If you’re quick you can still get an entry or three into the life drawing exhibition being organised by the City of Swan. Entries close 15 May 2008.
No commissions on sales and some great awards… First Prize: $1000 Second Prize: $250 Third Prize: $150 Local Artist Award: $150 People’s Choice Award $100
<pIt’s all over and I’m happy to report that Phi II was awarded a Highly Commended at the Mindarie Boardwalk Sculpture Festival a couple of hours ago. It was a tough contest against a field of awesome professional and emerging artists. I was happy just to be asked to put together a proposal – getting a nod is a huge bonus.
A bit stoked…
Now all I have to do is go hire the rickety trailer again and drive all the way back to bring him home – very slowly over the rough roads – the reverse of Friday’s nail biting escapade. I just hope I can yet again find three strong men and a trolley. And pray that I don’t jack-knife the trailer this time. Oops.
Amanda
Phi II on the way
After months and months in the planning and making Phi II was this morning delivered to Mindarie Marina for the Mindarie Boardwalk Sculpture Festival & Awards 2008.
No chips, no dingles, no damage. Amazing. It’s not that fragile, of course, being concrete and stainless steel but after a snail pace drive (at less than 60kms per hour) all the way from Chittering to Mindarie… cos I was worried that the rough roads and the ancient hired trailer MIGHT do damage. That’s over two hours folks. Not a nick to be seen. Oh ye of little faith.
Phi II at Mindarie
Phi II holds blood (scratches making the frame for the moulds), sweat and tears in addition to the more visible materials. Oh, and it froze my fingers working oxide into the wet concrete sometime after midnight on a series of really cold nights… I couldn’t start until I got home each night and it took that long to get the concrete to just the perfect state to work. Yes, with my fingers. OK. I’m fussy.
So what’s the story with it. As Phi II – it’s obviously a next step on from Phi (which brought home the City of Melville prize last year). Hang on, why repeat myself, here’s the official version:
Phi II belongs to a series exploring the golden ratio in three dimensional geometric forms. Sometimes called the divine proportion, and denoted by the Greek letter phi, this ratio is a natural phenomenon which has fascinated scientists, mathematicians and artists since it’s discovery over 2400 years ago.
The outer shape of this work is an icosahedron which is a regular polyhedron with twenty faces each an equilateral triangle. On Phi II these faces are implied by the lacing of stainless steel rope. The golden proportion is found in the more solid rectangles on the inside, crossing at right angles through the centre.
Tension, rhythm and balance are sought between the airiness of the implied space and the rough surface of the concrete and the repetition of line and plane. Phi II is not all serious, watched carefully there’s a fascinating play of shadow traced by the pattern of light.
My interest always in finding something more than the obvious while exploring something that might have been made with a purpose in a time and place unknown. This gives us the most teasing question, simply “What is it?”. That can only be answered by our imagination.
“Without mathematics there is no art.”
Luca Pacioli (1445–1514 or 1517)
Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar and mathematics tutor to Leonardo da Vinci
If you want to go see, you’re going to have to be super quick – the exhibition is this weekend only – with winners announced at 5pm on Sunday May 4.
Amanda
If you live in or around Perth, Western Australia you might like to take a toddle down to the farmers market held on Sunday mornings in Midland. On the third Sunday of each month you’ll find a bunch of artists alongside the fruit and veg. You should be able to tell which is which. Squint if you have to – then we’ll know that you are one of us. (For those, not in the know, artists squint in lose some of the detail – it makes it easier to paint.)
In fact if you are an artist bring your easel and join us. If you actually live around the Midland area and happen to get the local paper (The Echo) – try this week’s page 7 for the run down – they ran a little story on us and, yes, that is me in the picture (to the left) pretending to work… snapped last time we were there.
Run by the Midland Art Group with joiner-inners from everywhere we get together and talk, and make art, and talk to the public. OK, so we mostly talk. The idea behind it is to get us all out of studios to show the public that we exist and see what we do.
I take a long a woodcut each time – actually it’s the same woodcut each time. It’s pretty big for a woodcut and fairly fine work. It’ll take a long time to do, especially since I talk so much. In fact since I talk so much, I think it’ll never get finished. When I’m not talking and actually start cutting someone inevitably comes along to ask a question – usually something like “Is that a sculpture?”… Welcome interruptions, always welcome, after all I don’t mind talking. The downside is that, I get into what I’m doing and when interrupted suddenly, tend to slip and stab a finger. My own finger, of course, not the person asking the question. The member of the public then gets to see what woodcutting is really all about – it’s not an art form at all it’s a blood sport.
So that’s it. Sunday morning’s, bring your easel and paints. Or charcoal. Or whatever… and join in. We set up between 6.30am and 7am. (Aargghhh…) and work til around 2pm. Don’t forget to bring your flask and lunch. And yes, you can bring a few pieces to show and sell, as well as show and tell.
