I'm delighted to have been asked to assist with a wedding of two great friends, looking after the decor side of things. It's a great project for me, and we're at the stage of deciding on all the different elements of decorations needed, moving into testing some things.I'm going to be giving this Crepe and Watercolour flower tutorial a bash. How great would huge, huge paper flowers look, suspended up high, along with some of these giant balloons I found over atJust found from my 'balloon research' how it's simple to make two toned balloons.And if you were ever interested in how balloons are made, like I am. There you go!The above is another installation, this time made with what looks like loadsa different shaped and sizes balloons. The artist is Piraja Maharaja and the blogger is Lauren Ann Lane. It's brill and has sparked off lots of ideas for balloon decor at this wedding.What did we do before Pinterest ay? It's been so useful to collaborate with people over that in really defining what kind of decor is wanted at this wedding, testing our ideas and tutorials, pinning different colour palettes and texture inspiration. You can follow me on pinterest if you like. My favourite board is the 'Things I Could Be Doing Instead of Sitting Here' board. Never fails to inspire me to get off my bum and MAKE.Did you know that my sister is a wedding photographer? She lives all the way in New Zealand but is looking for weddings to photograph here in England. She's such a pro at it, so is her man - they're a husband and wife photo team. And finally, here's a blog I wrote two years back about another wedding I helped coordinate the decor for. This was for a lovely family who I used to nanny for.
Here is something new from Mr. Carter.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMG2oNqBy-YAnd some notes I made whilst I was watching it. This is the first thing in quite a while which links back to my fine art degree and provoked a reaction. I'm not for or against this piece of work from Jay Z, but that's usual of my mediator demeanour in life: never quite taking an opinion (I try to see that as an asset!) So here's what came to me:Marina Abramović - hugely respected performance artist. Recently lots of hype from her 'The Artist is Present' performance piece in 2010 at MOMA. 736 hours, each sitting 30 minutes long of sitting opposite someone, (any spectator). Huge time and emotion investment. Imagine staring into so many different people's faces for that long, that often.Jay Z's newest music video, shot in one day, nicking the performance piece from Abramović, but being friendly with her - she appears a few times in the video, mostly head-butting Jay Z and staring into his eyes, adding some weight to the interactions - everyone else seems to be showing off.I wonder if Jay Z paid to use Abramovićs' creative idea?Everyone looks so excited at the end, that's nice. Like the end of a really good gig where everyone's wanting to go and carry the party on, like it finished too early. 'people' include the general public as well as Jim Jaramusch, Judd Apatow, Jemima Kirke and Alan Cumming. Which is great. Everyone, come along - just like Abramović did for her performance piece.It's out of the box for rappers, which is great. I like that. But it's sneaking into the box of performance art, and making it another consumable, you-tube-able, quick-fix of art. No space to be bored, bang bang bang. "I'm a celebrity!" The excitement of seeing a rapper compared to the stillness of an artist staring into someones eyes for 30 minutes and seeing what happens.Jay Z's video shoot looks like a lot of fun, I wish I was there. He's got this crazy cult following, that triangle shape he makes with his hands, which his crowd copies and shows him. Bet he loves that.That's it really. Just some thoughts. I don't know if I like it or not. Do you?
Yesterday, paints out (wall paint, powdered Indian paint, lacquer, pencils, pins to scrape with and graphic pens) to make one very small painting for a fundraiser for Bristol's Cruse Berevement Care, to take the form of an anonymous exhibition, each piece A5. More about that here. Liking the words 'Top Notch' and wanting to write them everywhere.
