Harpys Emporium: A treasure trove of Handmade Crafts and Geekery!

 Harpys Emporium  is run by Lauren Challenor, Ebz Howson and Charlie Powell. It was initially the Harpy’s Nest and run by Lauren during university initially as a way to pour out creative goodness to reflect her love of all things geek ranging from gaming, manga, comics, film, television etc. She then teamed up with Ebz from Grinning Cat Emporium and Charlie from Badge Leopard Together they make a wide range of goods and accessories such as;

– Keyrings
– Necklaces
– Charm and Fabric Bracelets
– Pokemon Gym Badge Pins
– Metal Pins
– Phone cases
– Badges
– Stickers
– Magnets

These goods reflect their combined love of various fandoms, and on top of what is quite a brilliant collection they also do requests,  so if you aren’t completely overwhelmed and distracted by the range and unable to find something (which is highly unlikely) you can get it custom made, and to boot, they are very reasonably and competitively priced, and there is literally something for every budget. This is a stall that reflects the student background of those who run it and as such won’t burn a hole in your pocket.

I came across them at the Belfast MCM Comic Con and their stall was rightfully busy. I couldn’t really get to appreciate it until the Sunday as the first day of the Belfast Comic Con was too packed to really get the time to absorb all there was to see. I suggest that the second day of a Comic Con event might be the best chance you have to really get to explore their stall, it deserves the time to really be explored.

After much deliberation, I ended up getting my sister a Hunger Games bracelet and Pin which she hasn’t taken off since and made her the envy of her friends.

There was one item I saw that I was particularly taken with, and this photo is thanks to their facebook:

 

This is the perfect accessory for any Loki fangirl, it was a shame that the ring in question was too big for my finger. I still regret not getting it though as I feel as my health improves I might actually fit it.

their products are perfect to give to friends as gifts, not only are they made by other fans, so they are imbued with their passion that would rival your friends reaction upon receipt of the item, but they are also great to gift to yourself. It isn’t selfish, think of it as an act of self care, and whats not to love about a Game of Thrones bracelet:

in a similar vein to the events following my sisters demonstration of her bracelet to her friends, I kind of wish I had indulged in a Game of Thrones bracelet almost as a tribute to my work on that series as an extra.

However, funds are a limiting factor, especially at Comic Con, but mainly after visiting this stall (as you will want EVERYTHING!) , the queue for the ATM was shocking, thankfully due to my priority ticket I could nip out to an atm at a local petrol station and skip the queue on my return. if you aren’t as lucky to have a priority ticket, bring plenty of money in advance and keep it hidden and safe.

Also, their stall, while also a highlight of any Comic Con is an affordable haven for any Pokemon fan, they use upcycling techniques to recycle pokemon cards into pendants and charms. Meaning your deck of cards can in effect still be with you but in a more unusual way with a novel twist. For any die-hard fan’s there are also gym badges available!

due the wide range that they offer, there is more than one way to fly the flag of geekdom and share and express your passion.

As a group of fans they have put their love into the creation of these products, and this makes them more special than any mass produced product. They create what they believe in and want it to reflect their love of the fandom and so the items are produced to the highest standards and quality.

This was without a doubt the best stall there all weekend.

To paraphrase Loki, they are burdened with  a glorious purpose to bring geek-tastic goods to the masses.

Vampire Free Style – Comic

I recently attended MCM Comic Con in Belfast. It was the first time being there and as such it was quite chaotic on the first day. By the end of the weekend, and the end of sunday it was nice and quiet and I was able to really admire the various artwork displayed by those in the comic area of the event.

I came across Vampire Free Style by Jenika Loffreda

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A brief summary of the series is this:

A witch boy in training is looking for his girlfriend who vanished mysteriously.
He meets Micia, a black cat who can speak with the stars and who knows
something about the missing girl … something connected to a magic necklace,
a vampire looking for his memories and a 300-years-old forbidden love…

The artwork is amazingly beautiful, a haunting mix of both gothic and dark with at times humorous overtones due to the amazing Micia. Who I would argue kind of steals the show somewhat, though I am a bit of a cat lady at heart.

