Doll house windows and reflective materials

I found a magazine spread with a doll house in it and appropriated its windows and walls for this collage, mixing with plant imagery and imagery consisting of mosaic like work and strange looking surfaces such as metallic papers and foils.

 
 

Geometrics and the red telephone box

Old red telephone box.
Black and white dots.
Golden-yellow lines and boxes.

A part of a series of collages I made last year.
Looking at both colour and geometric shapes that bring together a strange kind of theme to the collage.

 
 

Connect the dots…

Or join the dots, as I fondly recall, were actually, 

as opposed to word searches which were honestly like some kind of form of kiddy torture.
If you’ve been bad, a word search, and if good, a join the dots.

Or at least the was my first impression.
It was a bag found in one of the cheap bag cages at the back of the shop, I didn’t buy the bag obviously, I mean it didn’t look very sturdy, but the surface print was just so interesting I had to have a good look. Snuck in a few photos too. 

The forms are fairly abstract but clearly butterfly like in shape, and some looking like flowers or petals, made out of this strange cross hatching and black simplified petal shapes.

A closing note this interesting scale like pattern
made from petal like shapes with this 

cross hatching that is reminiscent of netting and structures of grids.

Lots of blue, lines and plastic

With pinks and silvers thrown in for extra points. 

 

The bead work on this kurta is coming off now but it still looks impressive. 

The interesting grid like structure above alongside wavy sequined lines 

shows great choice in colour. and shape.

 

The inside of the neckline shows an
interesting structure of thin plastic thread that is transparent and still visible. 

The slit eye like shape, clearly a shape referenced 

in Asia's own art and cultural heritage, 

an example would be the book cover of
The triumph of modernism: India's artists and the avant-garde, 1922-1947 by Partha Mitter,
which shows a painting that uses the idea of elongated eyes.

Shiny and purple. Could it get better?

Well yes probably, it's a lovely shade of plum like purple.
Yum. Plum, coincidence that it rhymes?

Purple has been a colour I've been drawn to like,
well I suppose a rusty stubborn magnet.

Silvery coloured bits, which I'd keep away from the iron in case they melt.

Silver goes with everything and anything....

just be careful you don't end up looking like something from a Christmas nativity story.

Denim Special

If you've been there form the start you will know of an entry on denim (Quilted Arcs) in which I touched on the environmental issues of denim itself. I decided that as the last post in September 2011, I'd look more into what can be done with cotton,
how it could be customised, reused or recycled.

Below are photos by Liz, a fellow student artist and friend:

Showing thick cotton stitch above,
of which Liz isn't a fan of - but personally
I think the thick cotton used is quite interesting.
Need to find and buy a roll of it myself to try out on my sewing machine.

Amazing macro skills here.
Liz tells me she ripped the jeans
and then stitched the lace/net onto the reverse side of the jeans.
A round of applause for the fashion guru folks.

Ah nice ragged effects.
Never gets old.

This is a great example of what can be done with old raggedy jeans,
in a way that utilises simple stitch skills (like the running stitch).

The above are the little metal studs that

are used in the corners or borders of pockets on jeans

to reinforce the corner areas, known as copper rivets.

The use of green thread here is quite different,
I've yet to see another pair of jeans using green thread.

Also the idea of tie dye being a way of stopping dye

getting to parts of fabric was also used on this pair of jeans.
Though this process industrially often involves more energy being used up.
It can also be done to jeans at home with bleach (here a link to a tutorial on the process),
however their are precautions you should take,
wearing gloves is just one of them.

Just something I've been working on very slowly,
looking at stitching scraps onto old denim using a brightish cyan like blue.

A better photo of what I'm working on.

Ending on an idea:
why not put words on jeans?

Thoughts of blue and music: Christian Marclay

A look at ArtForum this week, somehow this week is the last of September 2011.
The below photos below are of works by Christian Marclay
and are displayed at Fraenkel Gallery
and are taken from ArtForum (an arts journal/magazine)

I found an advert in ArtForum which I liked,

now this isn't new as well if you an occasional or rabid reader of ArtForum
you'll find the articles a bit, well over complicated me thinks

and I kind of feel the need to get out the dictionary.
Any way when I went ahead and googled the artist whose advert looked so refreshing,
I found I still liked his work. Now that is NEW.

I have been resizing images a lot and cropping them down just so that you get the good stuff

(and admittedly to save space but thats not benifitial to you)

As you can see, only good premium stuff. I deserve a snickers

(of course Christian Marclay deserves a large bag of malteasers).

A link to photos of more of his work on T R I B B L E & M A N C E N I D O

Glossy paper is a nightmare to photograph.
Some detail above shows actual tape strand entwined, circled, twirling and looking abstract.
His works from this exhibition are cyanotypes,
a form of work that combines both print and photography,
where an image is used and exposed onto paper that has been painted with a chemical mix.
A youtube video with more information and a 'how to' on cyanotype 

I really like the tape being used to create line,
and its reminder of analogue technology's existence, that and of physically owning a piece of music or sound on a tape, unlike mp3 files on a memory card of some kind.