The path narrows, the ledge beckons

Have just come in from an opening - the artists concerned (or certainly two of them) would be well-known in this parish - Paul O'Reilly and his daughters Suzannah and Vanessa.

This is a retrospective of Paul's work, some of it going back as far as 1958, but most of it done within the last ten years. Suzannah has a collection of prints (monoprints/photoetching) and Vanessa has two large conceptual pieces.

The venue is the Source in Thurles and the show will run till Friday January 25, 2013. I would urge anyone who might be near Thurles during that period to try to see this exhibition and to pick up a copy of his statement which should be available.

The invitation.

To the now.
Tutorial visit todayand some discussion of how the work should be presented for the assessment which occurs immediately after the Christmas. There is no doubt that thought will have to be given to deciding what one thinks is ones strongest work because in making that decision one is talking about ones thinking and what one hopes to do. This all has to be done in the coming week - nothing to be done about that over the holidays. - No pressure, then.

A good bit of work done in the print room today with woodblocks but I will have to wait till next Tuesday to finish the monoprint and I would like to have that done as it is part of the development from the quartet of wall images. Visuality is all.


Not long now

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Pure asphalt

Great days work which ran very smoothly (should I be worried?) -I know it sounds desperately nerdy, but writing a to-do list on the morning train really is the business.
I came in this morning with quite a long queue of bits and pieces but worked on them steadily throughout the day and honestly, if I hadn't done the list there were certain smaller ones that would have been forgotten.
At this stage there are a number of projects that are beginning to come to fruition and I hope that by January if they are not fully finished at least they may be in a presentable state. Some are more successful than others but that's the nature of the beast. Probably more importantly, there are some I am happier with than others.
I am working on the large development of the wall piece and I intend to put the work in progress photos in my sketch-book but will wait for the finish to show it here.

The other small project I have undertaken having seen the idea at Mary Nagles typography lecture was the collection  of an alphabet of what I have chosen to call Public Print. It's not complete yet, but here are a few 'letters':

 

Some are a bit gnomic but I think you can work them out

 

And for last item on the to-do list..

 

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Just a skip along the path

Not much time this evening - film being shown in the Source (art centre) in Thurles -'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' - so just a minute for what is important in my life


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A branch path

On the way in the other day I read two short pieces from 'About Looking' the John Berger book I have been with for the last while. The first was about L.S.Lowry and was very uncondescending, if I may coin a word, finishing with the comment: '...given his inhibitions as an artist, he intuitively chose correctly. He chose to paint the historic.'(1980.p.102)
The next article was particularly notable to me in that I had never come across the artist before -Ralph Fasanella (1914 - 1997) was born in New york and spent pretty well all his life there painting scenes from the city and having read the piece I then sought out the work and was  surprised in that the way it was approached by Berger really didn't indicate what it was like -really only its content;
here are works by the last two artists for your interest.:

Ralph Fasanella -Bridges -1974

 

 

L.S.Lowry -Coming from the mill  - 1941-48

 

There is quite a similarity in the style, is there not? ...and if you were to look at a large group of these this becomes even more apparent. Do these artists constitute part of the area that some call Primitive, Naive or even Outsider art? Probably not.

 Some years ago the Douglas Hyde had an exhibition of such work and there was a similar show in IMMA. I bought a Thames & Hudson book at the time and am now having some difficulty in laying my hands on it (but I will!) and I couldn't make up my mind as to where I stood on the subject. One part of me feels that Berger's ideological position is colouring his views on these artists and then I fear that I am adopting a slightly intellectually snobbish position. I sometimes feel that there are dangers in accepting 'everything' as art and that if one does it becomes a good deal more difficult to exercise judgement.    

Inconclusive, I am afraid.

Turner Prize was awarded tonight (without any attribution being made as to their publicity, I might add) and I would have to say it was very strong. The winner was a video about the Woolworths Fire by Elizabeth Price and seemed to be a very disturbing piece with an amazing sound-track.

 

Elizabeth Price -courtesy of the Irish Times

 

One of the other finalists had these remarkable drawings which he had been doing over ten years. They were enormous and the detail was astonishing.