This started as me making a 'creative tutorial' for the Light Box blog, but turns out that I didn't feel very excited nor energised about making a step-by-step tutorial and wanted more of a chance to experiment and have fun with it.So away I went, not worrying about an end-point, not worried about photographing every little step. There is this thing (all over Pinterest and craft blogs) where you can melt down old ends of oil pastels, combine with crayons to help solidify and bind, then cook for just 10 minutes in the oven at 100 degrees, and you can make a whole new crayon/oil pastels out of whichever colours you like.But I like what I made more then that - more of an object (plus it's crap to use as a crayon!) reminds me of using resin, makes me want to take this further and try to set objects within the melted down waxes. Could I float little objects in grey pastels, so it's barely visible, like smog? What about just using wax? Those are notes to self!I did take some pictures. The slicing of the oil pastels was a wonderful experience. An unusual texture - very satisfying.
Some creatives who influence my work include:Jessica Stockholder, Yayoi Kusama, Richard Tuttle, Helen Frankenthaler, Jen Stark, John Cage, David Shrigley, Bobby Baker, Miranda July, Eva Hesse, Ian Davenport, Spencer Fitch, Anya Gallaccio, Joseph Havel, Mona Hatoum, Janine Antoni, Gaston Bachelard, Matthew Barney, Amanda Couch, Tara Donovan, Richard Long, Irving Penn, Nicholson Baker, Conrad Shawcross,Tim Knowles, Phydilla Barlow, Anne Bean, Cornelia Parker“Found objects are massed and lyrically intertwined with vivid color” Stockholder"Art is in the ability to make unpredictable associations and connections, making ordinary things seem extraordinary." Unknown“Even though I make discreet works, i like to consider the way in which everything works together as an ensemble so that there is an accumulative effect, so that not only the work will have a specific intention or construction or some specificity, but the whole group of things will build to one kind of idea” Havel
Beauty Is Embarrassing is a documentary chronicling the life and work of the artist Wayne White. I haven't seen it, and I want to see it, but I don't know how I can!
Whether he’s parading a twenty foot tall puppet through the Tennessee hillside, romping around the Hollywood Hills dressed in his LBJ puppet suit, relaxing in his studio pickin’ his banjo, or watching his children grow up much too soon, Wayne White always seems to have a youthful grin and a desperate drive to create art and objects. It is an infectious quality that will inspire everyone to find their pleasure in life and pursue it at all costs.
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http://vimeo.com/43734566"art can be a 24/7 lifestyle, art can be fun""Do what you love. It's going to lead to where you want to go"Wayne White's artwork is fantastic too. Here are a couple of his word paintings:My favourite thing I have seen of his is the giant mask, seen in the movie poster above. I have in my pipeline, and I am constantly thinking about making excessive fancy dress costumes and too-big masks. More on this soon.The director and team are trying to get the film into theatres. Apparently it makes people want to stop procrastinating and get on with those projects they have had in the pipe line for 20 years. Maybe you are inspired by Wayne and you want to help make this happen. Here is the Kickstarter page. They are looking for crowdfunding.Images taken from Wayne's Website
The Mapping of Jerry Gretzinger. From 1963 to the Stopping PointStarted drawing a map, it started as a doodle. Hefinished a whole page and found himself moving onto other pages, joining them up.One piece a day. He goes to his studio as soon as he wakes up. Spending time re-mixing paints. He's made a deck of cards which he chooses one from, which instructs him on which of his half-finished maps he will firstly archive, and then work on. Other cards have different instructions.http://vimeo.com/6745866This was a great video, I love how much detail there is about Jerry's working process and the structures behind his making.Jerry is working on exhibiting the entire project:
The concept is that the installation will be about half complete when the show opens on October 5 and will continue until Saturday afternoon, the 6th. Visitors will be able to watch the process. I will be there helping and, when the installation is done, will be working in my on-stage studio and answering questions. The show will close on Sunday the 14th or the following day. We'll be more specific soon.
