He spoke of the Edge

I have looked back over rhe blog to date and am absolutely amazed that I havent mentioned Nntony   gormley up to now. That will be correctd.
today we had our third CCS lecture on Sculpture and it ran through Giacometti with his existential angst which led to the emaciated figures I have always so lopved (maybe I enveid them when I was a lot more overweight than I am now!) and into gormly whose fascination wth space and edge rellay spaeks to me.
 I really liked the comment he made to Gombrich who asked him:
'Do you want me to feel like you?'
 'No' said Gormley, 'I want you to feel like you.'

Without further ado, Antony Gormley

Sitting at the side of the path

Bank Holiday Monday in October -there was a tie when I would have been in Cork for the Jazz Festival -never missed it and the weather always seemed to be good. The first time I went there was to see the Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ) who had reformed after apparently permanently retiring. I couldn't believe I was seeing such legends so close to me on stage.
Here's a taste:

 

 

Anyway, enough of that nostalgia  -   no, that's wrong; the fact that this is great music and will always be is slightly devalued by thinking of it only as nostalgia.

We often talk about happy accidents -well last week I was copying a Japanese woodblock print and when I took out the copy I discovered that the paper marker I had been using had lodged over the face of the figure in the print; at first I was infuriated, but then I began to think about it and these are what eventuated from that thinking: 

 

 

Barnett Newman -The Edge King

Ellesworth Kelly Rocks!

I know, I know it's all a bit irreverent but surely you cant be too po-faced about the things you love?

Ps  Any earlier readers might note that I at last managed to get the pictures in the right way up.........well it's the least one can do .........under the circumstances.

The path meanders at the weekend

So it's a wet Sunday night and to add to that it is now winter time. Here is something to brighten things up:

 

These are two pictures by Sarah Morris(b. London 1967) called Dulles(Capital) 2001 (top) and Endeavour 2005 - very bright and sharp doncha think? Their colour range really fits into the way I am thinking about my animations at present.

 

As to that, I had a great time on Friday with the studio essentially to my self for a good part of the day as I waited for PJ O'Connell (my teacher from last year in Colaiste Mhuire in Thurles) to come along -he txted to say he would be an hour later and that suited me fine working away and occupying a very large part of the studio with my own taste in music flowing : from Julian Bream on guitar to NeilYoung.

 



 

I got plenty of exercise walking back and forth across the studio, but I got to do a lot of stuff quite quickly and I am hoping to use these images in producing a further series of animations and also possibly to do a number of collages which may be worked up into a 3D or bas-relief :

 

 

 

This one may be made into one or a series of card collages - I'll put them up if they happen

 

 I think I already mentioned that we got our essay assignments for CCS and the one which is concerned with the Renaissance has produced a number of ideas one of which concerns Caravaggio and re that I picked up a copy from the library of Derek Jarman's 1986 film eponymously titled. Now while it is not a documentary I think anyone who wants to think about Michaelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio should see this.

 

Here's a still from it:

 

 

Some of the set pieces were stagings of Caravaggio's paintings and were stunning.

 

Let the weekend roll on and I'm being very well behaved.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 



 

 



 



 

 





 







 

 



Narrow is the way

It's Thursday morning and I have my first review in an hour. I thought it mightn't be a bad idea just to put up an updated statement:

Now Where Am I?                                                  October 24

 

I composed my first statement nine days ago, but even in that time one’s own standpoint, perspective and consequent point of view changes.

The animation features I have made and the additions of music to short videos provide me with some insight into image- production and manipulation, and a view of these images which has surprised me.

I now have some ideas about further manipulation of image, and use of pre-existing image, such as earth surfaces and the addition of sound track and video to these.

The other possibility would be the making of a large-scale painting using the image material created from the animation, and even the possibility of transforming such an image into 3D –maybe bas-relief.

The third avenue is the use of a separate set of images that have always particularly interested me for their use of colour blocks and sharp-edged outline and that is Japanese woodblock print. This is an area I have not touched upon at all yet.

Later I would like to make some comments about our first CCS essay assignment and  the business of writing an essay.

 

A toute a l'heure!