 

but in addition to this adorable character, the story is not overwhelmed by Micia and is at the end of the day a charming story about love against the odds.

while it is a self published comic, and as such can be hard to get a hold of, there is wealth of information on where to purchase on her website, with it proving to be surprisingly versatile. If you miss her at an event, her work is available both UK and Ireland wide in a variety of shops, although at present this is limiting depending on where you live. Thankfully, this is sorted as you can also order it online!

While it is a little slow to start, it is worth sticking it out as recent issues have started to show how everything so far was building up to explaining the past of some characters more fully, what may have seemed like a loose end is fixed. As it is self published, and I’m not sure if it is beta’d much like some fanfictions are, there are a few errors here and there, but these can be easily ignored due to the story and also the art.

I would hesitate to say that the style reminds me of Tim Burton soley on the gothic nature of the imagery, however Micia does have a slight Tim Burton-esque look. The actual comic with it’s imagery did remind me of a mix of the manga Bizenghast and for some reason made me think back to a manga called Goth that I read years ago (so I can’t be 100% as to why it came to mind as the actual narrative of that tale has left me)

Overall, for a small self published work, it is actually very good, and so far does seem to be building on its success. I suspect there is a bright future for this series, and so I recommend you check it out NOW!

A lot of my work is influenced by artists who have a more abstract and surreal style, such as Picasso with cubism, Dali with surrealism, Kandinsky with abstract and Miro with a mix of styles, some of which can be seen in a more sculptural and tactile format within Antoni Gaudi’s architecture. While their artistic styles were inspired by many variable things such as shape and colours interaction with each other, it can’t be ignored the powerful influence their personal circumstances had upon their work in relation to social, economic or political unrest. Their work was influenced by and a reaction to the social milieu of their time.  While many of the artists referenced are part of the modernist movement overall, each was separately influenced by circumstances individual to them such as the political and social setting, with variations of time reflective of the advancement of each art movement within modernism from early 20s Wassily Kandinsky to the late 60s and  Joan Miro and therefore are representative of different eras and aspects of modernism.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 –1944), the father of modern abstract painting, was a Russian painter and art theorist who wrote the influential ‘Point and Line to Plane’. He spent his formative years in Tsarist Russia, was working in Germany at the outbreak of World War I, was present in Moscow during the Bolshevik revolution and worked in Weimar at a time which saw the rise of the Nazism in Europe. He witnessed radical cultural, political and economic change. He trained originally as a lawyer and was a lecturer in law but resigned in 1896 to move to Munich to study art. He was influenced by Monet’s use of colour and the idea of using colour as an emotional element of the composition in its own right rather than a literal depiction of nature. While in Germany his artistic style developed and became increasingly abstract. Part of his artistic motivation was derived from his time in Bavaria in 1889 where he equated his experience of the architecture of the Baroque chapels to that of being in a picture (something that Antoni Gaudi managed with his architecture, turning buildings into sculptural art pieces such as La Pedera, La Casa Batilio and La Sagrada Familia). Kandinsky wanted to allow the viewer to, ‘stroll around within the picture, to force him to forget himself, and so to become part of the picture’.

This simplistic imagery of a horse and rider (Image 1) are reduced to a few lines, much as Miro would later do in his art. The background is also implied instead of detailed as you might expect, another startling difference from more conventional painting is the use of blue for the ground, green for the sky and red for clouds, none of these being the expected colours. While green and blue are analogous to each other the use of red a primary colour is very noticeable. The trees are also simplified to black lines that give the impression of trees but in no way are realistic and also lean to the side a little as if swept by the gust of wind that the speed of the horse that the fluidity of the strokes of the horse convey.

Image 1 Wassily Kandinsky, 1911, Reiter (Lyrishes), oil on canvas, 94 x 130 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands

With the outbreak of World War I Kandinsky was required to leave Germany and so he moved back to Moscow where he concentrated on teaching and promoting art. His political and cultural opinions were at odds with the newly established Bolshevik government, however, and his art was considered too Bourgeois and individualistic for those in the Constructivist and Suprematism movements as he didn’t conform precisely to the utopian geometric style that had been adopted by his contemporaries such as Kazimir Malevich (Image 2) and was popular with the Russian avant-garde which embraced a more monochromatic style. Kandinsky could be said to have evolved his work from the father of neoplasticism, Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, whose style was rigid and geometric like those in the later constructionist and Suprematism movements but who embraced and is famed for the use of more colours like Kandinsky did instead of more monochromatic tones. Kandinsky’s works are an extension of this with the work breaking away from the more strict regimental linear style to a more fluid motion representative of the fluidity of music.

