This piece above, "Furry Cocoon" is one of her pieces that intrigues me the most. One a whole it looks like a cocoon, and this is not hard to guess even with the help from the title. In the centre of the cocoon she has built up the wire and mesh and made the middle of it extremely dense. This darkness here presents then the idea that there is actually something wrapped up within it. That this piece has not been man made, but naturally to complete a life cycle. The longer strips at either end, to me, represent an umbilical cord. This stretch of wire is feeding the animal inside, supporting it and keeping it alive as it goes through metamorphosis. The colours in this piece are duller and are more natural hues to what she normally uses. The firery reds and burnt umber suggest two things. One, that this cocoon is a danger to touch, which in nature would be necessary in order to make sure nothing destroys it. Or two, that it has been in this cycle for a very long time, and like the trees in autumn it too is slowly decaying even with life inside it.
Campbell's work is extremely organic like. Many of her works take on the form of cocoons, structures that could be a home for insects and birds. They present a very naturalist feel to them, even with the bright colours to them. The way the materials she uses, (wire, mesh, found materials), work together to create a translucent network. Again, this network could be shown as steam cells or the network in your brain - which again brings in the idea of nature and humans. The round forms of her sculptures to me almost remind me of a pregnancy bump, and then bring forth the connotations with this. There could be new life forming in these shapes, slight fragility (definitely through the areas with big gaps) and then mortality - you are dying from the moment you are conceived.
This piece above, "Furry Cocoon" is one of her pieces that intrigues me the most. One a whole it looks like a cocoon, and this is not hard to guess even with the help from the title. In the centre of the cocoon she has built up the wire and mesh and made the middle of it extremely dense. This darkness here presents then the idea that there is actually something wrapped up within it. That this piece has not been man made, but naturally to complete a life cycle. The longer strips at either end, to me, represent an umbilical cord. This stretch of wire is feeding the animal inside, supporting it and keeping it alive as it goes through metamorphosis. The colours in this piece are duller and are more natural hues to what she normally uses. The firery reds and burnt umber suggest two things. One, that this cocoon is a danger to touch, which in nature would be necessary in order to make sure nothing destroys it. Or two, that it has been in this cycle for a very long time, and like the trees in autumn it too is slowly decaying even with life inside it.
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This week we are looking at sculpture and the poetics of materials used within it, what they say and how they can enhance a piece. We have begun this by going into the workshop and being given the basic materials of square wooden dowel and cardboard. The first session with this consisted with us "playing" with the materials, seeing what forms we could create and if anything excited us. I wanted to see if I could bend the wood but keep it still attached, so I would not have to rely on glue holding things together. I found that if you partially cut down on it you can bend it to a shape with slowly starts making a square spiral shape. Once I had made a few of these it began looking like the Fibonacci sequence. This formed a great connection to what I had previously been doing, as it is a natural sequence and one about how things are made up, formed. I created a small sculpture using these spirals and included cardboard within the piece. I wanted it to look organic. For a time it looked like the green steams that come from pumpkins when they are in the early stages of life. However, the further I went with this the more it looked to me like an octopus. This was then all I could see and I felt that they're was no getting away from it. Nevertheless, I then thought about the idea of threading. I got some, around 1 meter long, dowel and threaded them through. This gave a more interesting sculpture but because of the harsh edges it made it look more man made and not organic. The complete opposite of what I wanted. So I put this aside and began again. I got three long sticks and began cutting into them, making them look gnarled. Once I had these three sticks I wanted to use the large spirals that I had created beforehand. I then put these inside the triangular pyramid I had made and had some threading through the outer sticks.