How I wish I likes in America and could see this!Screen shots taken from this video
Today is the THIRD day IN A ROW that I've been in my beautiful studio. It feels great! I've made more time for it, and a free weekend has been a lovely way to ease myself into making more time for studio and creating. I have made some things I really like, and which were fun to make. Working with multiples, thinking about an exhibition / arts trail event, where I show all the 'multiple' work I've been creating. Mostly centred around the Poppy pieces, but also on other multiples, things I have collected, like these metal triangles, which were in an old frame, keeping the back on and in place. Some of them are rusting, they are very sharp, and I used some extra strong and thin double sided tape to attach them on. It seems to fix most things, although some of the objects I have created are 3D and I'm playing with a glue gun today, to test the fix of that. I have started a shopping list, what do I need to make what I want to make, and have on-hand in the studio instead of being out and up and down Gloucester road shopping for big rolls of paper. Also I'm measuring up my old frames to find big paper for, or glass to fill the frames with, if it's been smashed or used for something else.
Love Chief. Making a stencil with sticky lettering, using the most beautiful map ever for a back drop. The map is so creased though, I'm not sure I can iron it out... and unsure about weather or not to cut it down to size of have map boarder.
A new year de-clutter. I've been organising things on my computer better. Part of this involved wading through thousands of photographs, deleting and shifting around. Collating the images of things I've made into one big folder. It's been a bit of a mission, but also enjoyable to be reminded of things I've created/found and forgotten about, such as these:Collages, all together.These beautiful keys, which belong to the caretaker at Redland Girls School.Trying new methods of drying the 'glue moulds' this patch never, ever dried.Complete glue moulds, peeled off a strong plastic surface. So brightly coloured although I never used much ink.My father's difficult hand writing. A bad list! More of a statement.The first sewing drawing, during a residency at a secondary school.A little brainstorm which sums up everything. Colour and repetition.
Auckland Art Gallery - I saw some marvellous things: (Most in the 'Whizz Bang Pop' exhibit)Unsure of the artist of these two images.Jessica Stockholder - Untitled (2003)Ed Ruscha - Love Chief (1986) writing something massive on a canvas, especially something like 'Love Chief', how self-affirming.Luc Piere - Environment III. Spent a while in this mirror-box. Reflections going on forever, stuck in a time-warp, can't find the door. Shame is smelt of feet!Rosalie Gasgoine - Web / Piece Work / Foreign Affairs (1994) 'choosing to work with materials that "have had sun on them"' grids of weathered woods. order and repetition.Tony Cragg - Clear Glass Stack (1999) assembelage, interlockedThank you Auckland Art Gallery, so much variation, and I never usually find much that I really am inspired by, so this was a nice hi-light of my trip.
Back in the third year of my Fine Art degree, my great tutor Amanda Couch organised a trip to galleries in London. One of the first galleries was the Victoria Miro in Mayfair and I was dazzled. Yayoi Kusama's drawings were ignored, all I could see where her installations and get absorbed in her 'Infinity Mirror Room'.When I saw Kusama's 'The Obliteration Room' (above) I didn't realise it was her work. I was reminded of 'I'm Here, But Nothing' which I saw back in my Uni days (see below images) but the work is slightly different. The viewer can interact with the artwork; children only being allowed to add stickers to the walls and domestic items in the room. How I remember 'The Obliteration Room' was that you opened the door, slid into the room, which was pitch black apart from a UV light and thousands of equally spaced glow-in-the-dark stickers. The room made me dizzy, people were stumbling and any sense of surroundings was lost.I'm Here, But NothingI'm Here, But NothingNarcissus GardenInfinity Mirror Room: Love Forever
'En masse Kusama's work is beautiful but overwhelming, the product of a self-described obsession.' Victoria Miro Gallery'The encounter with my work is extremely important at this stage. I am a factory worker and the monotomy of these tasks I make myself complete have an effect on me. The balance of control is off-kilter as I feel like I am being controlled by my objects.' 3rd year Project Plan from uni'Obliterate your personality with polka dots. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment. Take off your clothes. Forget yourself. Make love. Self-destruction is the only way to peace.' Yayoi Kusama
Amanda uses a variety of media in her work (including stitch, wire, ceramics and found objects), but all have their roots in drawing. The work tends to be simple and pared back - about the juxtapositions of different marks, tones and textures; and often uses elements of mapping and graph-making inorder to convey particular emotions and ideas.Themes that Amanda is exploring at the moment include identity and some of the aspects that contribute to this such as memories (especially the transient and shifting nature of memories and those mediated by photos) and a sense of place, particularly around living on an island with fixed boundaries, surrounded by the forces of the tides and the weather.