He would also have been partially influenced by his friendship with Paul Klee during both of their tenures at the Bauhaus.  Both of them are seen as fathers of modernism and while on the surface their styles seem very complimentary, Klee embraced a surreal realism, whereas Kandinsky strove for a more idealistic representation driven by his synaesthesia – the capacity to see sound and hear colour, which gave him a different outlook on the world and explains why music and spiritualism played a large part in his works.

Image 2: Suprematist Composition by Kazimir Malevic, 1915, Oil on Canvas

1922 saw him move to teach in the faculty of Weimar Bauhaus following an invitation from its founder Walter Gropius. During his Bauhaus period (1922-1933) his works continue to advance from what was seen as radical by his Russian counterparts and continues to show how, while influenced by the Constructivism and Suprematism movements, the sympathetic environment of the Bauhaus allowed him to further his studies in art theory and reflect this in his works. As a synesthete Kadinsky experienced colours as sounds and he translates this effect into his art by representing the musical transition of the song to lines moving wildly about.  This is a strong influence overall displayed within his works such as Composition 8 (July 1923) so much so that the viewer is overwhelmed by the noise of the image as you journey through it. The musical metaphor is apparent again in the use of the word ‘composition’ in the title. The colourful, geometric forms appear to pulsate creating a surface that at times is dynamic and aggressive and yet also calm. Composition 8 also shows the emergence of circles featuring in his works, and the more important role they would later play in many of his works such as ‘Circles in a Circle’ from 1923.

 

 

 

Image 3: Composition 8, Wassily Kandinsky, July 1923, Oil on Canvas

 

Another artist, whose work acts in a similar vein as Kandisnky is Joan Miró 1893 –1983, For both artists, it could be argued that less is more, with many of their more famous works being a mix of what at first glance could be mistaken for blobs of colour and lines. A Catalan artist born in Barcelona, Miró grew up surrounded by the fantastical art nouveau structures created by Antoni Gaudi. His early influences included Cezanne and Dadaism. He was living in Paris at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and he railed against what he viewed as the commercialism of bourgeois Cubism used as a weapon of propaganda and pseudo nationalism, and in particular the works of Picasso.

After World War II Miró was widely acclaimed and his work was exhibited and commissioned in America.

In 1967 Joan Miró completed ‘The Gold of the Azure’ (Image 4) following a 1966 trip to Japan for an exhibition of his work. The piece with its stark contrast of 2 primary colours of blue and yellow are contrasted not only in colour but in composition, with the strong bold yellow that surrounds the ‘azure’ of blue composed of small spiral rotations with a fine brush and as can be seen from the pale white poking through is painted directly onto the white of the canvas. This white is used throughout the mass of blue to add luminosity but also from the halo of white Miro left surrounding the mass of blue.

A common occurrence in many of Miro’s works, are the simplistic lines representative of birds, women and men. In The Gold of the Azure’ there is the added element of stars, planets and astral configurations.

Image 4: The Gold of the Azure – Joan Miró, Oil on Canvas, 1967 – Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism

Image 5: Paysage animé,  Joan Miro 1970 – Animated landscape Acrylic and oil on canvas

1970 saw the creation of ‘Paysage Animé’ (Figure 5) which is full of movement and activity, drawing the viewer’s eye to no one defined area of the image. This impression of movement is due to the numerous plain lines across the surface along with the various dabs of colour. This basic structure is composed of brushstrokes, dribbles of paint, and drops that fell from the artists brush as he worked.

Works such as Catalan Landscape (The Hunter) (Image 6) and Harlequin’s Carnival (Image 7) from round the early 1920s show Miró’s initial venture into Surrealism, with a similar style to Kandinsky however his works also have a Dali-esque theme such as with the Tilled Field (Image 8).

