America in Colour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some pictures of old barns and such that I took with my Diana F+ camera over the summer while in America. I used lomography colour film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natalya Lobanova

I found another artists blog by Natalya Lobanova. Simple, personal little works to make you smile. If I presented something like this in college I don't think it would go down well, but she gets away with it so that's something I suppose.

 

 

 

 

Fall Progressive Review

My set up for my progress review.

Jane Gifford

So I just happened to come across this artist while flicking through the book Dream Machines, Lucky Me!

Jane Gifford has been recording her dreams and making works exploring dream language and narrative, the cumulative process of dreaming and notions of the diary, through drawing, painting, printmaking, installation and video.
Her website is really worth a look at, I really like her dream journal. A little illustration accompanied by a short paragraph.

'Dream Journal, November 2004'

'Dogs in Boots'

'Dream Home'
The perfect home for dreaming - a standard garden shed, painted a
'dream-like' lilac, furnished with a bed and papered with facsimile pages from the Dream Drawings notebooks.



'Dream Paintings 2001'
A series of small, narrative, (monochrome except for remembered colour)
paintings of key dream moments.

156 paintings, 3 for every week of the year.

(The way the above works are presented is similar to how I would like to present my bed photography.)

A photo a day

So it was suggested that I take a picture of my bed every morning when I wake up. I think this idea could work really well. I only started last week so I dont have a lot to work with, I'm just trying to do mock ups for my progressive reviews even though the idea at this stage isent really effective.
I've been doing this in two formats, One is a close up of my bed the other is zoomed out showing more of my bed and who ever is on it at that given time.
I plan to do loads of them and either have them mounted individually, or all on one page making a grid or series of photos.

 

Each one is the same but slightly different, the above images have been taken over the past four days.

I like the idea of them being passport size. I have a series of old passport size photos of my great grandfather they are all slightly different, almost like stills from a film rather than photographs, ( I will post them on a later date.) I really like the imagery of the photos, how thew flow into each other. There was also an image I found in a magazine that I have given to a friend which visually was along the same idea. Unfortunetly I have to do this through photoshop, which for me is an almighty challenege. I can never get the damn thing to do what I want!

 

A wider shot of the bed. (22-0ctober-2012)

A close up shot of the bed. (21-Oct-12)
This might be more interesting visually....i wont know till I have more of them..

 

 

Cushion Dreams

 

So I have abandoned my wooden frames and have converted by embroidered text into cushions. They are quit small, but I will make some pillow size further down the line. I'm not sure if I like them or not, they aren't very symmetrical....

I have my assessment tomorrow and after it is over I will restitch the last bits were I have to close the hole up so it is a bit neater and shift the cotton around so its not so lumpy looking....A bit of a rush job today as I have a lot to do before tomorrow...

 

There will be alot more cushions/pillows further down the line. Hopefully this will eventually turn into an installation piece, accompanied by photos displayed above the cushions/pillows, through slide film (suggested by my tutor)....

Visually it all looks good in my head, but we shall see. I have alot of sewing to do....its very tedious.

Mariele Neudecker

Yesterday we had an artists talk by Mariele Neudecker.
She is a sculpture and photographer.  Her tank pieces are my favorite, They are dreamy, ghostly worlds contained within a small space. Little souls concealed within a glass tomb.
With alot of her work she references, paintings, etchings and other 2d works. The titles of her work are very important, they add another layer to the finished piece.

'Her practice investigates the formation and historical dissemination of cultural constructs around the natural world, focusing particularly on landscape representations within the Northern European Romantic tradition and today’s notions of the Sublime. Central to the work is the human interest and relationship to landscape and its images used metaphorically for human psychology.'

'Thousand Generations'

'Heaven, The Sky'

'I dont know how I resisted the urge to run'

Recipes From the Kitchen Drawer

As some of you know I used to post my weekly recipe, which has stopped, mostly because I am cooking something new everyday, (trying to make home grown veg and food budget ingredients more interesting), and I cant keep up with it all.
BBC Good Food is a great site by the way for recipe ideas.
 But today I thought I'd share a great book called, 'Recipes from the Kitchen Drawer' a graphic cookbook by Helen Ashley.
I don't have the book but I have been collecting the recipes from the back of the Telegraph magazine every week (the book is on my wish list). It is such a wonderful idea, presenting recipes in a simple comic book way, combining graphic design with cooking. They are simple and easy to follow. I made Chili Con Carne the other day using one of her recipes and it was wonderful.

Ice cold, stitch

 

Another finished stitch piece, the heart was done by chance, there was a mark on the screen that looked like a heart, so there you go, It seems to work.

Marina Abramovic

Loved the idea behind these works. I dread to think how much they cost to make, but I would most certainly love to try the shoes. The paragraph below was directly taken for a book I am looking at called 'Dream Machines.' Its an exhibition of work by different artists, selected by Susan Hiller which focuses on dreams and altered states of consciousness.

