Frances Wadsworth-Jones is an artist who has recently created a fabulous collection of jewellery inspired by pigeon droppings that she has named ‘heaven sent’ based on the idea that a pigeon dropping can be seen as lucky.
She is turning what is seen as disgusting and not something you would want on your person into something that is actually quite attractive. it is an interesting take on it, with surrealist overtones and reminiscent of my recent trip to Barcelona where I looked closer at the works of Dali.
There was an alcove near the end of the trek round the museum in which another artists work was hidden. I assume this is a temporary exhibition, but the works there was quite interesting to look at, the use of colour varied with some presenting as far more colourful and textured from others.
Matt Lamb’s works made me wonder if I have chosen the right pathway choices at tech, and Dali made me debate taking Jewellery back on as well. But I think if their art can make me think and reflect more closely on my on artistic pathway then this can only be a good thing and lead to greater advances on my part.
Te exhibition was in the Market Place Theatre Armagh it was entitled ‘a therapeutic understanding of addiction, mental illness and maternal relationships’
I wasnt impressed, but I know that art can be open to interpretation and different people see it in different ways. But this exhibition left me feeling flat.
The works below were interesting, but reminded me more of Rorschach test and the ink blots it used.
this may have been what the artist intended, but it didnt impress me too much.
I went to the William Scott exhibition in the Ulster museum the other day. I took a few sneaky pictures (ok so I took 3…)
it was good, as photography isnt allowed, I decided to do a few brief sketches. Nothing fancy more like vague outlines, but during this I was approached and asked if it was ok to film me for their youtube video. I’ve not seen it yet, but they have a video up about the exhibtion opening
My drawings were very basic and my version of the Hare and the Candle I feel is a bit ‘overdone’ as to be filmed I had to go back over my sketch which at that point had been finished and the dark edge and legs of the table were added. I was quite pleased regardless with my work.
I noticed that as time progressed he moved from portraiture to more abstract and still life works, with more colour eventually being added to this art, although I feel blue features dominantly in a lot of the work featured at the exhibition as he moved from more bland colours used in his abstract work to a mix of dark colours with blue and one work literally ablaze with red and oranges.
I was passing by Markethill today fighting bad cross winds to get home when I decided to stop when i saw the site of the Cow sculptures I usually see as I pass. It occurred to me that i’ve never really given them more than a passing glance so I stopped and got up close and personal which received quite a few odd looks from passing drivers on the main road.
Kevin Killen is a Northern Irish artist who specialises in sculpture with a more hands on appriach mixed with his own imagination. His Markethill sculpture is known as Mother with Young and is part of a rejuvenation project for local areas and is an homage to the farming background of this market village. The cows themselves have very angular shapes within as part of their outline and this helps contrast to the more rounded atmosphere of a mother and its young. You can also see the village through the cows which helps place the significance of the cows to the village as it is a place where you can buy and sell cows. It is almost an advertisement of sorts.
While researching Pinch Pots I cam across the work of Maria Martinez was a native american artist who created creations inspired by her cultural roots and reflected traditional Pueblo pottery styles.
Her work is mainly black on black, a mix of polished and bland to create a stark contrast effect. Her aunt taught her the basic skills and her family and herself continued to practice these and helped to preserve this knowledge. She was well known for creating some of the much finer pots in her area as they could be very thin and so was approached to recreate traditional Pueblo pots after parts of some were discovered during an archaeological excavation and museums around the world wanted replicas.
It took a while for her to master the process of black on black as it was a skill that was slowly dying out and for a long time she was embarrassed by some of her work, thinking it was not as good as the original ancient pots would have looked like. With some encouragement she overcame this and recieved world wide acclaim but stayed humble regardless.
Vera Wang uses pleats a lot in her designs. I adore the dresses that i’ve seen designed by Vera and I love some of the more fitted mermaid tail style ones. The dark black and grey dress looks a lot like that worn by the Corpse Bride in Tim Burtons movie and is suitably gothic for a halloween type event.
As shown in her designs the pleats can be applied to cocktail dresses and full length gowns as well as tops which is something that I had debated incorporating into my designs after I had viewed work by Issey Miyake. However I think if I was to have someone model my clothes I would rather there was some movement and a sense of emotion such as joy especially if they are modelling a wedding dress. I like the clothes to capture and reflect the personality of the person and this is best achieved by a more natural pose.
Issey Miyake uses pleats a lot in his fashion designs. As part of unit 2, i’m looking at fashion designers who use pleating, curving and gathering in their designs. Issey uses pleats to great striking and geometrical shaped clothing.
I like the designs and would be interested to see if I could create a more practical version of some of these designs and also how to incorporate pleats into the designs. At present my main thought process leads me to wonder about pleats within tops.
Victoria Contreras – I choose this artist as I really like her work. I’ve always been interested in word play, but it is the conversion of words into jewellery is an interesting notion and I would like to try this myself with some of my favourite quotes. I also like the fact that it is quite intricate and can appear as if no words are there until closer inspection.
Russ Mills work is a mix of classical to pop surrealism. he focuses mainly on the human figure with areas taken from nature and animals and converged as one image. Covering subjects such as superficiality and isolation he also delves into more socio-political statements in his work.
I really love his work for the mix of photorealism with abstract. There is something intimate and personal about the pictures as you view them, as if their personality of the figure is bursting forth from them.
orderlydisordered 