When you compare The Hunter and The Tilled Field, you notice similarities in where some of the forms are placed, however the subject of those forms has been altered. Reality has been further left behind as he progressed from his previous works. With the farm as a basis, you can see the circular base of the tree has changed into a simple symbol for a tree, represented as a slightly irregular circle marked by a simple black point connected to a diagonal line projected outwards and connected to one solitary leaf and like his work in The Tilled Field, this representation of a tree also has an eye growing from it. To the left of this eye in The Hunter is a human-esque stick like figure also reminiscent of the cactus shaped tree in The Tilled Field. This figure gives the painting its name and is the hunter of the title, seen wearing a traditional Catalan hat.

Image 6: Catalan Landscape – The Hunter, 1924, Oil on Canvas

Image 7 – Harlequins Carnival by Joan Miro, 1925, Oil on Canvas

Image 8: The Tilled Field by Joan Miro, 1923, oil on canvas

For myself as an artist, I like the use of symbolism to build up a picture layered with hidden meaning or open to an array of interpretation or question. Art should make you stop and think and for Kandinsky, Miró, Picasso and Dali their works do.  Symbolism played a great part, with Picasso’s Guernica a great example of symbolism in art, the eye almost watching over proceedings much like in Miró’s Catalan Landscape and The Tilled Field.

Kandinsky used the circle often for symbolism as the circle according to him is the ‘synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the excentric in a single form, and in equilibrium’ it acts as a uniting central feature point and breaks away from his Russian contemporaries more straight suprematism style. Each of these artists took a standard mould and broke it, breaking new ground and leading the way for modern art.

This movement of modernism influences me as I like how art can then be converted into more sculptural pieces and architectural art. Like the arts fluidity on canvas I like how it can be fluid in its representation, going from something solely visual to a more tactile, visual feast.

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BECKS-MALORNY, U., 2007. Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944 : the journey to abstraction. 1st edn. Hong Kong, London.: Taschen.

BUTLER, A., VAN CLEAVE, C. and STIRLING, S., 1994. The Art Book. 6th edn. London: Phaidon.

DÜCHTING, H., 1997. Paul Klee: painting music. Prestel.

DÜCHTING, H. and ERBEN, W., 2003. Joan Miró 1893-1983 : the man and his work ; with a commentary on Miró’s late work and notes on his paintings. 1st edn. Koln: Taschen.

FINEBERG, J.D., 1997. The innocent eye: Children’s art and the modern artist. Princeton University Press Princeton, NJ.

GRAHAM DIXON, A., 2008. Art : the definitive visual guide. 1st edn. London: Dorling Kindersley.

HOCHMAN, E.S. and ASHTON, D., 1997. Bauhaus: Crucible of modernism. Fromm International New York.

KANDINSKY, W., 2012. Concerning the spiritual in art. Courier Dover Publications.

KANDINSKY, W., 1994. Kandinsky, complete writings on art. Da Capo Press.

KANDINSKY, W., 1979. Point and line to plane ; [translated from the German by Howard Dearstyne and Hilla Rebay]. 1st edn. New York: Dover Publications.

LONG, R.W., 1980. Kandinsky: The Development of an Abstract Style. Clarendon Press.

NERET, G., 2011. Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989 : conquest of the irrational. 1st edn. Taschen: Koln.

POLING, C.V., 1986. Kandinsky’s Teaching at the Bauhaus. New York, Rizzoli, .

RADFORD, R., 1997. Dali. 1st edn. London: Phaidon.

TOWER, B.S., 1981. Klee and Kandinsky in Munich and at the Bauhaus. UMI Research Press.

WADDELL, C., 1998. Creativity and mental illness: Is there a link? Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 43(2), pp. 166-172.

Printmaking and Photoshop.

development of my Final Major Project

FMP- Final Major Project

I know my blog posts have been fewer in recent weeks. This is because i’ve been focused on my final major project at tech as well as occasional bouts of ill health.

I spent an unfortunate amount of time during this period either too unwell to attend tech or in hospital. I feel this has had a negative impact on my work as it hasn’t received the focus I would have wanted to give it, and has made it hard to follow my initial planned outline.

