Wrapped trees

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It has to be Christo and Jean-Claude. No idea when or where, though - except that it seems to be very rural. Imagine living a simple life deep in the country and one morning you pass down your usual lane and see ... this ...  "This is art" wouldn't be your first thought!

Or maybe that's not what happened at all.

Surely they are these trees, so beautifully "against the light" -

In a park in Switzerland, 1997-8. See more pix here.

Paper and pen, into fabric and stitch?

You know how you kinda come across things on pinterest, even when you're not looking? This spirited creature caught my eye, and I started speculating how the drawing could be converted to fabric and stitch.

The horse seems to be torn from one kind of paper and collaged onto another, giving those nice edges. Not the sort of edges you get with torn, or even hacked-at, fabric. But another component is the negative space between the pieces - that could be manipulated. Best of all would be to have strang scraps arranged in an animal shape ... and supply the missing limbs, as William Kentridge has, with lines - perhaps stem stitch, or couching?

Kentridge uses published books as sketchbooks and as "canvasses" for his drawings. This tree is drawn on pages from the Universal Technological Dictionary, which adds a certain frisson (so, how technological is a tree, then? it might surprise us...)

It makes me think about layering up pages and then attaching cloth to them, and/or adding stitched marks.

It makes me think - why fabric, why stitch? why not keep it simpler...and perhaps less laborious? Maybe because with "just lines", there's nowhere to hide.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Why IS a raven like a writing desk? I've been wondering ever since this  piece of wall art, purchased in 2012 -

has sat on my shelf. (The clock is from The Cardboard Clock Company, round about 1991 - and the vase, much used in tulip season, is from the Chelsea Craft Fair a few years before that, maker Maggie Byrne.)

The paper has yellowed in the daylight over the years, but the question remains.

Coincidence has now revealed why a raven MIGHT BE like a writing desk. Looking for something else, I found "top ten intriguing riddles from history", among them this one, set by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

"Alice is at a tea party with the Mad Hatter, who decides to give her a riddle: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” No answer is given because, when Alice gives up, the Mad Hatter admits he doesn’t know the answer either. Many famous people have subsequently put forth their own solutions, with the best probably being author Aldous Huxley’s “Because there is a B in both and an N in neither,” and puzzle enthusiast Sam Lloyd’s “The notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes.”

However, Carroll himself actually did provide an answer to his famous riddle, mostly because fans would not stop hounding him about it. 

Carroll’s Answer: Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front! (Note the spelling of “nevar.”)

Extended Drawing - module 8

It's interesting to see, at the start of each module, how the tutor has set up the room. This time, tables with two chairs, and stools at the front.

First up, gathering in front of the screen, on the stools, to find out what's in store: the investigation of truth and non-truth. This week, looking for "truth" in drawing via automatism, a practice used by the surrealists. Lots of information in Mario's introduction to the subject - and good discussion in response to thoughtful questions. There was a feeling in the air of minds being stretched ... or was that just inside my own head? Names mentioned ... Andre Breton (and the surrealists), Mallarme (and symbolism), Freud (and dreams) - cubism, dada - Pessoa's 79 heteronyms, Madge Gill, Henri Michaux, ShaoLan Shueh's Chineasy, Susan Hiller, David Jajajel's asemic writing, Austin Osman Spare (pix here), Unica Zurn, the French-Canadian Automatists, including Jean-Paul Riopelle; Ellsworth Kelly's pine branches, Debbie Locke's collaborative drawing machines.

We sat in pairs at tables and worked in silence, with lights dimmed and glasses off and/or eyes closed, the partner helping by moving the paper if necessary to keep out drawing on the page. Various materials were available. When both had had a turn, up came the lights and we looked at what we'd produced -

Did it feel automatic, or was there some sense of control? For me, an awareness of what my hand was doing ... of wanting to make different sorts of mark, use different materials, different gestures. I was trying to relax and be free ... it's a process of discovery ... but not entirely successfully. I didn't "get a sense of the true you existing in the work", not just then and there.

After that, a chance to work larger, or with different materials, on our own -

 Some people found space on the floor -

 My scribble became a coloured scribble, freely using the chalky pastels on hand -

and smudging them with the white pastel -

 ...layers and layers of colour. Not a good effect overall, but better in detail, using the camera as a viewfinder (such a useful technique) -

We didn't have time to make a cubomanie ... maybe next week ...

Or, why not now?

This started as the photo of my colourful drawing, turned to grayscale, printed, then cut into 5cm squares and glued down randomly. I was neither pleased nor excited by it, but did spend part of an afternoon developing it by adding "automatic" marks here and there, then all over, trying to pull it together in some way. (With a 0.5 felt pen - bad choice??) It felt like a complete waste of time, but at least there was a purpose - to get it pulled together, though that wasn't there at the outset, it developed later, which meant a few areas don't have a place as part of the whole.

