First day

First day of art school today - UAL's foundation course in Camberwell.
We had a project called "Cheap Date" - to break the ice and get us started drawing things.
There were 10 locations to visit and record in some way - only got to about 3!
En route, you purchase your "date" a £1.00 gift, which goes to form part of an installation back in college.
I was paired up to a guy who admitted stealing golf balls when he was six, then putting them back through guilt!
Here's a few shots of our Cheap Date installation - gifts were a honeydew melon, an Aladdin video and some caffeine pills (I haven't got any shots of the video case with the crushed caffeine on) - also sorry for the bad quality - these were all taken on my phone because I didn't take my camera (not a mistake I'm making again!) -
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I also took these photos once I got home with just the video tape that I'd cut into -
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Credit to Alex Wood for being my "date" and collaborator for this little project.
Let's see what tomorrow brings...
-sb

Personality

I was thinking about meeting all the new people in halls and at college tomorrow - what do I say? Is my name Susannah or Susie? Am I English from Scotland or Scottish with English parents or simply British? Which accent do I use?

How much do we make up or gloss over when we meet people? Are we true to our real selves or does that just come with time? 

I made this using the photo I handed in for my student ID and an old Moleskine notebook - 

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Each cutout shape is almost imperceptibly different from the previous - each day we know a person our knowledge of their identity changes as we learn about them or as they change as people. It often goes unnoticed until, upon reflection, we realise that the person we met isn't quite the person we know.
I then stuck all of the cutouts, including the original cutout from a photo booth photo onto my sketchbook for college tomorrow.
Seeing all of the cutouts together also highlights the progression of outline - 

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And the three spares on the inside cover -
Personality - the pattern of collective character, behavioral, temperamental, emotional, and mental traits of a person -

-sb 

Jerzy Goliszewski + Ofra Lapid

I first came across Jerzy Goliszewski on Society6 (his society is here and his blog is here).

Jerzy is a Polish artist, based in Warsaw, who focuses on site-specific projects - something I've always inexplicably admired - I find it brave somehow. Quoting from his website, Jerzy "is most interested in complicated and complex structures. He strives to use simple and natural materials."

The end results are poignantly mystifying.
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His blog showed me the beautiful work of Ofra Lapid who also has a blog, here.

Ofra builds models of these derelict buildings from photographs taken by an amateur photographer from North Dakota who obsessively documents the decaying process of these houses.

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So graceful yet melancholic.

-sb

CHRIS

So, back to exhibitions. Next up - CHRIS, as seen in Le Moulin de Maintenay in northern France -

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These are both sides of the advert for Les Empreintes du Temps - this side is a photograph of one of his visually and also texturally stunning paintings.



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Photography was banned inside the exhibition, but I did manage to sneak one photo, above. The exhibition was mainly large (all between 600mm and 1500mm square, at a guess) paintings of walls and doors of traditionally built derelict houses from the region. They all use a particular kind of wattle and daub style technique to make their walls, with wooden beams inside. Nearly all of the paintings showed this in some way.

What was stunning about the paintings was the texture - each one had been built up before the paint was applied, but in a planned way. Where CHRIS was going to paint wood, he would make the texture underneath the thin layer of paint as wood. Where it was rough and matted, there would be rough and matted material applied and then painted over. I thought it was pretty unusal to build up texture in this way - using other material and one or two thinned layers of paint rather than huge thick clumps - as many other artists do.

Seeing as I couldn't take hundreds of photos of the exhibition, I took a few of the Moulin de Maintenay and the lush countryside setting -

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This and the previous photograph are of the building which housed CHRIS' exhibition.

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Artisanal Creperie just across the road ... mmmm!

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Eating crepes outside with a glass of cidre, absolute bliss!



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Especially with such a beautiful view...

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Or two!

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Everybody needs propping up in their old age!

-sb 

Hiroshi Sugimoto + Society6

I have two things for today - Society6 and Hiroshi Sugimoto -
First of all, Society6 -
Society6 is a site where you can post artwork in digital form - such as photography or graphic design.
You can then make you art available for people to buy as a print, or canvas or a multitude of other forms.
To me, this seems like just the opening new artists need - a space to watch.
So go forth, check out sb-a on society6!

Now, on to Hiroshi Sugimoto.
What a man. What. A. Man.
The renowned Japanese photographer has a major exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art featuring works from his most recent series - "Lightning Fields" and "Photogenic Drawings" - but it started the day I left! So here's the confession - I haven't actually seen this exhibition!
But HS is just too good to not talk about - here's why - a selection from his "Lightning Fields"
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To create these beauties, HS exposed photographic dry plates to violent electrical discharges. HS's approach to photography is very scientific, exploring the very nature of it's being and pushing the limits that no one else thought of. Here is a self portrait of the man at work -

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Now I feel just like The Jealous Curator...

-sb

Tony Cragg

Went to see Tony Cragg at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art -
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Looking inside the larger sculptures was like finding a hollowed out tree - I could have sat inside it all day, watching snippets of life go past from the numerous tiny openings where space overlapped space.

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As you walk around each sculpture faces appear and disappear. Some warp into recognisable yet unplaceable lines while others are very clearly human profiles.

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The surfaces were one my favourite parts - such unbelievable smoothness! The most beautiful of all the materials had to be the wood - each line echoing the last layer, highlighting every curve and every turn.

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-sb

Trine Pedersen + Tiro Kontinen

These next few posts will be about exhibitions I went to on my holidays -

First - Trine Pedersen + Tiro Kontinen

3 islands - a series of three international artists workshops 2007-8 on Scottish islands
2 artists -  Danish artist Trine Pedersen and Tero Kontinen from Finland met at the North Uist workshop
1 exhibition - since meeting, they have worked together, collaborating on the same drawings

Some of my favourites from their first exhibition together -
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(detail of first image)

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(detail of first image)

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"We have been doing drawings together actively since 2008. Working this way is a visual playground for us and an artistic conversation as well. The pictures are created over a period of time by layering elements, colours and overlapping images. We both have a great interest with collage-like working, to add different and contrasting elements to the same picture to create various states of visual tension.

Normally when we are beginning with a drawing there is no particular leading theme in mind. The beginning can be a small fragment of a form or an accidental splash of ink and the picture starts growing instinctively almost like an organic process. Small fragments start to create a bigger picture, images flow inside images. The work is considered to be ready when we are both satisfied and we accept it. During the time of the drawing we are creating parallel realities, something that resembles science-fiction stories.

Working together opens a whole new world of possibilities for creating living pictures. It is always a great thrill and you never know what you will have in the end, most probably it's something you wouldn't create just by working alone and there is a huge amount of challenge to keep the visual tension and intensity in the picture - not to let it fall into a dead end. One needs a great deal of curiosity and interest to willingly take the risks of an exploration.

The leading theme in our drawings has been the drawing itself. Drawings have their own inner logic and vocabulary and one cannot see immediate difference if the picture has been made in a quiet island or in a noisy urban environment. We have made drawings during our travels and the drawings have been travelling between us. The experience of travelling is one source for imagination and the drawings will have a life of their own. In the end the drawings are about islands just because we say that they are."  - TP + TK



The most beautiful shapes and colours.

-sb