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Travelling to Greyfriars Bobby and watching how the public move within the space I created this score. I took a video and interpreted what happened throughout this score, using sound waves as individual lines showing the flow through the movements. Indicating different things I saw through colour and media, using black ink for cars/vans/busses and the greater gradient of black indicates which side of the bus was on. Using blue highlighter for a person, yellow highlighter for two people and red for multiple people. The busyness of this work shows the loud environment I was in.
After going around the Botanic Gardens, we looked at different ideas that are key to the Lichen walk. We made a plan of what we might show on the walk, creating a lined path where we walked in the style of Trisha Brown. The group used different parts of our bodies and different mediums to create the notional drawing. We saw a lot of colour from the lichens and trees which both feature in the drawing. Below you can see us creating the drawing and the route we took in the Botanic’s.
As a group we choose the Kallima, due its interesting pattern and colours, we thought about how we could manipulate this and use it to inspire our own work. Work below is from Danish Razwi, Sally Dawson, and Rona Bisset.
Rona Bisset
Danish Razwi
Sally Dawson
Notional Kallima
Using a range of notional drawings to complete this exercise, we thought if we used our own style and artists that we have looked at then combine our ideas together it would create a clear story of the Kallima. Sally Dawson choose to look at John Cage, mapping out where the Kallima travels. Whilst I looked at Trisha Brown, using my mouth the create the shape of the Kallima, filling it in with leaves. Danish Razwi looked at the structure and colours of the butterfly. I overlayed and played with a few settings on photoshop to create a notional drawing in different artists’ styles whilst betraying the Kallima’s beauty.
Thinking about how the Kallima camouflages, we decided as a group to do a dress in the style of a Kallima, looking closely at the leaf structure and how delicate the Kallima is. Choosing a physical model to represent this we created a ball gown style dress with a corset at the top with flowing sticks down to the dress. A green leaf links the corset to the skirt making it open and flowy just like the butterfly when in motion. We also wanted to create spiderwebs to create a natural environment for the dress, using a glue gun to create white lines flowing around the dress. When picking the leaves we wanted to use mainly brown leaves with a little bit of colour from the yellow and green leaves. This relates to the work I have been looking at from the past weeks from using natural materials to create artwork then to looking at how butterflies move and develop.
Mimetic species look like another object to protect themselves from predators.
Top Row – Kallima
Known as the Oakleaf butterfly, as it takes the colour of an Oaktree so becomes incredibly difficult for birds to catch them. There are around 8-10 species known due to them being camouflage it can be difficult to capture them. Kallima Inachus is the species I’m interested in as the patterns vary from different butterflies, especially in the dry season. With little sunlight in the rainforest, they normally hold their wings half-open, resting on trees or on the floor next to leaf litter.
Middle row – Symbiotic Lichen
It is between fungus and algae, using carbon as its food source. Lichen is grown amongst branches of trees/plants but can also live on the ground in the right conditions. I find Lichen to be very interesting as there are many shapes, some being quite flat whilst others are hair-like. Creating little pockets of detail on the trees. The colours are vivid greens and oranges depending on the type of lichen creating very abstract photographs.
Bottom Row – Phylliidae
Is also a very camouflaged animal, being a walking leaf insects they’re normally green. With females being larger than males, males have small forewings. Their lives are based on leaves, giving them coverage, protection and a place for their young to feed to become strong. Using leaf mimicry as a defence to protect from predators but also using sounds to ward off predators by rubbing tubercles together.
Butterflies are very mystical creatures with different myths linking towards them, such as a white butterfly means an angle is looking over you. The life cycle of a butterfly is also very well known, the transformation from an egg to a beautiful animal is incredible. From another butterfly layer an egg on a leaf then that hatching into a caterpillar. For a small caterpillar to enter its next transformation it will need to eat plenty of leaves and grass to become strong enough. Making a cocoon along a branch and then sleeping for 10-14 days for it to emerge from the cocoon into a colourful butterfly. Then the life cycle starts all over again. Some butterflies can live up to 12 months others can only last for 24 hours.
I recreated the life of a butterfly using Trisha Brown’s style, using my feet shown in the time-lapse below. I used Brown as she captues movement in an abstract way so I wanted to show the movement of a delicate butterfly, using ink as its delicate liquid to work with. Working quickly to produce a messy abstract piece then making prints adding colour to the piece. From bottom to top shows the transformation of a butterflies life. The video below shows how I made this piece using Browns’s style.
Morton Feldman is an American composer, looking at how he presents his music through art. Using a prospective type of drawing to show where the notes of an instrument or in his case multiple instruments connect, you start to understand his music in a different form rather than listening but seeing. I found Feldman’s ‘Violin and String Quartet” to be interesting, drawing were the different angles of the bow hit the violin with notes and lyrics on the line to exaggerate the lines. Incorporating his work with my personality, I picked the song ‘Follow You by Bring Me The Horizon’ and looked at notes creating a prospective drawing showing depth to the music. Then looking at people who play the violin created my own version of lines with lyrics, understanding the process Feldman went through. Adding sound to create a fully immersed atmosphere around the artwork.