OK its a lot later the same day and this is one much happier dude! Again thanks to my two tutors of the day -Sylvia Shortall and Mary Nagle - who not only were very encouraging and supportive of what I have been doing, but once again have pointed me in a slightly different direction 'along the enchanted way' (thank you Mr Kavanagh).
This evening I returned to Len Lye and discovered that he had made a film of the music of Tal Farlow who was one of my first heroes of modern jazz guitar -what a melange : you just have to see this!

Its a combination of  two of the  things I love best: abstract art and modern jazz .

 

 

I have to do this.

 

 

I will leave the comments on CCS till tomorrow.

 

On the Road Again

With that title I shaould really be able to add a bit of music from Canned Heat but maybe that would be a bit ambitious.

Anyway, I'm here at my desk with my own laptop working away as the mid-term reviews have been going on around me. I met my tutor in the corrdor and she asked me if I was today and I said  "Thursday" so Iam continuing to work on more animations using pictures of shutters on shops ont hre way from the station to here.:







 

Thesae shutters are everywhere and people have been complaining for some years that it was now impossible to window shop anymore - envy seems to have produced a society whreer people hold on desperately to what they have; anyway, they are now ubiquitous and thus familiar. So, the challenge is to make them unfamiliar, not just to look, but to see.

 

Heres the first result of that process:

 

 

But thats not the only thing that has apperared as part of the ongoing process today:

 

 

 

These are the results of our session in the ceramics workshop last Tuesday, And while they are unlikely to appear in Fu Ping or the V&A for my first ever attempt at ceramic work I am delighted with them. The lower piece is a sort of ham-fisted homage to woman who was gifted in ceramics and had a studio in Cashel where I  saw serious work for the first time -Sarah Ryan (1950 - 2001)

 

There are nine of her pieces in Limerick City Gallery of Art, which are well worth seeing -looking at the date of her death it is hard to believe it was so long ago and that she had reached that age -she seemed so much younger.

 

 

Anyway the path calls once more and even though I have some more ideas about animations I would kike to push in a somewhat diffeent direction. Two things have occurred to me: one involves doing a series of drawings or paintings bearing on the concept of edge, photograhing them and then animating them usung editing processes to change them from the original.

 

The other direcrion is to look at a series of prints which are very edge-orientated - japansese woodblock work such as Hokusai, Hirshige or Utamaro. I imagine there would have to be some checks made on copyright issues before using these, but it might be interesting to download or print fragments of these prints and put them together in an animation.

Some japanese woodblock prints:

 





 



There are possibilities here

Some wanderings on the weekend path

The business of making animations is becoming more and more fascinating and I have at last discovered, courtesy of a good deal of help from Paul Gardiner, how to change project files into a more accessible format.
Let's see if this new information has worked:

Wow! Can't believe this! Another step forward into the digital world. I think now I might go back and see if I can upload some earlier videos as I had planned.

So it has been a good weekend one way and another; lots of work and a great result in Thomond Park - Munster march on once more.

Distractions on the path to school

One of the advantages in getting an earlier train is that there is no fierce rush and consequently more time to observe. this caught my eye as I was walking:

 

I'm really not having much fun with the whole video animation process at present - need to learn more.

This is the next day and as you can see not a lot has happened with the business of uploading videos. I have managed to get my animations on to Skydrive and they aer playing but Paul Gardiner has told me anyone wanting to look at the stuff would need a password, so I think I will bite the bullet and start bringing my laptop in to school. It would certainly make things a lot easier when making a presentation to my tutors.

regarding the comment above about the video, I didn't realise that this actually runs on the log, so I'm not quite as digitally dense as I thought I was!

This is a two-day post but as I am working away I will continue and when I get home I will add a number of pictures to show where I am now. With regard to that I am going to post the statement I have made out for my tutors explaining my present position. :

To Sense My Space

 

Where am I now?                                                         October 15

 

The main thrust of my research and practice at present is into the concept of edge.

This is an idea which is open to interpretation in many different direction, but for now I am concentrating on a tight personal and concrete view, derived from an initial rather more monumental perception.

There are two distinct strands to my thinking and to my work

The first comes from an interest in the work of land artists such as the Boyle Family, Richard Long and to a lesser extent Andy Goldsworthy, and has taken the form of a plaster cast of part of my garden. This cast is here at present. I do not intend to pursue this for the moment because, in truth, the cast was not quite as inspiring as I had hoped but there are possibilities.