Perhaps I was trying to stick too rigorously to what was already there on the paper. Eventually I did feel myself loosening up, but overall I felt like a person who was just doodling, and not very well. As much as I wanted to "go with the flow" and embrace the idea of automatism, it felt like an idiotic thing to do. What reveals itself? ... hmm, I wonder...

I did - and do - feel, though, that there's some way this can be useful to me. Experience shows that the things most struggled with are those that suddenly become possible and even useful, desirable.

During the week I was aware of the "truth" issue and found some relevant serendipity. First, in the Drawing Projects book, words to the effect that a drawing is an approximate revelation of a perceived situation. (So, it's unlikely to be "truthful" as perception has so many shortcomings, oversights, and pitfalls; and then there's the skill and/or intent of trying to reveal it.)

And this account of an essay (by Lucia Berlin) about truth in writing, in developing a fiction.

Week 2 - non-truths, ambiguities, and illusions. Good to see slides of the history of cubomanie and of various illusions. Names mentioned... Gherasim Luca, who invented cubomania; Christopher J Lee, who put the original poster beside the cubomanie; Andre Masson; anamorphosis, eg the skull in Holbein's The Ambassadors; ambiguities like Kaninchen und Ente 1892, All is Vanity 1892, My wife and my mother in law 1915, contour rivalry, figure-ground (a good example of which is Phoebe Morris, Peter and the Wolf) -

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 Shigeo Fukuda, Malika Favre, Al Seckel, the impossible triangle (by Penrose father and son, but Oscar Reutersvard had invented it years before), Fanette Guilloud's anamorphic tape installations, Escher of course, and the Kanisza triangle and its inferred edges.

So many possibilities! Rather than excitement, I felt panic - so little time! I quickly decided to cut a grid through several pages of a magazine and rearrange the squares and see what happened.

A convenient grid

Cutting through layers of magazine pages

Using inks - including splatters and blobs - as a basis for collage
(subconsciously making the page work as a whole*)

Working quickly, with occasional glances to see what others might be up to -

Then it was time to go round the room -

Wish I'd done one of these

... or these (which you won't get much idea of; the photo is a prompt to my memory) ...

... but it was Liz's grid - and how she used it for tracing - that was most inspiring

Next day I took the idea of tracing, moving all over the place, and moving the paper as necessary - as Liz had done - and came up with this -

Note the use of the ink splatters!

Since then I've done other collages and tracings, but this post is long enough already (and has taken as long to write as was spent in the classes), so they'll have to wait.

But I'll round off with another useful technique, using a viewfinder - in this case the camera, close up. These are from the automatic drawings -

They might yet find their way into a tracing. But ... how to develop those tracings? They have become a form of automatism in themselves - my mind feels quite empty when I'm doing them.

* Also subconsciously I'm planning a possible quilt with this - using a scattering of the big dark blocks (indigo dyes?) pieced into a light background (off-white damask?), with the smaller brighter pieces either pieced in or appliqued on. Lighter pieces in the dark areas, darker in the light areas ... counterchange ... but none as dark as the blocks or as light as the background - midtones for the small bit. Bright, though! It could become chaotic, so perhaps some further colour restrictions need to be added into my "rules". 

And those little splashes? French knots!

As for the "why fabric, isn't paper easier" question - it would be interesting to see how the method of putting the fabric together differs from using paper, how much more careful the design has to be to make it possible to sew rather than glue. For instance, what would you need to do to inset the lower red piece on the right? How much extra effort would be needed to piece the entire top, rather than use applique? (Lots!) What would you do about the quilting - would those french knots be enough (a variation of tying a quilt?) or would you stitch around each bright little square - perhaps using the stitching that holds the applique as part of the quilting?


(This post is linked to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Fridays)

Tide's out on the Thames

... and so are the sand sculptors. (In February. It doesn't seem natural.)

Poetry Thursday - The Seafarer

... Lest man know not
That he on dry land loveliest liveth,
List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,
Weathered the winter, wretched outcast
Deprived of my kinsmen;
Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scud flew,
There I heard naught save the harsh sea
And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,
Did for my games the gannet's clamour,
Sea-fowls' loudness was for me laughter,
The mews singing all my mead-drink,
Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern
In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed
With spray on his pinion ...

(translation by Ezra Pound, 1912)

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The 124 lines that constitute The Seafarer are recorded only in the Exeter Book, a tenth-century anthology of poetry housed since 1072 at Exeter Cathedral. It is regarded as the greatest collection of poetry of its time in existence, says Simon Winchester in "Atlantic". He goes on:

"The precious little volume has had a life as tough as it has been long. The book's original cover is missing, and of its 131 pages, eight have been lost, one was evidently once used as a wine coaster, others were singed by fire, and still others incised with notches suggesting they were used as cutting boards. Yet to the thanks of all, it is a survivor, and the Exeter Book is now recognised to hold about one-sixth of all the Anglo-Saxon poetry ever known to have been written. A single scribe is believed to have copied out all of the poems sometime in the tenth century, using brown ink on vellum, and wielding his quill with an impeccable, monastically steady hand. ...