‘Move’
Trisha Brown looks at dancing and how we move through the medium of dance, Brown is a choreographer and likes to show movement on life-size pieces. She focuses more on the feet, drawing with her feet or them becoming a stamp. I recreated one of her pieces using my foot to create movement around a centre dot (heel). Taking this into photoshop adding layers on top and playing with the special effect filters to show different levels of movement, then turning it black and white to be in the same style as Browns. Then using my feet to draw using charcoal, pencil and ink to see what would pick up the most movement. I like the idea art doesn’t need to be made with just a paintbrush or pencil, you can use anything from week 1 looking at Joan Eardley using natural materials, then using grass and stalks to produce abstract marks. Now using my feet to produce marks and artist copies.
‘the colour of movement’
Rudolf Labon is another choreographer, looking at movement in a very different way to Brown. He looks at how the different parts can connect to show the different structures of people moving, which reminds me of a long exposure. Labon also uses red, blue and green to show the different moves producing a free piece and makes you focus on the contour of the bodies. The bottom right is a quick contour sketch using ink to look at different movements of getting into that position.
I used my own photographs as well as other sourced photos, mainly used for the biological images. I went to the National Museum of Scotland visiting the Science and Animal gallery’s, I looked for different sized objects and parts of animals. I concentrated on textures and different colours of the animals, linking from work that I have researched, over the last few weeks. I particularly like the Moon Jellyfish, with the strains of stingers falling down from a vivid outline creating a structure for it. Also from the Botanical Gardens, I visited the ‘The Hidden Beauty of Seeds and Fruits’ as well as the garden trail. Levon Biss captures macro photographs of seeds and fruits, which creates a new perspective on the life of a plant. You see the intense colours of the Lancepod, producing an abstract photograph the one above looks like an inhabitable plant from above. Finding Biological items was more difficult than I thought, I tried to look for DNA or petri-dish in the Museum however, there was none. So I looked for galleries and photographs that did microscopic photography and came across ‘Small World Competition’ looking at all sorts of little details. The Crab is interesting as it shows the exterior of the shell and then the interior of its respiratory system, using unusual colours to represent this. Small World Competition – https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/subjects
Following last week’s work, I took these objects and looked at the past, present and future. Looking at either their materials, history, and what they could be made into, I have created A2 pieces expressing these.
Tunic from “12 unwearable dresses” (1967) by Pace Rabanne, I was first bought to this piece by the shine of the metal material. I was interested by how they created shadows and highlights through the squares of the tunic. Following this I looked at how and where the materials were sourced from and what the dress could be recycled into.
‘Recycled dress’
Full Grown Chair (2017) by Gavin Munro, after viewing this I researched how the chair was made which made me look at the details of the wood. I explored different limits of the chair throughout the A2 piece, looking at branches so where it came from. Then to its purpose using it for clothes, books and sitting. I drew a little sketch of my home with where the chairs are.
‘The chair that lives’
Light Fighting (1902) by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, this piece uses different materials for different light shadows across a room. I love the pink and purple glass panes, which reminded me of glass windows in a church and the coloured light coming down from them. I thought about where the light came through the different ideas of it and the use.
Looking at three artists (Charles Sheeler, Robert Rauschenburg and Jayashree Chakravaarty) I choose different pieces which I found interesting in the use of colour/texture and composition. I looking at them in great
detail noticing more texture and interesting facts about the artwork showing this through my thoughts of each piece above.
Looking at Charles Sheeler first, I looked at different mediums I could use to represent this work, I think acrylic worked the best as it gave me vibrant colours and perfect lines. I tested different light conditions and proportions to understand the colours that he used, the darker the colour showed the shadows against the structures. In Aerial Gyrations I
used photoshop to create different Pov’s of a building using vivid colours.
Left to right – Stacks in Celebration, Aerial Gyrations, Amoskeag Mills
Robert Rauschenburg interested me as he uses cyanotype which I have created in the past being influenced by his work. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to create large scale ones but I wanted to create a heavily contrasted piece using dark blues against a white background. I like the textures he creates so I wanted to show these off using different things I found in my bedroom with new media.
Left to right – Untitled, Scanning, Banco
Jayashree Chakravarty is an inspiration to me, she uses nature to produce her art. Using what she found to create natural objects, I used plants, leafs, branches to show her style off. I created my own textures using the materials I found and put paint/ink on these to show the textures off. This was her recent work, however, she used to be more detailed with textures filling the page up with different types of conventional paints. I tested different colours and textures to see what I would use to recreate her work. I love the use of colour in all of her work and I believe this will influence future work.
Left to right – Earth as Haven, Oil, Acrylic, Leaf Cotton Paper, Untitled
‘Seeded, Grass and Daisies September’ by Joan Eardley, is a piece full of history even by looking at it, you can start to understand the process every detail has gone through. Firstly, Eardley picked every single grass stalk and that perfect daisy by hand, from her home village (Catterline) displaying personal meaning to this piece. Recreating her childhood of using newspaper and sweet wrappers to create art. Every natural element of Eardley’s work encountered the elements like wind and rain which has influenced this work, producing the swooshes of paint to show movement. Sticking them on roughly to reflect the texture, cutting, gluing, sowing every little detail into the canvas. Adding the process of colour was next, creating the vivid pops of oranges, reds, and blues to contrast with the now-dead stalks.
Eardley wants you to explore this piece in great depth, as you use more than one sense. I wonder how many hands have felt this painting, as you glide your hand across it your understanding grows. Eardley uses a variety of colours mainly those you would associate with autumn, which contrasts heavily with the white walls of a gallery showing that Eardley thinks about the space the painting is in and what atmosphere it may create. At first, it felt like a cold, wet day but then you look closer and see the intensity and richness of the colours she chooses, expressing the life of the daisies and grass.