 

 

 

 

 

Marina Abramovic's crystal Shoes for Departure offer to transport the viewer into an altered state of consciousness. With the artist's written instructions functioning almost as a hypnotic suggestion, the shoes provide the means to enter a space of trance and contemplation:

"With naked feet enter the shoes. Eyes closed. Motionless. Depart. Duration:limitless

Material: amethyst"

The artist's mineral pillows encourage a similar journey into the unconscious, as viewers are invited by the artist to rest their heads on them and experience the mind-altering properties of the crystal supports: 'Smoked quartz, works on the subconscious going deep into the past of memory to balance the conscious mind'; 'Sodalite, amplifies dreams.' The works create their meaning in their interaction with the feelings and imaginations of an audience, and in the re-enacting by that audience of state of mind suggested by the artist.

 

-'Dream Machines', selected by Susan Hiller



Untitled (Smoked Quartz pillow)

 

Two More..

 

I've completed two more stitched pieces. The first one I have posted I will re-do as it is just to messy. The pink one is done on an old pillow case that I had when I was very small. I screen printed the text onto it. I think I will screen print my text onto the fabric instead of using the transfer gel. Its alot less messier and is almost quicker.

I am starting to question the presentation of these pieces. I like how you have to get really close to them to read the text, it makes it alot more intimate, but I wonder if the frames are to big and maybe need to be half the size.......

I like how the frames are wide though as I think I may place little objects on top of them.

I think when I have my photos sorted as well it might look alot better. I am also contemplating making dream catchers but that may be a bit to 'crafty.' We shall see.......

 

This is all one dream but told as if it is three different stories. It jumps around the way dreams do, from one frame to the next.

The Owl and the Pussycat

I was listening to Poetry Please, on BBC Radio 4 today while I was cooking away. They were celebrating the life and work of the poet and painter, Edward Leer, most famous for his nonsense poems. They played The Owl and the Pussycat, sung by Elton Hayes. I adored this poem growing up, so much so that its one of the very few things I took the time to commit to memory. I thought it was wonderfully sung by Elton Hayes and I simply had to share. Edward Leer was a wonderful poet.

First Piece

This is my first completed piece for this project. I am happy were his is going, but unfortunetly it looks dirty especially so in a photograph. But it does look better now that I have painted my space!

I dont really like the mark that the transfer has left arount the stitching, I am going to see if i can do this with out transfering th text, so this might be redone all together. Its been handwashed, starched and then streched onto a wooden frame, that our technician kindly made for me.

The text is rather depressing I know, but dreams are strange and this one is especially so.

 

 

 

Alice Maher

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go on a college trip to Dublin to see Alice Maher's exhibition, 'Becomming,' at IMMA.
Her work was wonderful. Dreamy and macarbe all rolled into one, nature twisted with the human form, the primitive and the complex. Her work, without sounded big headed, was very much like my own. She reminds me alot of Kiki Smith, but since they are the same age they would not have been influenced by each other, they are peers not mentors. But it is interesting to see the cross-over that imerged, I imagine on some subconscious level. Her stop-motion videos were amazing, well worth a look. I wish I could of stuck around a bit longer, but there was other galleries to be seen none of which held work as immpresive as hers.
The only other gallery that stuck out for me was the Douglas Hyde Gallery, which was showing, 'The Paradise,' by Fergus Feehily, which was an istallation about light and darkness; and especially about luminosity, and Nina Canell's 'Tendrils,' which can be described as a kind of modern alchemy, as much of it is about transformation and a search for deeper, more unified, beauty.
These were complex yet simple exhibitions that were quiet and lovely.
We also saw Callum Innes, 'Unforseen,' in the Kerlin Gallery. A series of block paintings. A theme that has become stale. Only Mark Rothko and maybe a small hanful of others have ever been able to take this theme to a higher level, in my opnion at least.
 Below are some photos from the exhibitions...

'The Four Directions' by Alice Maher
Snail Shells (This was the only piece that I could take a photo of the rest are from her site)



'Cell' by Alice Maher
brambles and wire

'Berry Dress' by Alice Maher
Cotton, Rosehips and pins



'Ombres' by Alice Maher 1997
Aseries of three images in charcoal.

 

Impulse Slight (detail) By Nina Cadell
2011
Watermelon seeds, wood, glass, copper wire

Kodak Brownie

My favorite

 

 

There is a different image of the beach bridge which is more visible if you turn it to the right, and if you know what to look for!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some photos I took with my Kodak Brownie box camera.

 

The Kodak brownie takes 127mm film but I used 120mm. The film didn't match the box, as the 127 is much wider, so the have double exposed and moulded into each other.

I like the effect tho. The larger images have been taken and cut from the two long image.

Most of these were taken in Kerry at the beach or in my garden.

 

 

Kodak Brownie Box camera