Drawing summer school - day 4

Was it yesterday's meditation that brought on my calm state on waking early?

Watering the garden, I took time to smell the roses - well, honeysuckle - and to photograph it

 for drawing on the tube journey -

Today's tutor, Marcus Coates, had us moving between close-up looking at microstructures and making large-scale imaginative structures that scrutinised things natural. Fascinating to hear him talk about his own work. Dawn Chorus (2015) is amazing. A lot of his work draws on bird-ness, but his range is wide - an appearance on Galapagos TV, for instance, in blue-footed-booby costume, giving a bird's eye view of the inhabitants ... with a teeny bit of social critique.

To work. Buddleia through the loupe, against cool blues and greens of my sundress -

 I stole the idea of making an eye-level shelf to hold the specimen -

... and got this far before giving up - the looking back and forth through the lens was so very frustrating. The memory of the exact shape gets lost, somewhere....

(Even with my best spectacles, prisms-in-lenses-wise, my severe astigmatism means that refocussing is active rather than automatic - I have to decide which eye to favour, and find its sweet spot in the varifocals. But hey, I can still see, even if looking is slow.)

I took a few deep breaths and turned the paper over. This photograph

 blown up on my phone, screenshot taken, became a different kind of lens, another type of aid for looking. Cheating? maybe; I don't care. It does lend itself to scrutiny, to discovering "what the thing is itself".

Such a beautiful thing

Even with this in hand I lost my place in the intricate structure, and (like others, it turned out) resorted to absorbing and expressing the principles of the plant's growth -

 I was so impressed with the large scale works others were producing. Impressed and discouraged, actually.

 A second chance - "take another plant..."

There wasn't time to add the spore cases ...

 On to the next!

 ... imagination at work as we transition from this physical world to the imaginative world of the (possible) drawing ...

What I chose to do was outright self-sabotage. Working title, Uphill Struggle -

As the ink ran down, I tried to stop it by blowing (through a straw), which somewhat emulated plant growth - roots and leaves -

The look of it was creepy, horrible... and it hung there, unfinished/unresolved, overnight. My calm mood of the early morning was completely gone. And it was hot hot hot in the big gritty city. Time to go home.

Certainly I wasn't expecting  what happened on the last day.

Drawing summer school - day 2

"Choose an object" -

Then, working in pairs, we first spent 5 minutes looking closely at it (the drawing came later) -

 including with magnifying glasses -

One person drew the texture of the object, for 5 minutes, without being able to refer to the object ... and erased it -

 The other did the same, over the erased marks -

First person again -

 This time some marks got left ...

 and a final drawing was made -

 New piece of paper (smaller; newsprint), both of us working on it at the same time -

 The morning's results -

In the afternoon, consideration of the similarities of plants and humans, in terms of life-cycle. The task - to make a sort of hybrid between plant and human.

I used the veins in my hands as a source - they bulge, but they supply life-blood! Like sap in a tree. Like (neural) pathways that can be set up when others are blocked.

All sorts of botanical and medical information and metaphors swam in my brain as I struggled with the shapes -

nearly gave up, then switched to charcoal

persevered and started to enjoy it

Some people saw "Matisse's dancers" in it, but I think of it as the Dark Wood and all that lurks there...

Next to my work were these "hybrids" - plant-body, landscape, chimera ....

The tutor of the day, Sarah Woodfine, had had an exhibition at Danielle Arnaud; though it was closed, it hadn't been taken down yet, so the class walked over to the gallery (on Kennington Road, about 20 minutes from the Drawing Room).

Refreshment in the garden behind the house -

 and a close look at Sarah's work. She often draws on rolls of paper, using B and HB pencils -

Another snake, a different format -

Rainbows in art, life, etc

You get sent a link to a website, and it takes you in many directions....

