After a long time I have begun drawing my wonderful dog again; this is the best so far. I like the effect of drawing her, then roughly rubbing the whole drawing out and reworking it. It gives it a…a…. a sort of a…., well, rubbed out sort of a look, then sort of filled in again.
I can’t work out how to make the image small enough so that it will enlarge. Sorry folks
This is how I did it, it’s quite interesting, well to me anyway.
Clockwise from top left :
the 40 x 30 x 12 mm plywood blank with the drawing of the chair
drilled holes to allow jigsaw blade egress
first cut outs, of back of chair and seat
final cut out chair now waiting to be painted and sanded and painted.
I have decided to stop at 72 chairs, I don’t think I will enough room for any more. 72 equals 3 sheets of 8ft x 4ft 12mm plywood.
here is a pile of unpainted chairs
and here is a pile of painted chairs
Came across this lovely new artist well new to me anyway;
this is a quick translation of what it says on this website:
“I despise big gestures and big words. Every kind of pathos is
unbeknown to me. Epochs of high culture seem strangely distant to me.
Neither the classic greek-roman nor the European High Renaissance get
me excited. My love is embedded in the dark ages, their mysterious
signs and images. Be it the inscriptions of early humankind in a rock
or something chiseled into a church portal by an unknown stone mason
or signs burned into a piece of wood by an African medicine man. A
simple song in a language unknown to me, a game of hopscotch or
children playing ball in the street – nearly unthinkable of these days
- all these are the sources that feed my art.The small things are more
important to me than the big ones.The wisdom of the people is closer
to me than that of a scholar. I cannot imagine life without magic. The
secret is an important part of my life.”
Translation courtesy of Hanna
Just a quick detour as I promised in my last post.
I met a lovely woman, into fabrics as madly and badly as I and she told me about a workshop at a local branch of The Embroiderers’ Guild, would I like to go….. I think it had the rather unnerving title of emotive embroidery or something. I decided to give it a go.
The workshop was run by James Hunting ; he had given us a talk the previous evening so we came more or less prepared, but he showed us some tricky new stitches, and some of his own work. And so there we were 16 mainly middle to older aged women sat round a mosaic of trestle tables and I looked round at them/us and thought crikey am I really part of this, help. At a coffee break (with lots of M&S biscuits) I had a vague chat with one of the ‘older’ women and she casually mentioned that before she retired she had been a physicist. So there we were quietly, companionably and peacefully, sewing, stitching and embroidering in an upstairs hall of a suburban library. It really was a lovely weekend.
And that dear readers is how I got back into sewing again and how the stitched chairs were born.
I have been whingeing about writing my dissertation but last night l had a minor breakthrough which should help a lot. Namely I have sort of understood what my work is about. I am exploring recreating the stick chairs in different ways : ink, stitch, plywood. Attempting to translate what I consider to be the ’spirit’ of the neat staccato stick drawings into the 3 different media. To reproduce them in different forms while maintaining the original ‘essence’ of the stick drawing. To maintain that simplicity, that simple ‘chairness’; the minute I had done the first tiny drawing of the chair I knew that it was a theme, symbol, thing I could work with and reproduce; it was obviously a chair, yet it is not ‘right’: the seat and back are outlines, the seat is not there but the back legs cannot be seen through it. It was only when I had finished my first drawing of the chairs that the impact of so many empty chairs struck me: The chairs say – alone – empty – waiting – separate – single – abandoned; curiously the single stick people didn’t say anything
I love the simple stop and start of the ink line made with a mapping pen nib (it has no spring at all, there is no trailing off, difficult to ‘flourish’ with a mapping pen). Then I allowed my love of textiles and stitching to resurface. Although we did some digital workshops last year (poor) and many people on the course moved on to video and photography I am clinging on to the physicality of doing it myself, placing each mark, considering each stroke. I have not moved away from holding the mark making implement in my hand, I love marks and making them. I wonder if this is because I have come to this art business late and old and am too traditional (discuss-later). ANYWAY re-inspired after attending a local Embroiderers Guild workshop (and more of that later) I started stitching the chairs; the same staccato, stop, start, perfect. Glasses off, head down, engrossed.
