Shadow Catchers Exhibition

I went to London to visit the 'Shadow Catchers' exhibition in the V&A Gallery. This Exhibition Presents the work from 5 international contempory artists that without a camera create images on photographic paper by casting shadows and manipulating light, or by chemically treating the surface of the paper. Images made with a camera imply a documentary role. In contrast, camera-less photographs show what has never really existed. 

The one artist I was most interested in while visiting was Floris Neusüss that makes photograms mainly of the human image. I like how his work captures brief and glimpsing moments using light sensitive paper.

This piece to me always seemed quite ghostly, but I still really like it because it obviously shows how someone was there but no longer.

This was my favorite of which I seen of Neusüss' work. It doesn't look like much from a first view but after reading it's discription of how he made it was what I was most amazed by. What he did to create this was placing photographic paper in a garden at night during a thunderstorm, and letting lightning expose the paper.

Shadow Catchers
Floris Neusüss Shadow Catchers Video

Monika Jarg and Transparent House

Monika Jarg a textile designer creates "carpets of wood" by drilling holes into panels of wood and weaving directly into them with fibers. I've found this an interesting to decorate something as simple as the floorboads beneith you. I surely hope that when I have my own house with floorboards I would try this out. This idea reminds me of some of Claire Coles work where she'd drill into tea cups and sew flowers or messages into them, creating these sentimental and delicate tea sets.
http://www.tekstiilruumis.ee/indexeng.html

While I'm looking at floors I've also found this, this beautiful new concrete flooring from san francisco’s trasnparent house team. They’ve created a way to add these soft floral patterns to polished concrete flooring either doing the pouring or after the concrete has set. I think it's absolutely beautiful how they've added detail to the flooring without taking away from the simplicity of the style, also how something so eatheral as nature is forever inprinted in an industrial styled concrete floor. Ok floorboads are quite uncommon in mondern houses, so this will be what I want instead.

Printing & Sewing with Maps

From cut out maps I began to look at printing through cut out maps and after collage I thought this could be a good point to persist with looking at various types of backgrounds. I've tried using cellulose thinner on fabrics and multiple ways I can use a variety of materials together. I also tested printing on to translucent fabric, that work pretty well and i'm intending on using these again. I tried out two types of patterns to print; the first is of a cut out map and the other of a pattern that is related to maps like a pirate map.

I've sewn into a couple of my printed pieces and I liked how I sewn along the roads of one that it gave me the idea to make a quilt doing the same.

I loved how my quilted piece turned out I wanted to do more with this idea that I tried sewing into maps. After sewing along the roads didn't make much of an effect on the map I tried sewing along the contour lines of a map. After a whole day at the sewing machine I was amazed how beautiful the pattern created was. I'd like to copy this further but I all them lines are too complicated to translate without having the map with the line work into.

Collages with Maps: Peter Clark & Jerry Gretzinger

Dog Collage - Peter Clark
I looked briefly at college by creating one containing pieces of map like peter clark, after doing that it seemed obvious to add more to the piece by linking all the roads from each slice of map together to create my own personal made up map.

This reminded me of the work by Jerry Gretzinger, which started by a doodle on a sheet of typing paper while working in a ball bearing factory. This is now still being added to as an ongoing project describing an imaginary landscape called The Gretzinger Map (1963-Present). when he'd get to the edge of the page he'd add another continuing on. He uses I huge variety of media including collage within creating all (as of june 2008) nineteen hundred contigious panels.

'The Gretzinger Map' - Jerry Gretzinger

I like how this is an ongoing project and that it's all made up. It reminds me of when I was younger when I'd create my own pictures of fictional places and playing platform games on the playstation 2 like grand theft auto. it's obvious he's put alot of imagination and research into making these maps incorporate towns and cities with museums, government buildings, churches, parks, railroad stations and airports.

Jerry's Map (Video)

Lesley Halliwell

I watched 'James May: My Sisters' Top Toys' on BBC2, where he looked at all the toys from his childhood found in his sisters toybox. One of which was the spirograph where he found it it hard to use without mistake but also mentioning the work of Lesley Halliwell who uses spirographs to create large colourful pieses with the small spirograph patterns. I thought this was an interesting way to use somthing as redundant as a childs toy to make the dynamic monochromatic ink drawings.

http://www.lesleyhalliwell.co.uk/pages/exhibitions_james-may.html

Cut Out Maps Shadows

Having my cut out maps layered together i saw that it created shadows between the cut out roads. I looked at small sections and drew only the shadows to create the image of the layered roads.

Taking inspiration from Tord laser cut pieces I've looked at making more shadows with my cut out maps by shining bright light onto maps giving a off a shadow pattern of the roads.

Melinda Gibson

Looking briefly at Melinda Gibson's style of work I've attempted to create my own using one of my own images. I cut out sections in the pictures like parts of the dress and table legs. finding patterns online i placed them each on a layer behing the cut outy image. I also used this technique to cover the table completely with a copy of the tabble clothe so it looks covered over as the table wasn't fitting with the style of the picture.