with Native American and Jewish cultural studies. I will incorporate the history of these two cultures into this project's theme. The book will include photography, drawing and writing. I will explore cowgirl culture, Native American life and culture, and Jewish settlers in the West at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as pioneers and traders and look at their interactions with the Native American people.

I want to make a ledger book style first person narrative about a young Native American cowgirl. I plan to make the characters and scenes in the book come to life through the film using animation and hand processing techniques. The major artistic theme of my Division III will be the idea of handmade-ness. I want everything I do to be hand made and mostly hand processed. I will most likely use a vintage ledger book as my starting point for the book and paper. The story will come from my research and knowledge of the history of Native American and Jewish people, most likely set during the turn of the century 19th. I'd like to incorporate the culture of the cowgirl and the idea of the Wild West into my story as well. I will use my mediums of experimental film and photography and book arts to portray the story of an independent Native cowgirl and her adventures through the American west.