 

The week begins again:

 

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As Eddie Cochran sang..........

There is somethng that has been itching to be noted here and it relates back to the last lecture we had with Dr David Brancaleone on colour. I am fairly sure that I did not comment on at the time on this subject.
He mentioned a person who developed very strong theories on colour and  I thought that he had been going to speak about Josef Albers whose book on colour theory is fascinating (Interaction of Colour -1963) and whose colour studies such the various 'Homage to the Square' pieces are wonderful, but particularly when seen 'for real':

However, this was not who he meant. The person in question was Johannes Itten and at the time I was sure I had heard his name before and upon digging a bit I remembered that I had read about him in a book with tthe glorious title of :

Now you may think that this is just another populist art book but there is actually a good deal more to it than that, not least in chapters on conceptual art and Arte Povera, and for someone who was unfamiliar with the intricacies of the isms of modern art it is a good introduction. Will Gompertz has been art critic with the BBC.

I read all sorts about art.

Anyway back to Johannes Itten. It was in this book that I discovered his connection with the Bauhuas but that his teaching methods brought him into conflict with the more rationalist approach of Gropius. He did, howver produce one thing that really got my attention and it was a way of pictorialising the colour circle with attendant secondaries in a way I had never seen before:

 

 

What always amazes me about these diagrams is the arbitrary decisions on the primaries - but lets face it art is subjective -n'est-ce pas?

Sorry about all that - a bit of a self-indulgence, but just one final thing about the book - what attracted me to the review I read was a picture of the map inside the front cover -

The modern movements and artists as the stations - Ok it's a bit gimmicky but if it would get people past money and Hirst, might it not be worthwhile?

Rant over -todays episode

 

 

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Right angle bend in the path.

Well there you are - it has happened again.
The tutorial system in LSAD Year 1 definitely works because once more I was inflicting a certain amount of darkness on my self regarding where I was with my project -seemed to be running into the sand a little and thinking had got blurred.
Thereupon my tutor Mary Nagle appeared and we had a long look at the present state of my animations and it was felt that I needed to vary them somewhat and a few ideas were suggested which will be pursued.
However as she was looking at the set of images I am at the moment using to make a monoprint the idea was put forward that I might build this exactly as it is...........but big.

Monday morning!

...........progress will be documented.

I should have reported that on Tuesday I was with Elaine Riordan for a 3D on paper manipulation and the first steps were taken in building Smithwicks Brewery:

 

(In passing, Mary Nagle was very interested in the fact that an image like this could be acquired from a phone camera -in my case an iPhone 3  - the same instrument that has been used for most of my pictures).

Yes this is the self-same brewery in Kilkenny picture taken unfortunately after I had begun to work on my print using Ralston Crawfords painting of Maitland Bridge  no 2;

 

The procedure of building this with paper could prove challenging and already a bottle of detergent at home has lost its nicely domed cap to art. Elaine also kindly loaned me a little book on paper in architectural design -I had to find out what a 'spline curve'  was and no I cant explain it  - far too mathematical  -but beautiful works in the book. I don't know how much of a maker I am but I would love to be able to do these.

 

First I have to master plaiting straws!

 

OK its time

 

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The path of paper leaves

Spent a large part of the day in the library working on source material for second CCS essaywhich involves an anaytical examination of two paintings  -Ingres : the Turkish Bath (1862 ):

 

 

and Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907):

I have, in my mind a fairly good idea of what I wish to say and I won't yet elaborate; suffice to say that when I was young I read a biography of Picassso by Pierre Daix (1965) and found it extremely sycophantic. It tainted my mind rather irrationally against Picasso, I suppose, but a  book read a bit  later, by John Berger -The Success and Failure of Picasso' (1965)- acted as a restorative. Pierre Daix is of course a very good friend of the artist and thus perhaps not best qualified to be objective. It took me a while to start to look properly at Picasso to try to dissociate the artist from such material. I wasnt very objective then.
.........Or maybe I know a bit more now.

Was rather washed out last night and because of the busyness of the day your favourite feature did not appear. Today, however

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