ERIN MC NEILL

Erin Louise McNeill is a Senior at UW Madison completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts.  Her current work surrounds issues of gender in advertising.  McNeill uses a hybrid process of traditional dark room techniques and digital output to reveal startling subliminal messages.  This particular medium is strikingly poignant because these images are not a construction of the artist but rather a direct imprint and reflection of  gender in American advertising.  She can be contacted by email at cadence_84@hotmail.com. 

ERIN MC NEILL has this to say about her work:

"The work I am doing now surrounds my own interest in gender construction and the media's role.   Looking through magazines, I find images that when combined, underline the motivation of advertisers.  The viewer sees two images in a split second when flipping through the magazine but the messages are very much so different.  By juxtapositioning different images from one page in a magazine, these images are made. 

"Gender is the main emphasis of this project.  In Games, a young man playing a video game is combined with an advertisement for the army.  These two actions go hand in hand, yet the connection between video games and military service is often missed.  It is the power of gender roles, which creates a system that leads young men into service.
 

" In So Smooth, a young woman is joined with an image of a manic cartoon man.  It is here, that the differences between how gender is supposed to be presented are apparent.  It is considered un-feminine to be loud and aggressive, that should be a man's role. 
 

" Together I see this larger body of work contributing to my understanding and  want to express the differences between what we are told by the media through advertising and how the messages operate together.  I hope that these images help reveal the media while presenting an aesthetically pleasing image reminiscent of the dark room."