Otherwise, if you’re a watcher rather than a doer – welcome.
Amanda
I haven’t reviewed a book in ages – quite simply because I haven’t read one. Swamped with study unfortunately, and as enlightening as it may be, it has it’s downside, in what I get to read. That’s not to say that required reading is bad or boring (did I imply that…), no, no, no. It’s just acknowledging that you don’t want to hear about text books. Today’s waffle is about a book that has been mentioned here before. This time, however, since I’m finally getting near the end of it, I can say something more complete. Three months to read a book is something of a record for me – it used to be like three each week…
So here we go with Advice to Young Artists in a Postmodern Era. The author, William V. Dunning, is a professor in fine arts at Central Washington University and his book is published by Syracuse University Press. Now normally, as you may know, I don’t bother with that sort of formality, I just give you a link to Amazon or somewhere, so you can go find the boring bits yourself if you’re interested. OK, I have still gaven you a link to it but that’s only because if anyone buys a copy I get a 6 cents credit or something like that. Which I then put toward the books I buy which keeps me supplied with things to write about. I promise I won’t spend it all at once. Alright, don’t let that stop you buying a copy – I’ll keep writing anyway – just to spite you. Oh, I forgot, my point in giving you the dull details was to say that the guy has cred.
You can, in fact, be grateful the commission is so small because it stops me reviewing books that are no good. Can you imagine the rant? That’s because I don’t bother to finish reading books that are no good (unless the lecturer makes me…) and thus I have nothing to say on them. So there.
I also don’t do proper book reviews, there are lots of those out there. I just tell you what I think and then ramble on about irrelevant stuff. If you’re looking for a normal book review – try Google. I promise you there’s nothing normal on this site because… OK, we won’t go down that side track either because that one was covered last week…
A few posts back, I praised Mr Dunning for bagging writers who re-hash stuff they’ve read without bothering to check their facts. It happens a lot, especially in rose books – I know a lot about books on heritage roses. I also grow a lot of heritage roses (mostly hidden under weeds at the moment…sniff) but in growing them I know about them. Some things become darned obvious when you grow a particular rose: like how big it is and whether or not it has a scent. An author might make a mistake and say that Monsieur Tillier is a puny thing that struggles to make three feet and the Dark Lady doesn’t smell good. Shame on you on both counts. Monsieur Tillier in my garden makes a good 12ft in all directions and The Dark Lady will perfume a entire room – no need to stick your nose in that one. What’s criminal, however, is all the other authors who come along and repeating it! Where’s their credibility? What does all that have to do with art books? Aside from “not much”, of course. I’m getting to that.
The similarity between rose books and art books is in all in the description. A with roses you can find out an awful lot about a painting by standing in front of it and looking. One thing you may learn when standing there looking is that what you see may not be the same as stuff that has been written and copied ad infinitum by writers who didn’t go and stand in front of the paintings they wrote about…
Mr Dunning blew the whistle on lots of books that describe Seurat’s work… I could kiss him. Colour theory is a pet interest. Seurat’s work likewise. The difference between what Seurat did and what we are often told he did is, well… amazing. Go back and read what I wrote on that or better still go find a copy of Advice to Young Artists to read for yourself, check the library. Or, even better still, if you’re really lucky go look at La Grande Jatte with a fresh eye. It’s in the museum at the Chicago Institute of Art. Look for the red, yellow and blue dots that are supposed to mingle in the eye…
OK, so what else does he write about? Mostly about how to get the most out of being an art student. He also has a fair bit to say to and about being an art teacher. Or how to be a better teacher. He doesn’t bag teachers, not good ones anyway, but he does point out interesting things that might raise a collection of eyebrows. Things like: good teachers are those that spend more time learning about their subject area rather than learning about how to teach. In fact he thinks that too much education theory makes them worse. Oo wah.
He also reckons that crap is a technical term. I might just use that in an essay some time seeing as I can quote an authoritative source.
On art students too he has radical thoughts. There’s one where he tells the story of a guy going off to art school already a pretty accomplished realist painter. (I think, I can’t find the page, details don’t matter, the message is the same). The school wasn’t teaching much that he could learn. Ignoring the cries of his fellow students that he was selling out, he thought about it long and hard, picked up his brushes and knuckled under to study the abstract painting being taught. What the… At the end of doing his time (yeah, I’m well aware that makes study sound like a sentence…) at that school he was able to combine what he had learned with what he’d already known to make something entirely new. He didn’t sell out. Nor did he waste his time. An interesting thought for any student faced with a seemingly irrelevant class. (OK I could learn from that.)
For me however, William Dunning’s most important message was right up front in the first few pages of the book. He talks about what makes it likely that an art student will make it as an artist. It’s not the ability to solve problems – as we are often told – it’s in the rare ability to ask questions and find problems worth solving. That’s the difference between good and great.
And that’s something worth thinking about. Amanda