"The Seafarer is dominated, at least in its first half, by a lengthy and mournful meditation on the trials of the sea. It is in truth an elegy to the Atlantic, in the voice of a man - though no one knows his name - who has suffered hard times winning a living from its waters, but yet who, when he is away from it, yearns for the ocean life more than he could ever imagine.

"But then, in an instant, even though the summer on shore is fast coming, the mariner's mood changes to one of longing, a mood that all old salts will also know well:

Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries
Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,
All this admonisheth man eager of mood,
The heart turns to travel so he then thinks
On flood-ways to be far departing ...
So that but now my heart burst from my breastlock
My mood 'mid thew mere-flood,
Over the whale's acre, would wander wise."

Charity shopping, and where it might lead

Much as I liked the covers, these stayed in the shop

Idly browsing the charity shops of Crouch End, I found these -

with a view to developing some "installations" of the ceramics and other objects. Is that box frame deep enough? Can the boxes be adapted in some way? Will I ever get around to it??

Earlier that day I had come across the "black books" I made some years back, some of which mix happily with the porcelain pots -

That raised, yet again, the question of "how will I ever show these?"

Add in a few memory balls, and you have the start of a mixed-media mini-installation -

like the one sitting on my bookshelf, waiting to be drawn (or dusted) -

How to get it (a) onto the wall and/or (b) "out there" to be seen?

One possibility is perspex boxes (thanks to Ann for supplying info about those).

Edward Quin's historical atlas

A first encounter with the historical atlas published in 1830 by Edward Quin was the highlight of the Works on Paper fair for me. (Though I was very tempted to buy a woodcut of geese by Watanabe Setei.)

"Historical Atlas in a Series of Maps of the "Known World" from 2348 BC to AD 1828"

The known world - known at the date the map represents - is shown emerging from dark clouds. What an amazing concept ... what a lot of black printing ink (aquatint). The clouds have splendid edges -

AD 912 - Dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne

These prints, which the gallerist suggested would look well on a staircase, getting ever darker as you ascended, were once part of a book, and I think they suit the book format better than being framed prints. As you turn the pages, you make the clouds disperse.

Fortunately we have youtube to show us this phenomenon - see it all happen in less than a minute here - and there's a gif of the sequence here. It starts with the deluge, and finishes with the Northwest Passage still undiscovered.

Quin's approach to cartography followed a trend from the 18th century trend that tried to present historical change as a consistent and unified whole. His innovation is shown in the use of dark clouds to obscure the unknown areas of the world

The work was intended to educate schoolchildren about the history of the world, giving a rapid view of all great political changes in human society. Of particular note are the maps showing the Garden of Eden and the Discovery of America. The final map depicts the 'End of the General Peace' in 1828.

Called to the bar in 1820, Quin died at the age of 34, in the year his atlas was published. It went through several editions.

Seeing spots

The mugs we use most often are the spotty one. They keep each other company on the draining board before lining up on their hooks, ready for the next use. And they give me pleasure, grouped together ... so I took a photo.

You will have seen immediately that the drainer has spots too - but that's something that until now didn't register with me, in conjunction with the spottiness of the cups and the pleasure of seeing them there. My perception has become habituated to those spots in the drainer - it ignores them as I set down the dishes.  But seeing "a picture of the drainer", rather than the real object, gives a chance to rediscover the spots.

Another "interesting" thing about that old drainer is that, with the exception of the wooden spoon, it's the only non-shiny thing in sight!

Drawing Tuesday - Grant Museum of Zoology

"Viewpoint", the murals at the entrance of the museum, were painted in 2013 by Sarah Cameron of the UCL Slade School of Fine Art.

We choose our allotted two specimens and sat and drew. It was good to sit at a table, but next time - choose bigger specimens!

The galago

The platypus - but without the bill

Yes the galago skeleton really did have a "dislocated" hip ... and having done one entire creature, I wanted to look more closely at certain parts of the other, so the platypus page is a jumble of legs and vertebrae -

Lighting was a bit tricky, and some went to draw bigger items elsewhere.

Joyce's "Neanderthal Skull Cast"

Carol enjoyed the primates in the gallery

Janet's galago

From a different angle - Sue's galago. Also known as bushbabies, they are small
nocturnal primates living in Africa

My dugong, in bony bits 

Dugongs are aquatic mammals who graze the seagrass in warm regions. They are
believed to be the inspiration for stories of mermaids, and are an endangered species