The top here was my final piece, a rotten nectarine. I was extremely pleased with the painting and so was nervous about adding stitch to it incase I wrecked the piece. However, with that said, I believe that I made the right decision by adding thread into it, as from afar you are really unable to tell that it has been stitched into. It is not until you come close to it that you realise that it has been sewn into, and it gives it that little bit more texture. The section which I am most pleased about is the background. I always feel that I can never fade/ blur the background out but in this case it worked really well!! The stark contrast also works aesthetically well as it makes ones eye concentrate on the rough outer line of the nectarine, and the bruised section on the right. Once the painting had dried I took it off the canvas and began stitching into it with different colours. Similar to how I varied my brushstrokes, I varied my stitch movements. The stitch gives it that extra layer and draws you closer in to explore and understand what it is. It could be there as a thought of that it is only the stitch that is holding the piece together. Without the stitch, the rotten nectarine would fall apart. It also presents the idea of that through piercing it, it has sped up the process of it rotting, or then the idea of as you pierce it, the juices come flooding out from it. The quick visible brushstrokes almost makes it seem as though you can see the fruit rotting, moving and wrinkling before your eyes. The colours used are very organic, they are fleshy tones which remind you again of natural things - life span and mortality. This piece works very well by it being so large. A rotten nectarine would often be over looked, but by making so large and detailed, it shows the true beauty that it holds for the viewer and makes you rethink about just looking over and everyday object. The only thing which I would change when I next do this would be to use a darker bobbin thread, as in sections at the bottom where I had stitched into, it shows through as white dots/ specks. I might also try the use o rags within the piece, as another way of applying paint. Once I was sure that I wanted to incorporate stitch into my work, I thought it would be a good idea to test out how well I could stitch into a painted canvas. This led to these three trial pieces. I split the canvas into three and painted each source in each section. Once it was dry I stitched into the canvas and oil paint. This worked tremendously well and highlighted certain areas of the paint marks. It allowed me to stay rather abstract as the stitch brought back the important lines. From this experiment going well I decided to do this as my final piece. I have now finished my 20 small drawings. These stemmed from three sources, My box (the chains), previous work (nectarines) and my studio. The work consisted of graphite drawings, watercolour paintings with biro, stitch collages and etchings. All of these pieces were different and it allowed me to test out different drawing techniques, all together the are quite interesting to see such a wide range of techniques and styles. I felt that my first etching was too plain (before I aquatinted it) so I decided to fill it in with stitch. Overall it doesn't look too bad. In sections it is a bit crazy, however you understand the idea for/ with it. It works well with the thin ink lines from the etch. However, there are too many colours within this piece which I believe wrecks it. If I were to do this again I would not use as many different colours and kept it to just the two. After the 'simple' etching w had a go at aquatinting. To begin with this process was a little confusing as have to paint the white sections in black first, back to front. However, I found this a more interesting and enjoyable process. The shading added a lot more visual aspects to my nectarines and allowed it to be more clear on what it was. It was because I was so pleased with this process that I felt that nothing more had to be done on top of the piece, that as my first ever print like this, it was finished. I would defiantly look to doing this process again as I felt for me it worked so well. Michael Raedecker's work really interests me. At first one just sees this as another painting, one in white washed colours - slowly fading into the background. However, it is when you get close to the work, you are able to see that he has stitched into sections of the piece, most of the poles and lights are made up out of thread which he has embroider in. It is interesting to see a male using embroidery within his work as it is often seen as a womans art, most of the connotations of seeing connect to women. This piece is really enlightening and I want to experiment in a similar style to this. The water colour piece which I produced you could daily see the stitch, but if I as to use oil paint and on a larger scale I may being able to confuse the viewer into what they were seeing and hopefully produce a fascinating composition. So far all of my small drawings for this mini project have been either graphite or watercolour. I wanted to have a go at something different, and I was missing using my sewing machine!! I collaged the background. By adding a little bit more colour to the background it adds a little more interest to the piece and makes it seem although the nectarine is not just floating around in random space. After I had done that I painted in watercolour and then added in the most prominent sections with a biro. Once I was happy with that I added in the main dark and light sections with white and brown thread with the sewing machine. This adds a lovely texture to it and makes you want to feel the nectarine. I believe this works well and so will defiantly use this again…The brown paper looks like the juices oozing from the nectarine!! We went into the printmaking studios with the intention of creating some etchings. I had never done etchings before so I found this whole session really interesting and an insightful way of another way to make drawings. I learnt how to do the whole process. This first picture is of my first etching. I used a needle tool and a flatter piece of metal to create larger parts for shading. I printed this and felt it was too light and that it needed more depth within the piece. So I cleaned it up and worked back into the piece of metal. I used wire wool in the bulk of the nectarine in order to make a textures surface there. I reprinted this both on a plain piece of and over the top of my original print. These prints were better as it has more contrast in it, however, I believe that I used too much ink and it would have looked better if I had not used as much - some of the detail was lost were the ink merged (middle picture). (One on the right) The one in which I printed over the original piece was not in line as it went through the press, which led to an even darker print. I decided to then go over this in the studio with white pastel to bring back some of the highlights within the piece. I believe that this improved the composition and brought back the shaping of it, making it look more realistic.