The other presently much more interesting project is based on a series of photographs taken at various locations, but sprouting from Limerick Junction, a site which I believe has a great deal more potential for development.

These images are views of familiar objects seen from an unfamiliar perspective, and for now I would prefer not to name them, as I feel that would reduce them once more to the banal.

The pictures may be used in various ways, but each can stand alone. At this time I have made a short animation feature, based on the work on Len Lye.

One of his 1930s pieces – ‘A Colour Box’ – was little short of revolutionary for its time and for the use for which it was commissioned – an ad for the Royal Mail parcel post.

This animation is a new departure for me, but I have found it fascinating and would like to pursue it perhaps even working with pictures of the cast.

 

Frank Rafter

Home again and on checking my email found this post from Carmel - thank you very much for that, Carmel.

Carmel Bergin 17 October 22:36 There's the post I was telling you about earlier and to look at other things on the site you just click on SOCKS there is an art and design category on that home page. Hope its helpful. http://www.facebook.com/l/xAQGIOJiUAQFvaUZ-jgxnsnAkD-8VnxGrcZZIi5hdSLdg-Q/socks-studio.com/2012/09/22/history-images-horizons-cities-photographs-by-sze-tsung-leong/ “History Images”, “Horizons”, “Cities”: Photographs by Sze Tsung Leong : socks-studio socks-studio.com Also visit: http://microcities.net/         The City photos were amazing and I will show some of them later.

Slippery conditions underfoot

Oh how quickly the days roll by! I have become a bit addicted to the making of videos and animation and I am going to try to load a slightly different one in its raw state:

Fine!!?! this is all taking rather longer than I had hoped so I wll leave it alone and go on to other things.
I was looking for something else the other day, first at home here, then in the library at school and in both places a different name came up(the same in each case) and it promptd me to retrieve a volume of the complete works of this artist to peruse. Her work bears on my concept of edge as you will see, but apart from that it gives me great pleasure to see such a wide variety as in real life I have only seen a limited range of her pieces:

This piece is called Nightscape(1959-64) and was typical of the Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) work that I first knew. I loved all the little sharp-edged boxes with their treasure-troves of found wooden objects all soaked in matt-black paint.
Later, she reversed the colour:

 

This was Dawn's Wedding Feast (1959) with the same process in white.

In 1977, New York honoured her by naming a plaza after her and commissioning seven site-specific pieces:

 

 

A wonderful artist.

 

On Tuesday last I was at my first workshop, and this was run in the Ceramics Building By Ciaran Whitelaw. Here are a few pictures:

 



 It was, admittedly just a taste of the process, but it was enough to whet the appetite for a longer contact with the clay.

The primrose path of dalliance

Guilt is writ large here when I see the date of my last post, and I wouldn't mind but so many times during the day I have thought of points I would like to make and things about which I would like to muse aloud , but ...... no screen or k'board handy ; I'm reminded of the late-lamented Janice Joplin who, when singing of her desire for a  Mercedes-Benz proclaimed:

My friends all drive Porsches, I MUST MAKE AMENDS;

well, no merc but I must make amends.

Before I go back to cover lost ground I must mention something that was on BBC4 -a series of three programmes about the making of the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, and a complete showing of the film in colour - it was originally shown in b & w; I can remember creating mayhem in my home in Dublin by insisting on watching even though the reception was brutal and everyone else thought it was a load of rubbish.
Looking at it again........... it was an amazing piece of work to have been shown on mainstream television on Stephens' Day at that time (1967) and it is still quite a surprising achievement.

 

Ok- enough of the nostalgia, but the film is still interesting as an art piece.

 

 

The plaster cast was duly completed, cleaned up here, and brought into school where it went through another cleaning.

 

I would have to admit that it did not look quite so stunning as I had expected so a little more thought will be required for this particular branch of the path. I will retrieve it  from the drying cabinet  tomorrow and think about it - possibly a few more casts, but a little smaller and seeking out a less amorphous surface.

Nonetheless, it is what it is and that is an honest record of part of the earth's surface noting the edges that are there. It clould be  a satellite view from on high...........