At times, it was hard to focus, and with at one point 3 IV cannulas, quite hard to do notes in hospital due to all the wires. Despite this, I do think the overall project was a success and developed nicely.

I had initially looked at tortured artists, and how illness affected their creativity in an essay, this led me to look into the imagery for emotions and mental illness.

 

A common theme I noticed was how the heart played a major part in being associated with emotions, and was used in many metaphors, idioms and hyperbole such as, ‘a heart of gold’ or ‘cold hearted’

I had thought about using this play on words to create imagery, much like a spin off of catch phrase, as a picture can tell a thousand words, I thought that i could capture these words in an image.

I hoped to also use colour and shape to help express these images, and so they would be used to reflect the intention of the image without using words. I looked into the psychology of emotions and shapes and colour association to see if there could be ways to influence the viewer.

 

however, in the end it wasn’t really working out as I imagined it would, and I felt it was too simplistic, I looked at developing it further. As I had created a lot of prints throughout my experimentation, it was suggested I look at a way to present them, perhaps in the form of an altered book, or accordion style leaflet.

 

i was drawn to the idea of a book, as a book is a medium of print, and I was looking at printmaking. I felt that the mix of printed imagery on printed words with a relevance to the subject of the image was an interesting combination and so looked closer at that. Below are samples of some of my prints which i took and developed further in Photoshop.

I found it hard to find books that appealed to emotions when I looked in charity shops. I didnt like the effect when i printed in the book, it seemed too simple, however i liked the sensory aspect of a person touching and seeing the book.

as such, i tried to make it more visual than just a print, with examples shown above, using the laser cuter to engrave designs into the books, so i could spell out the word heart, transforming the books into a wall art piece. i had thought about staggering the height, but when i put together everything at the end, I found that a single height received more favourable feedback.

I spent part of the time in the hospital discussing my ideas with those in the other beds and the night staff when I couldn’t sleep when feeling unwell. I asked for feedback from those around, and found that some of my line drawings were received well.

 

The nurses offered to print me some information on the heart and i discussed my ideas surrounding heart imagery and emotions as well as using medical notes relavant to the heart to print onto such as an ECG.

 

The idea that we could, ‘tug’ on the heartstrings of a person due to their emotions appealed to me, and was reinforced by my own occasional chest pain, which was like a physical reaction of my heart to stress or sometimes for no reason that I could identify.

I wanted to incorporate strings into my work, like a continuation of my work in textiles previously, to this end i looked closer at trapped fibres and strings within laminated pockets as well embellishing into the pockets to see the overall effect. It reminded me a lot of my initial media experimentation during unit 1 and 2.

when i looked up heart strings, i realised i needed to use more anatomical terminology, as heartstrings in google images kept bringing up imagery from a south korean soap opera and so i needed to use terms such as tendineae chordae.

 

I liked the idea of how the heart expresses emotions that are sometimes hard to verbalise by its physical reactions.

it was with this in mind that i came up with one of a1 studies:

 

the heart being used to symbolise emotions, and how it expresses them and the person not verbalising but throwing them away instead of face them.

I then played on that imagery as a lot of my prints where of hearts, and so used them as a medium to express the same sentiment of the a1.

I laser cut a figure out and hung prints up with fishing wire at different heights.

during my research into altered books previously i had tried some origami within a book and had created a heart shape.

I decided to build upon this foundation and created a double heart for a central piece for the prints to appear as if they were falling into the book. I liked the idea of a book, as people use books to write in to express their emotions such as with a diary, and in previous units I had looked at a book bursting open with the imagery of butterflies.

The origami into books took quite a bit of effort with calculating measurements before even a fold was made, but i used online tutorials to show me how to use Photoshop like programmes to come up with a plan.

 

together my prints and central piece of the book together formed my main bulk of the FMP, to make it more direct and obvious that the prints were falling into the book i made sure they had string attached that directed the visual down towards the book.

Hospital art

In hospital and been here all week. Still working away though 😀

YouTube artist on Turner Prize list

YouTube artist on Turner Prize list http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27299819