woensdag 25 juli 2012

2d sculpture: Incorporated

Yes, I am finally getting somewhere with my search to get an optimal combination in style, material, expression and message. ...ah and the prices of these works won't break the bank!

Ever since I noticed that I needed to express a message, I was looking for a form in which I could preserve my freaky colourful style AND telling my message about how we value things and the role of big corporations in it. So I have been focussing on the food industry. We all know food is one of the most important things we buy in life, perhaps THE most important and yet we are so careless in how we judge what we eat.
To express more with my work I have been mapping other 'dimensions' of art to use in expressing my message. Normally you start with creating the story with anything that you can use to make it visually happen. But I already had a list of demands visually and that the message shouldn't interfere with it.

So by using particular materials for my artwork I manage to send a message just by using different materials. I started with bones, which was a coincidence and soon discovered it ticked the right boxes around food (dead food source) and our mindless following (sheep). Examples are invasive species and Eco orange http://www.imsobo.com/exit.html. But still it was a bit far fetched and unclear. It was more about expressing the beauty of nature (bones and stones) in contrast to the artificial (clay/resin/manmade).

So I started using plastics to express the waste and the use of artificial food sources. That in itself had similar impact. So I combined the two and that was a bit of a search because my main base material to create, clay, suddenly only worked as an adhesive. I had to rethink how to keep my style without making the right shapes with clay. I eventually worked it out by using an earlier used technique for mosaic, like in 'Bad Enamel' http://www.imsobo.com/trail.html. And combining that with the use of other plastic materials like in 'Eye Lid' and 'Sugar Ray rabbit'. Eventually resulting in: Mr. Clean http://www.imsobo.com/trail.html

But Mr. Clean was quite a lot of work and a very fragile piece.

In a parallel thought process I created fridge magnets, where I used what I did with Delft blue ceramic paint style and plastic mosaic, but on bone. Why? The other dimension I wanted to use to express my message was 'location'. What better place to express your message about food than on a fridge?
Soon after the first magnets, I wanted to create fridge magnet sculptures. I did, but the space is limited and I didn't want them to stick out a lot.  http://www.imsobo.com/fridgemagnets.html

Now I have fused where I left Mr. Clean with where I was with fridge magnets and came up with this strong combination, 'Incorporated':


maandag 16 juli 2012

Outdoor exhibitions

I just held my first outdoor exhibition this year! What does this mean? Well, carrying up my artwork, climbing gear, camera, name plate, lunch and some clothes up on a mountain. Finding a nice spot to show my art and start creating the display.
Last year I tried something similar on Loughrigg fell, but I moved a lot and lost some of the potential interaction with walkers. So this year I want to create a more proper display that'll keep for few hours on that day. I decided to bring only work that can be hanged and looked for nice cliffs to hang them on with climbing gear. I think this works a lot better than what I did last year. I can still improve some bits. Originally, I want to have either specific poems or a description of my artwork too. I also need to think of a, not so nature intruding, way to display my fridge magnets. Some bit of metal that blends in the natural environment? Hmm...

Some pictures of my work hanging halfway up Helm crag:




donderdag 12 juli 2012

Size matters!

Oh no, this isn't one of those viagra enlargement spam mail. No it is about me searching for the right size for my art related to the amount of effort I put in.
In my last blogpost I showed pictures of 'Mr. Clean'. I have now managed to keep it straight up, but it was a battle with gravity! Again I was caught by surprise how much time I spend on a standing sculpture that size. So when I want to make something like this, but bigger, I need to rethink how I create it before it becomes ridiculously time consuming.
Yes, I now have art in a lot of varying sizes from fridge magnets, which I still need to put on my website, to standing sculptures like 'Mr. Clean' and 'The Fellracer'. In the future I want to make bigger sculptures that take the same amount of time as 'Mr. Clean'. The two problems I am facing are retaining my style and how to make them, technically. Perhaps I need to learn new techniques.

For now I post some pictures of another relatively big sculpture I call 'The Flial'. Judgement weapon in the battle against mindless consuming.