STAYING CONNECTED ...

Had my review this week and I'm keeping on with the electrical theme.  I'm pleased about this as I really enjoy experimenting with the connectors, wire and coloured insulating tape.  I'm going to make lots more of the switch plates; they look very Mondrianesque. 

Using Photoshop, I zoomed in and inverted the photograph.  The result is great, I love the stark, graphic effect.

I also played around with inserting some of the wire sleeving  into the connectors and this is what I got:-

And after a little tweaking with Photoshop, I got some lovely images for painting or printing:-

The shadows and reflections are highlighted really well - I wish the originals were these colours.  This last one is my favourite:-

It looks grungy, graphic, industrial and  - at last - colourful!

LAST WEEK'S WORK ...

I'm still experimenting with the connectors and electrical bits and pieces I got at Wickes.  I saw a piece by Petah Coyne in an American arts magazine which inspired me by it's energy (which is appropriate for my subject in itself!)and tried to incorporate this into the drawings and some of the 3D work I made last week:-

 For more of Petah Coyne's work see www.galerielelong.com

Here's my response:



I'm pleased with some of these results but feel they need scaling up and further work.  I'm also thinking jewellery and glad to use the insulation tape to get some colour in my work.

SEBASTIEN WIERINCK - thanks Olga!

Isn't this lovely stuff!  Designed by Sebastien Wierinck who has a studio in Marseilles and designs domestic and "public" furniture.  I love the fact that light sources are incorporated into these designs and they look so good, you'd have to sit down on them.

His website is  http://sebastienwierinck.com/html/SW_INFO.html. 

VIEIRA DA SILVA - PURE INSPIRATION

Last week I discovered the art of Vieira da Silva who was an Abstract Expressionist born in 1908 in Lisbon.  She studied sculpture at the Lisbon Academy of Fine Art and in Paris under Bourdelle but made her name as a painter; "I never contemplated becoming a sculptress; I created sculptures in order to remain more free in my painting".   She was exiled in Brazil during the Second World War and afterwards lived in Paris until her death in 1992.


Some of her early works are figurative in an almost Cubist style (Calvary and War, 1942) but gradually the figure disappeared to be replaced with webs of lines, coloured blocks and converging perspective.  Her later paintings are wonderfully coloured, geometric explorations of perspective and spatial dimensions, lines and blocks of colour and light that draw the eye in or lead it across the canvas.  She often painted urban themes and described herself as a "city woman".  


I love her work, especially from the mid 1940's onwards.  The paintings are incredibly detailed and seem alost multi-dimensional.  She way shes uses colour and line are for me, wonderful and the paintings have an energy and dynamism that I find exhilirating.  Here are a few examples, beginning with one of my favourites:-
 The Big Buildings, 1956, Paris Centre Georges Pompidou










 The Grey Room, 1950, Tate Gallery, London.



Library, 1949, Paris, Centre Georges Pompdiou


I would urge you to check out also Gare St Lazare, 1949 and Urban Perspectives, 1952.  In fact get this book





or visit this site http://www.jeanne-bucher.com/galerie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=37


You'll be inspired for years!









  

At the end of last week I did some more 3D.  I went to Wickes and bought a load of cheap electrical bits and pieces such as metal socket boxes, connectors and insulating tape and then set about trying to reproduce the way the electricity cables connect, overlap and double back on each other.  I used the tape and connectors to replicate the connectors on the poles themselves and used the metal socket boxes as the bases.  I got some great wire from the stores that was lovely to work with and just set off, trying to get the randomness of the cables that you see in the photographs.  I really enjoyed doing this and was sorry to run out of wire.  I'd love to recreate this even bigger or just keep on going until there's a huge mass of cables and tape and connectors.  Maybe this would be a good way to get across the idea of the threat of the urban environment - a person or town trapped in a massive tangle of cables.

I'm going to carry on messing around with wire, tape and connectors and see what else emerges.

More spikey lines

A couple of weeks ago I was out in the fields with my camera taking pictures of the trees as they lose their leaves.  The way the leafless branches stand out across the sky reminds me very much of the way that the power lines also cut across the sky. 

One photograph in particular really reminds me of the woodcut I printed:-

I don't know if I'll actively do anything with this yet or just file it away in the memory and see if anything pops up.

Here's the woodblock and the prints I made.  I really like the fact that you can see some of the cutting lines.  The uneven, spikey edges of some of the lines look as if electricity is leaking out of the cables.