Things Organized Neatly is a blog curated by Austin Radcliffe. The blog has been written about in New York Times Magazine and The Guardian (who wrote this: "Austin Radcliffe whose interest in right angles led him to curate a collection of reassuringly ordered images. Radcliffe denies having obsessive compulsive tendencies, but his site may please those who do.") The Twitter is pretty exciting too.I've been watching for a long time, and I was delighted when I was featured last year, with my Apple circle installation: 'Sense'. You can see it on the TON Tumblr.Time to submit some things I've created whilst in New Zealand. Items found at the beach, 1, 2 and 3. Made in collaboration with Eleanor Gannon EDIT:'other things we found at the beach' was featured December 2011. See it here.
'Windstille' An installation by German artist Regine Ramseier.The following is taken fromRamseier's website. Thank you Google Translate! Although it doesn't make all that much sense."I have focused this work on the small room in the art laboratory. Around 2000 withered dandelion flowers alive and easily commute from the ceiling. A symbol of life and birth. A symbol of vanity. A moment to pause. Hold your breath and turn to the transient of a breath. Marvel at the miracle chamber. Hermann Hesse has expressed my feelings into words. In the poem, momentary flashes. The small white room contains a large window, which locks out the green of the park. The dandelion sky slopes from the door to the window and it seems as if the flowers worn out from the room, the light and the day to meet. But still they hang in the room and are permanent. Captured in my memory. They will not return. But the golden meadows, this I know, the dandelions, they will return next spring."
You'd like to give out exciting Christmas gifts, correct? I'd love to have the money and time to buy everyone something which will be special to them for Christmas. Something they'll use, or that will excite or inspire them, or simply make them laugh. It's tough at Christmas, gifts become thrown to the back of my mind and at the last minute I'm worrying. Or forgetting people. Or getting resentful that my family is so big.I usually make things, which I enjoy and keeps it cheap. BUT I know I'll be searching for those few special presents for those special people, so here's some things I've come across recently which I think would make brilliant gifts, and maybe you will too.Banter Banner believe we should celebrate the everyday. "no longer only for holidays, but for the everyday. As art. As design. As inspiration"'Good Times' banner. Loads more sayings available: Joie De Vivre // Sweet Dreams // Celebrate The Everyday$10Buy it here at BanterBanner.com.'Wild At Heart' Rosette. Hot pink ribbon with gold text: 'Wild At Heart' A quote from Lula, in Lynch's 1990 Wild at Heart: "This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top."$16Buy it here at BanterBanner.com.Fake PooMakes for a brilliant present. Nearly everyone ever finds this funny "This pile of brown doggie doo looks so realistic you can almost smell it."Cheap from Amazon/Ebay/Jokeshops.'Coast' by Marco Suarez: "These photos capture the beauty of Northern Ireland. Framing this photo in a circle creates an awesome composition that is sure to be a highlight in any room. The circle has a diameter of 13" and is printed on Somerset Velvet watercolor paper with archival inks. This photo is part of a limited run of 50 and each print is individually signed and numbered."$60Buy this print and others at Marco's Etsy shop.Hand painted geometric pendant. Painted on wood with a silver chain. By Vickygonart$24Buy this and other jewellery at Vicky's Etsy shop.'Crap' Text Artwork. Shamelsss plug here! I made this. Each piece is completely unique, with the fine lines drawn freehand and each letter individually hand-cut.£23No Etsy shop at present, but email me if you want to buy this- hello@lucybarfoot.co.ukMountain Δ Triangle Necklace by Adrienne Wroath. (made-to-order with love and care.) Adrienne makes handcrafted precious metal Jewellery. Her inspiration for is drawn from simple lines and shapes found within her environment, often focusing on geometric forms.$42You can buy this and other pieces from Adrienne's Etsy shop. And here is her blog