Then I wanted to breakout. I loved the plywood version of the racing track drawing (rejected by Mr & Mrs Jerwood) (to see it go here ) http://drawinglady.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/printing-not-drawing
I really like the creation of a 3d drawing, how it just hangs on the wall, casting a slight shadow (how on earth could Jerwood and Sons reject it, unbelievable). So I have started doing cut out plywood chairs. The first was on 18mm thick, I kept the proportions – line to size – sort of ok but on reflection I decided it was too large (65 x 40 cms oa). Now I have a batch on the go approx 40 x 30 cms oa. I got the local timber merchant to cut up an 8 x 4 ft sheet of 12mm shuttering ply into 24 pieces 30 x 40. This makes it much more manageable; I can get a small, albeit slow, production line going. And I need a production line because I have decided, for the final show, to do the ink drawing and the stitched piece but larger. Although both of these have around 4,000 and 2,000 respectively, I am only going to do about 100 plywood ones
What I found about the larger chair was that its size did not allow it to be wobbly or inaccurate as the tiny ink or stitch chairs could be/are. The uneven quality in the tiny chairs becomes too magnified; the eyes have to move round the chair to see it, trying to make sense of it, while at the same time being conscious all the time of the wrongness of it as a chair, it was too lumpen. Scaling them down they are now ‘eye’ size; they can be taken in instantly, in one bite/glance – CHAIR.
Go here : http://www.almostgotit.com and share your Jerwood rejection misery. I don’t really have any misery to report, just ‘what do I have to do (draw) to join the club’ and then if they did invite me in would I in true Groucho Marx style really want to join. Well yes I would, of course.
I have been prevaricating for months now, Not getting down to my ‘dissertation’ or whatever it is called. A critical commentary of what my final piece at the Bargehouse will be. I didn’t tell you that the show is being held there again, and for the last time apparently. Because one of the MAs is being exhibited in the Oxo building itself there is a lot more space so us 4 final Drawing as Processers (ors?) have quite a large space in which to show our work. Which is nice.
My work is repetition and the theme of the repetition is chairs; drawn, stitched and plywood cut outs. I am keen on the theme (what a jaunty little sentence) but am unable to gather myself for the written work. The course is so, well, for want of a better word ‘nothing’. It has limped along with just the 4 of us for the last year; 4 different tutors, no workshops, no external tutors/artists, no link to the rest of the college, no feeling of belonging to anything. Most of us now feel that the whole thing has become rather a chore, and we all started so keen and eager. It is such a shame and so very very annoying. Perhaps had we been foreign students who paid a lot more then they would have had more money to spend on us, that might have made a difference. I don’t know, but it has been a big disappointment, I somehow expected a lot more.
Anyway that is part of the reason I am unable to engage, but I will, and I will get my MA. Watch this space.
Rejected again. Second year running. Although I did get through to the second round, again, but I really felt I was in with a chance this year; I also entered the plywood version of this, which I thought might have a better chance, edgier, less drawing in the tradition sense of the word. But perhaps they want …..bah, who knows what they want. Well actually I will know when the exhibition opens. But there are a lot of entries and it is a small show……………
Anyway back to the drawing board, ha ha.
I just read that Bruce Conner died, last monday 7 July. Here http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/a/2008/07/11/DDKA11LE22.DTL are some nice pieces on him.
This the latest version of the stick chairs: plywood, 450 x 630 x 17mm oa, black emulsion; the edges will be white and I will probably adjust the black, give some sort of slight surface sheen (don’t you just love alliteration?) to make it less matt. I plan to do some more, but don’t know how many, again : ‘until it is enough’ ibid. By the way, I am rather pleased with this.
