This year I have had a few works done as prints for family members, and they have come up really well. I find Snapfish, here in New Zealand, do quite a good job. But there’s one gift I wanted to make from scratch. My sister and brother-in-law are devotees of Sri Chinmoy and meditate every day; they also love the sea and going diving. I am a bit inclined to scoff, being cynical by nature, but all the same I totally support their right to do whatever makes them happy. I wanted to make a prayer flag for Jim, but ran out of time. So I came up with the idea of Sri Chinmoy quotes on three small canvases, with a sea background. I rubber stamped the fish because part of their guru’s philosophy is about simplicity and accepting imperfection as being perfect. (or something like that…) The photos show the mess of creation, including on my hands, and then one of the finished canvas. I just hope he likes them and understands what I was trying to say to him.
Gordon Harris Art Supplies in Wellington has these great ‘Museum’ brand canvas; heavy duty, well constructed, tight canvas. I love them. I’m going to be exhibiting in May next year with some other Kiwi artists – details to come in another post – but for now let’s just say I want some new canvas. $400 worth, which is not too bad, except that it’s Christmas time (as in, we’re spending money on presents, not canvas). Perhaps Tony wants to buy me 4 canvas for Christmas and birthday combined?
The most recent NZ Art Guild Challenge is this: If you are not already – become familiar with different styles and eras of art that encompass text in a fine art context; e.g. Modernist era (pop art, futurist, dada, expressionist, minimalist) or a contemporary context (mail art, computer/digital art, text as image)
You may like to consider some of the following artists: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichenstein, Colin Mcahon, Ralph Hotere, Barbara Kruger, Billy Apple, Rene Margrite, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns
Create an artwork that encompasses one of the following categories:
– Text as image: e.g. Billy Apple, graffiti, concrete poetry
– Object and text: Choose an object and incorporate some text relating to this object – you do not have to be too literal!
– Text and image: You can use text in an abstract way or in conjunction with abstract images/patterns or with landscape.
I enjoy Cy Twombly’s work, and have been using more of my own photos as a base for works recently, so this is what I came up with. Mixed media: photo, calligraphy pens, white out and digital.
We’ve reached *that* time of year already. No, not Christmas shopping. Well, yeah okay, that too. No, it’s time to start planning my art calender for 2011. I like to know ahead of time what I am entering, so I can work to some vague sort of schedule. For all kinds of reasons the latter half of this year was slow for me art-wise, but I’m feeling on top of things again now and ready to put myself out there.
I put the events I am participating in into a spreadsheet, with wall size, important dates etc and then keep it on the white-board above my desk in my home office. That way, I can see at a glance what I need to be putting effort into. If I enter a new event, I update the file and print it out again. I also mark off when I have completed the registration, sent off the contract and completed the artworks. Sure, this spreadsheet needs a lot more details yet, but it’s good to have made a start; and very good to know that I have 6 exciting events planned already.
As a teen I loved the movie ‘Close encounters of the Third Kind’. In it lineman Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss, becomes obsessed by the shape of a mountain, a place he has never been to. He sculpts it out of mashed potatoes, in shaving cream, builds a model out of wire – and finds that others share his obsession. He makes his way to a place protected by the military and witnesses a space ship make contact then land. What does that have to do with my art? Well…
The wall I painted for our final exhibition at TLC.
In my final year at The Learning Connexion I did quite a lot of work with symbols, specifically a (mainly downward) arch shape, a slanted oval and a sort of bent cross / power pole. They mean something to me, but I don’t know what. The arch belongs on its own, the oval and cross belong together. Why? Again, I don’t know, but like Roy I keep exploring them.
I had stopped working with them for a time, but have been looking at my older work and realised I need to keep using them. I realise they are not unique, but they are becoming part of my visual language and being authentic to my true self means exploring them. Words on their own are not unique, but what a writer or poet does with them often is – and so it is with art. I hope to develop my own language and refine it over time.
Whilst at TLC I produced probably a hundred or more works that started with a photos of some shadows in our driveway that I then worked back onto in paint, replicating some of the lines, again in a curved cross pattern. I lost the photo and started replicating the shape on its own on black backgrounds. Eventually I painted a large wall black and, with no planning or end in mind, I painted huge cream curved crosses it.
Today I have been working on a smaller scale, on postcard sized 300gm watercolour paper, using Golden fluid acrylics, oil pastels, water-soluble pencils and giant poster pens. Tomorrow I think I’ll work a bit bigger and see what that does.
Cath Sheard Art 