Today we had a writing workshop and to be honest I was not looking forward to it that much!! However, I was certainly proved wrong. I have never really thought of including writing within my art but from todays workshop I might think of including it more. We began by just writing everything from our minds, non stop for around 2 mins. After that we described in 6 words our favourite book, this was quite difficult having to strip down a whole book into that smaller amount of words. After that we all took one item from the suitcase which interested us. I chose this old tea cup. Sasha then asked us loads of questions about the item to get us think: What does it smell of? Who owned it first? What would it say if it could speak? ..The one that I found quite fun was what would its job be, but not its conventional job. I could picture it sat on the kitchen windowsill with odd buttons in it collecting dust. The spare buttons that you get with clothes had over the years been collected and placed in this cup for safe keeping. At the end we had to create a 6 worded synopsis for it. Cups are always used when people come round to chat, have a natter. This cup would have heard so many conversations, some of less importance but there would have been times when something really interesting came about. I also decided that this cup was given as a wedding present. With these two things combined I go "Gift Of Gossip". "Collecting The Dust" came from my imagination of it sat on the windowsill waiting for more buttons to be added to it.
This week we have been looking at three different sources to obtain information from in order to do preparatory drawings. I have chosen the chain link which I had in my universe box to begin with. The second thing which I chose were my new investigation with the nectarines. When speaking with my tutor he pointed out that both of these things were predominantly about one objective, and that maybe I could look at space, a collection of things rather than just one. So for my third source I will look at the studio which I am producing my work within. I began with looking at the chain in just 2D with line drawings. I have never done this before so that proved quite interesting, and found that some of them you could still obtain a lot of information from even though they were in as simplistic form as I could get them. The falling nectarines I was really pleased with how they turned out, I felt that it works effectively. It was certainly interesting getting back onto photoshop and figuring it all out again!! I would have like a longer picture and to include more of the stages of rotting, but due to time (ironically) I was unable to wait that long as I wouldn't have been able to edit it all in time. Nevertheless, you can still understand what is happening. Again, if I was to do this again I would select a different background to make it even more noticeable that the nectarines are falling, and not flat on the board, as I feel there is a tendency to look at them and see them laying flat against the board.
The macro photographs came out extremely well. I borrowed this lens not really knowing what it would produce, just hoping that it would pick up on some of the finer detail within the skins outer layer. After taking around 50 photos, playing around with positioning and movement, I captured a few interesting compositions from them. I learnt that you should take these photos in RAW setting as it allows for better editing on the computer. So, naturally, I then uploaded them to be edited. This again was an interesting and insightful process. I found a new way of editing my work. I wanted to transform these photos further, making them unrecognisable from the fruit that it once was. I have achieved that. Some of it looks like colourful fabric, a crater in the moon or the shrivelled dried out skin on a persons rotting body, everything but a nectarine. These interesting compositions have given much food for thought, another path for me to go down. I defiantly want to paint one or more of these compositions. Finally, the video piece. Basic explanation: I let the nectarine rot for ten days. I set up the camera in front of Jade for ten mins ( a minute for each day) and left her in the room to be filmed. Initially I did this to show boredom over a period of time, and have by the side of her the nectarine changing over time. These, however, had to be stills as I was unable to obtain a camera which would film for long enough. Nevertheless, once I had the two files side by side, I didn't want Jades piece to over shadow the nectarine so I changed it to black and white and made it as dull as I could. However, this brought with it many questions and connotations. Like which is the living organism in lifeless bleak colours, yet the dying/ dead thing in full vibrant colours. These were two contrasting things. It then also made me question that the fact there was a human in the composition, was it right that I would be presenting something that is decaying before your eyes? would it make you think of; what if she was the one decaying, dying in front of our eyes? Evidently we are, but having this thing next to her which is dying makes it ever more present. Why can humans watch fruit die and decay easily, but it to be extremely morally wrong to look at a dead body as it slowly rots away? Humans seem to make this judgment even though technically there is no difference. This also raises questions in the universe and our planet, the consumption of food. If food goes out of date it is tossed aside and not thought upon, its only a piece of food it doesn't matter. Once it begins to decay and break down it is thrown away without any though. However, if someone is dying before your eyes, wasting away, people go out of their way to help them and prevent it from happening. If humans die from being malnourished or of old age, each time there is a reaction. However, so much food is being binned and it is never really acted upon. I want to bring within my work the questions of why some type of decaying are fine but others aren't. If I was to do this video again I thing I would have her falling to the floor and hitting the ground. This would be slowed right down, as though she had just passed through time and had hit the end of the line, there was no more you could do to help and no going back. No copyright infringement intended, music belongs to Yann Tiersen taken from the film "Amelie." |
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April 2016
Kerry FosterThird Year Fine Art Student at Falmouth School of Art. Fellow artists: |