Creating a wall using hung drawings I'm working on (although they do flap about too much)Frames ready to be cleaned/paintedText project artwork, taken out of crappy frames and ready to go into re-restored frames. (Restored with love this time, not a deadline. )Spraying the frames - smooth, matt finish.Here's a few, complete. I like hanging them and seeing them collectively, rather than wrapping them in cling-film straight away, ready for selling at Bristol Harbourside Market (more about that later, but for now, here's the Facebook and the Twitter)Sweet peas from the garden - one of the last batches. Lovely to have them in the studio
Angela Chick is beautiful person. I miss her - we met at UCA and now she's in Brighton and I'm here in Bristol and we don't see each other much, but we are often on each other's minds. Last weekend, I had the delight of Angela visiting me. We made things together. The biggest thing was a triangle collaboration, here is a couple of sections of it:I've found myself rather obsessed with triangles later. Here's some of the triangles which have come out of my hands lately. I rediscovered my Mac liquid eyeliner pen, which is long run out, and I use it as a brush with a pot of ink. It gives a lovely finish and holds the ink for a really long time.
This shape, I can't stop drawing you. It's taken from a sketch of Christo & Jeanne Claude's 'Surrounded Islands' which looks like this:"6.5 million square feet of material was stretched over seven miles and used to surround a series of uninhabitated islands off the coast of Florida. The resulting work was visible from all around and visually augmented through the use of a shockingly bright pink." See more of this incredible installation here. Lots of sketches and photographs.
An idea, researching now, experimenting too.The idea of being part of one of the Bristol arts trails next year, North, South or West, either. Showing and selling a series of repetitive works, the kind I love, the 'serious stuff', full of compulsion, happy accidents, flow, doing the same thing over and over and really boring myself, like a factory worker. I love the task ahead of creating a large body of work. To frame and exhibit and sell. Then I imagined the space and all this seriousness. There's lots of beige and white.I realise there is a bit of a schizophrenic within my artist self. One half the above and one half fun, fancy-dress, silly things to make you smirk, color and vibrancy. It would be good to see the two sides represented in an exhibition, but perhaps under another name. The things I want to make as this second half are usable, aimed at adults, for adults to play. And at the same time being things for the cool kids to have. Pop-up signs, elaborate wigs, old man masks, vegetable and weather fancy dress, fake poo's in different colours. All of that and more.So I'm starting with lettering, making words on sticks for people to spell out different words. I like the idea of them being 3D, but this is proving impossible to find on the internet. All I found was this one guy's attempt: (see his blog here)but as he says, the curved letters are near impossible, and it's all very fiddly. More searching found me this...A wonderful person made a font! Free and downloadable from here: at DaFont He's got around the issue of the curves by making everything not curvy.(This font is a set of cut-out layouts with which you can build 3D pixel style letters. They should all work. Just cut along the solid lines, fold along the dotted lines, put some glue on the shaded flaps, stick them together and there you go... If you want to use this for commercial projects, please contact me: tobias (dot) sommer (at) gmx (dot) ch )No printer here, but I'm going to copy down the net onto cardboard and have a try myself, get that trusty old scalpel out.Here's what I'm trying to make, but in 2D version. I couldn't find any thing stick-like in my studio, (and I just had the idea that using an actual stick, painted...Would be really nice) So I've used a dental mirror. I came across these at a strange market stall selling mostly nuts and bolts. They are extendable and have a tiny rounded mirror on them.
but as he says, the curved letters are near impossible, and it's all very fiddly. More searching found me this...