Interview: Artist Stretches Delicate Strands of Thread to Produce Awe-Inspiring Rainbows Indoors

Plexus no.24
 "when people encounter my work ... they just go to this childlike wonder space ... 
the other thing is ... how the insulation is going to activate a space"
(see more at mymodernmet.com/gabriel-dawe-thread-art/)

Scrolling through, I found the thoughts coming and going faster than I could catch them. For one thing, this use of thread is like stitching without using fabric: "they dazzle with reflected light". I like that this artist, Gabriel Dawe, is "challenging the constraints of masculinity and the patriarchy" by through "embroidery" and colour; he uses "hues to help subvert the world’s narrow view of gender and identity ".

Here are a few of the thoughts the photos of the work gave rise to, in no particular order. 

1. Thread installations of Chiharu Shiota, filling entire rooms (at Blain/Southern last year, and this one (from a Berlin show) with boats is gorgeous -  

Chiharu Shiota (via)

also Pae White, at South London Gallery 2013 - 

Pae White (via)

 ..........google "thread installation art" to see many images and other artists

2. Large airy outdoor sculptures, such as those by Janet Echelman - some years back there was one at the winter lights event, at Oxford Circus - 

Janet Echelman (via)

A different medium but the same "omg" effect on the viewer, the desire to see "more" of the work, in Dawe's case by walking around, for Echelman just waiting to see the changes

3. Interaction of colours in stitched work of ...?... about 20 years ago (not easy to find, it was the pre-digital era, but I'm sure it will simply appear, soon*)  and more recently Evelin Kasikov - 

Analogue-digital embroidery by Evelin Kasikov (via)

4. Barbara Hepworth's use of string in some sculptures like this one from the late 1930s -

Barbara Hepworth (via)

And Naum Gabo, this "translucent variation on a spheric theme" is from 1937, for instance -

(via)

5. Double rainbows and other atmospheric phenomena, which often occur because of factors unknown to the viewer, eg this one -

(via)

"Rainbows take many forms" - http://www.atoptics.co.uk/bows.htm 

6. Exhibition that included threads+dark room+lighting - Lygia Pape at Hauser & Wirth, 2016 -

(via)

7. The idea of the loom waiting to be woven upon, the warp stretched ... lots of metaphors there!

8. The single stretched thread - It can connect two points, and/or its length determines the frequency of the note sounded when it's plucked, and/or other physical phenomena (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/stretched-string) - that makes my brain hurt, so let's move on to consider the metaphysical question "how long is a piece of string"...

9. A few more questions ... (a) where are the shadows (b) how is the work best displayed (c) how does the site affect the work - and, a very practical question: what happens when it's taken down, is it binned and remade afresh next time 

10. Moire, and perceptual processes [my psychology degree contained a lot of info about perception, especially visual perception - no doubt research has moved on since the 60s! - something to research on a rainy day....]

11. Songs with rainbows in them ... "somewhere / under the rainbow ..." etc

12. Superstitions and folktales about rainbows - pots of gold, wot? But there's so much more .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_in_mythology

13. Can you see rainbows from space? Would it look like a circle? The conditions have to be just right, and full-circle rainbows are most often seen by pilots. Like this -

(via)

*when the name does eventually appear, or a photo of the work shows up, it will suddenly reappear, and probably several times - apparently this is called the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon: 

"The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards  ... (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias). This illusion is sometimes referred to as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon." (from Wikipedia, cognitive biases article)

Melotti at the Estorick

Orfeo, c1945 - glazed polychrome ceramic

The Uneasy Conscience, 1973, brass and mirror

Harlequin's Bride, 1979, brass, plaster, fabric and painted paper

In the Swamp, 1984, brass, painted wood and painted fabric

Monument to Nothing, 1974, copper, brass and nylon on Plexiglas base

The exhibition also includes paintings and drawings, and is on show till 7 April.

Fausto Melotti (1901-1986) was a close friend of Lucio Fontana (of the slit canvases). Melotti turned to art in 1928, after a degree in electrical engineering; his first exhibition was in 1935, and throughout the rest of his life he received many awards.