 

Anyway, the path winds once more, this time in a totally unexpected direction. On Thursday, I met my tutor, Sylvia Shortall, in the library and she felt that I should pursue the image -making I had been doing with pictures of familiar objects and scenes but from odd angles and abstracted from their surroundings. I have shown some of these already but here are a few more:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just prior to this she had mentioned a shrt animation film from the 1930s called 'A Colour Box' by Len Lye and I had watched this and was fascinated by it. She suggested to me that I might try this with these images. I was a bit stunned because I had never done anything like this before, but nothing loth I have spent the weekend trying this out and I will put in the very first effort. It doesn't amount to much but I just wish to record this because it was the beginning.

................ Ok so I haven't quite mastered uploading videos successfully but I will be back to you on that!

Anyway, it wasn't quite Len Lye, and Martin Scorcese need not feel threatened but I was amazed  as I would never  have seen myself working in this area.
I can see alot of possibilities in this.

Anon

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

Narrow, and slippery

Never got to do anymore last night; tsk,tsk

I was looking at a journal in the library today - Modern Painters, Sept 2012 - and I was fascinated to  come across a gallery ad - James Kelly/Contemporary - for a show featuring an artist called Robert Kelly, but apart from  the names which I will come back to, the piece shown

Luchino's Nocturne II -2010

 



has all the look of a hard-edge. That name Kelly just seems to keep appearing - I wonder are the gallery owner and the artist related and are they related to Senior Kelly ( who is now in his 90s -good man Ellesworth!) Anyway the edge is still there.

What have I been doing? Digging in the garden, thats what. No, I havent got a sudden deep yen for horticulture, but I have been working on an area to cast in plaster; I will then bring the cast into school and there are a number of options as to how I will reproduce the surface : texture, material, colour, size. But here are some pictures of the process up to now:

The raw materials

 

The first pour, covered against rain

Too thin

Second pour, but needs another layer

 

I'll come back to this when I have uncoveerd and cleaned the cast.

 

Aptly, the first of our seminars today was on 3D and I was speaking to Elaine Riordan after to explain what I was doing and to get some further pointers. I won't say anything about these yet as there are a number of different routes I might take.

The other sem was on colour and this is an area which particularly interests me because I have always maintained that I loved the electric colours and yet recent works have tended to veer towards muted tones and earth colours. - Have to go contrary to that to see what happens.

 

The other thing I did today was to use a sheet of newsprint to do a charcoal and red chalk rubbing of the surface of the chair-lift outside the studio (FF18). There is a very interesting pattern of lines in the concrete of the unused courtyard and I think I might try the same with those. - So if I'm seen out there I'm not simply trying to be alone.

 

Lines, edges, spaces being separated from one another. When we look at something we see an outline but we know it is a volumeand it is in at least three dimensions, and when we attempt to draw,paint, print it we have been exhorted to suggest these three ds but what surrounds it?

Edge............................paradox?

 

The Path is Narrow

Its been a few days since last I posted - extenuating circumstances.

Anyway, I have been pursuing the Edge by considerably different means than hitherto in that I have taken the very good advice that I was offered and have made the search much more personal.
I gave a little taste a few days ago, but here are a few more recent, ie last three days:

I'm afraid you will have to excuse the rather arty placement of the images -I'd love to be able to say that it was designed as such but I'm afraid it's more a product of my inability to control the cursor properly! hopefully this will improve with practice......... or maybe I will just allow random to rule.

Anyway, as you can see I am experimenting with edges  of every shape imaginable and that last word really is the controlling limit - one's imagination.

But having seen or devised these images the thing then is to transmute them by some means into an art form that will communicate -in some way - with the receiver (viewer, observer, critic, even partner -because in my view the person who receives the work of art is partnered wittingly or unwittingly with the maker).
The hard-edge, highly-coloured images have a fairly obvious connection with past influences[Ellesworth Kelly(b.1923), Kenneth Noland(b.1924) et al.,

 

 and are taken maily from public signage. The more organic edges -above and below:

 

 

 

areconcerned essentially with formations made outside human control and I am planning to make some permanent record of some of these.


In passing, I caught this

 

and couldn't resist the comparison to this

Ellesworth Kelly - Blue Green Red II   -1960s


More later