Painting 2B Starting to work on first task

First task involves linking a photo of a person and a line of text together to create a new work.

Project one painting photos.jpg

It was so warm and sunny

My first idea was to devise a warm and sunny landscape with the text from a close up of this man’s not so warm and sunny looking lips. This is what I did the other day resulting in this work.

photoimageproject

I cropped out just a part of his mouth and then turned it upside down and then printed the text across the bottom. The text was all crushed up because the enlargement of the picture was so huge and that is the explanation for the degradation into pixels too.

So in my work above I have used the formal qualities of the photo only to try and create a literal landscape work based on the text.

… Not sure that this is the full intention. Sounds like other possibilities include looking at the text and the image and creating a narrative that could be outside of the image. Then using that to create a work.

Suggestion was to look at each individually first:

Photo:

Young man looking directly to camera down his nose. Lips have a sense of being firmly shut, almost pursed. Wearing a leather jacket with the collar turned up and arms folded. Clean shaven and trendy haircut so doesn’t really look like a bikie despite the jacket. Left ear has two piercings. Photo is taken from waist height which gives the feeling of him looking down.

I don’t enjoy looking at this photo. Looks like he is possibly trying to be intimidating and closed. Not the sort of person I would like.

Text:

My first thought is of a nice warm day and I imagine an orange landscape. I associate warmth with security and sun with happiness.

But the phrase could also be taken in a more negative way – If you were dying of thirst in the desert you could be thinking – It was SO warm and sunny

Need to do a bit more work on this.

Sculpture one first lesson – Impressions

I used home made dough to make impressions – hard, soft, smooth, rough, friable or fragile.

Had a bit of a problem because I made my dough with gluten, trying to be smart but instead it was very elastic and kept springing back and obliterating my marks!

Reflection on this activity:

Hard objects made the best marks as quite a bit of pressure had to be exerted to get a good mark. Others used hard objects to make repeated marks and patterns. I didn’t think of doing this but will in future as interesting patterns could be made from mundane objects. With my photograms I could do the same thing if I was prepared to do multiple exposures with one object or a single exposure with multiples of the same object.

Soft objects only gave a mark if they were also resilient and had a hard surface behind. And again the springiness of my substrate was a problem with these. Next time I will unearth my clay or I will make a lower gluten dough.

Smooth objects were boring unless you wanted to mould around them and get a 3 D structure, which you I did try and would be a way of creating a smooth 3 D surface. Difficult to get off though and there was talk in class about using releasing agents. Guess we’ll find out more about that.

Rough objects were interesting. My impression of bricks showed a lot more subtle detail than I was expecting. I’d like to make impression plates for printing intaglio, collagraphs or rubbings but I’m not sure of the best material. I have put polyclay through the press but it’s a bit expensive for larger size things. I did condition my polyclay yesterday thinking I might use it and I was pleased that it came up well even after years.

Friable objects crushed but did leave remnants which could add another dimension. As someone noted – if you then fired the impression those traces would burn away and leave marks.

Impressions are another way of looking at my everyday objects but difficult to translate to solar printing which is my technique of choice currently for getting my imagery on to fabric, which is my ultimate aim.

I did bake my dough impressions yesterday and then stacked them up on to a solarfast primed piece of fabric and exposed. The impressions didn’t contribute to this at all but I was more thinking of future 3 D works being documented as photograms. If I had wanted to capture the impressions I could have photographed and then printed on to fabric from a transparency.

journal photo1.jpg

Chiharu Shiota

Chiaharu Shiota.JPG

Uncertain journey 2019

https://www.chiharu-shiota.com/uncertain-journey-6 Viewed 15 July 2020

Installation made from wire frame and red wool. Lots of complexity and the colour really adds to the evocative nature of the work. Her works in black yarn have a different feel. This would be a mammoth technical task and the curvy nature of the final work must be from layers of straight threads at different angles.

Photography 2B week one

Mostly about diptychs and triptychs today.

Joachim Froese:

Amazing photos in triptych forms. Photos of the everyday, looking closely at details around you. Resonates with my work which also focuses on the beauty and interest in the small details of everyday objects. He has called this Rhopography. – old fashioned term for still life with rhopos meaning trivial in Greek

Discussion in class about the technical aspects. How these are three photos but blended to match, whilst at the same time retaining points of difference that show that it is not a single photo.

http://www.joachimfroese.com/rhopography.html Viewed 14 July 2020

Joachim Froese.JPG

Also did a brainstorming exercise linking words in pairs or threes to demonstrate how imagery could be linked in a diptych or triptych. Two words tended to be opposites but three words could be on a continuum or demonstrate passage of time.

Word combinations like this can be used to trigger ideas for images in in a diptych or triptych.

Reminded me of a previous idea I had to base imagery around a haiku poem when I tried to use text in my work.

Haiku is three lines – before – action – after. So would suit a triptych.

Uneasy peace

Cruelly sliced by madness

Black ice paves the way

Going to try and do today’s 100 day project print as a triptych of photograms based on the above.

Well can’t say I’m happy with this. Too blocky and not evocative. Getting good strong colour though when I expose for an hour with no transparency over the top.