The power of threes

Threes turn up everywhere - in folklore (maiden, mother, crone), time (past, present, future), mythology (the fates and many other 'trinities') and of course in art as triptychs. I started thinking about hydrology and the water cycle, and how mechanical this is in many ways, and this led me on to ideas about air, land and sea. However, I didn't want to separate these formally as a triptych, but fortunately I had three small canvases that needed to be re-used and they turned into Hydrology (Air, Land and Sea).

First step, a metallic respray and bolting the canvases together.

Step 2: start adding the mixed media/collage elements. Yes, it is a seahorse!

The most 'mechanical-industrial' of the panels - Air

Not well lit, but here's the final piece, the way I envisage it being hung.

Close-up of the Air panel.

If music be the food of art materials

...get on and play! I was recently presented with the innards of a very dead piano by a friend who specialises in festival installations, interactive noise-making sculptures and other joys over at the Gypsyjam Collective.

Piano innards awaiting my tender ministrations

Lots of pianos meet a splintery end as they're hard to shift, no-one wants them etc, but at least this one would get used for something. I had no idea what, but, well, all those lovely little levers and springs... so I started dismantling and organising.

Piano bits all neat and tidy.

At this stage, I knew more about how a piano worked, but still didn't know how the components would be used except that there would be (a) articulation, and (b) non-piano additions. I began to tinker. And then some more, until...

Here it is Pianomechanical #1

...yes, wall-hangings - it's more-or-less flat, so hangs easily, and I shall be making a series of them, all numbered 'Pianomechanicals', and all different. They're for sale, so if you are interested, do get in touch. Right, back to the workshop...

Shiny cabinet of shiny shinies

The period after New Year is a quiet time when trying to sell art and craft (unless you've got a really generous January sale maybe!) So, I took the opportunity to look through my stock, remove a few early pieces from sale because they no longer meet the standards I've set myself along the way and expand into new areas, particularly hair-wear.This doesn't mean I'm making hats, but I am expanding my range of one-off fascinators and hairbands (now known as 'plaitinators' courtesy of fellow artist Lisa Thorne... As part of this, I've replenished my cabinet in the Art House (AKA 'my second home') in Southampton. Here's some of what's currently available - enjoy!

Pendants - steampunk and blacksmith styles.

Mini-me in a frame.

The cabient in all its shiny glory.

Purty fascinator with mesh, bows, checks and rhinestones.

Cyberpendant.

Cyberbrooches.

'Plaitinators' made of leather offcuts from Conkers Shoes in Totnes.

Mighty steampunk mechanical brooch.

The Great Gigeresque Ink Project (part 1)

I was recently asked to design a tattoo - nothing especially unusual about that, except that it's a full-length hip-to-foot piece. It's also in the style of H.R.Giger - you know, the guy who designed Alien (there are lots of tattoos around inspired by his work). The size and intricacy of the piece means it's going to be a lonnnnnnnggggg project (months), especially as I may decide to draw it full size. So, with the eventual-canvas's permission, it feels like something well worth documenting as it progresses.

The core of the design is the microphone stand that Giger designed for Korn frontman Jonathan Davis. You can already see how this might work along the length of someone's leg, albeit with some tweaking to the proportions.

Concept art for the mic stand, full length

Concept art for the mic stand, detail of the top part

Giger's work is known for its intricacy and detail/realism (if 'realism' is the right word for images that are clearly a dark fantasy, but you know what I mean) but that's not a technical challenge as such - it simply takes more time. For me the challenge comes in fitting the design to the person so it looks right - after all, it's going to be there forever, and creating a background that can be blended into the surrounding skin and which will enhance the centrepiece. So far I have a preliminary concept sketch - very scruffy and scribbly, but it's something concrete to work on. Next step - fitting it to the recipient...

The first concept sketch...

So, more soon hopefully, and in the meantime, if you're wondering what 'KooKoo pins' means on the sketch, have a look at this album cover by Giger...

Artists as transducers

One of my recent ink drawings is entitled Terrain II and records a local bus journey over a few miles, the pen acting like a phonographic recording stylus, translating the bumps on the road into lines on the page.

Terrain II, A4 ink on paper

Obviously this isn't a strict or 'pure' record - I've chosen the line spacing and shading to turn the original lines into a visual landscape - but the shapes are derived directly from the movements of the bus/road. Along with Terrain (also a bus journey rendered similarly to this) these were my first forays into anything that could be considered 'land art', and were somewhat inspired by the Uncommon Ground land art exhibition when it came to Southampton City Gallery last year. One of the pieces that intrigued me, though not my 'favourite' and certainly not the most spectacular, was Roger Ackling's Five hour cloud drawing, made by focusing sunlight onto card using a magnifying glass moved regularly from point to point, back and forth over the card. This burns an image of the sunny and cloudy periods (fainter or unburnt areas) and therefore captures the light conditions at that particular place and time. An understated work of intense concentration and precision that presses my ink-drawing buttons.

Roger Ackling's Five hour cloud drawing

There are clear parallels here - though one uses bumps along a road, and the other changes in sunlight levels, they are both one-offs - recording that couldn't be repeated in another time or place. With this in mind, I was drawn to the Sound Matters exhibition currently at Solent University's Sir James Matthews Building as it explores ways of turning sound into other art and craft-forms. Most relevant here are probably Landscape and Weave Waves.

Landscape, by Max Eastley, uses a motor and magnets to create forms from tiny metal fragments on the surface of a horizontal painted canvas. So, magnetic fields turned into a record of their influence. Mmm... science...

Landscape, Max Eastley

Weave Waves by Scanner and Ismini Samanidou presents a textile depicting - in fine detail - the sound of their breaths, digitally recorded, then translated into instructions for a weaving machine. The outcome - another transduction - is a thing of subtle, contemporary beauty.

Weave Waves by Scanner and Ismini Samanidou

The exhibition's subtitle is 'exploring sound through forms', so head along and have look (it's in Southampton until 8th March 2014), and why not explore movement, light, magnetism and anything else as forms as well - transduce!