Dicipline




     For my choice of discipline in initially chose sculpture, having enjoyed  both ceramics and sculpture equally during our elective term. It was soon obvious to me however, that sculpture was not the way for me. i just did not get it. it was far too abstract for my way of looking at things. i love form and i love art in which i can see what it means or represents. So for our first sculpture project we were given a brief on the human form and had to reconstruct in our own way ,,so i first started to make a realistically proportioned figure out of chicken wire to be told that it was not the correct approach, that it was too realistic.

The next effort i tried to make it a bit more abstract and began to make again a figurative piece from logs of wood,,,, again this was deemed too "obvious"

so after a lot of thought i decided after three week that i had to change disciplines so i looked to join ceramic and thankfully there was a place for me


                                            ceramics


the first project i was given was based on the narative
we had to pick a saying or metaphor or lyric and create a piece based on that. the saying i chose was
                                               "The Journey Of Life"


and to represent this i looked to Japanese tradition and picked the "Koi Fish". in japanese legend the Koi represents the life's journey and ambition or to strive for achievement and the waterfall represents the struggles and obstacles we face along the way

using a mix of porcelaine paper clay(for the waterfall and waves) and stoneware(for the fish and base) i mades my sculpture

my piece was then painted with underglaze using ,,orange and red for the fish and turquise ,blue, and green washes for the water with white for highlights, then an transparent glaze was applied which made the colours really come to life


also while making the fish we made some pieces for the raku kiln. these were dipped into a turquise copper oxide crackle glaze

then they were put into raku kiln before then being put into buckets of sawdust and then water to enable the raku process to happen

once this was done the pieces were ready to be cleaned

my favourite raku piece was the bowl i reclaimed from the skip and dipped into the glaze

here is ciaran doing a decal transfer demonstration

    yes after my experience in ceramics i think that i have definately made the correct choice
                                                                         i love it

ERICH FISCHL


                                          



                       SWIMMER AT REST, 1995.54 x 34.5 x 25.5 inches, bronze. Ed. of 3


Fischl's paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints have been the subject of numerous solo and major group exhibitions and his work is represented in many museums, as well as prestigious private and corporate collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modem Art in New York City, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, St. Louis Art Museum, Louisiana Museum of Art in Denmark, MusÈe Beaubourg in Paris, The Paine Weber Collection, and many others. Fischl has collaborated with other artists and authors, including E.L. Doctorow, Allen Ginsberg, Jamaica Kincaid, Jerry Saltz and Frederic Tuten.  




GEHARD DEMETZ




                                                                
                                                                                           Mother bake for us  
               
                                        It's warmer now                                    
In just a few years, Gehard Demetz has risen to international prominence by applying his incredible craftsmanship as a traditional woodcarver to subjects that are new and appealing to contemporary viewers. His sculptures of children are at the same time attractive and disquieting and rendered with an amazing perfection that is by no means rhetorical or classicalSince his debut in 2005, Gehard Demetz has been invited by prominent galleries to exhibit in the United States, Spain, Germany, Korea. He has also produced monumental sculptures on commission for collectors around the world




MAGDALENA ABAKANOWITZ




                                                   
                                   'Anonim' 2009bronze unique19 x 8 x 11.2 ''Malborough Gallery, New York

LI TIANBING


                                                

Dream Studio (2009)                                                                                                 by LI Tianbing

RON MUECK

 

While many artists strive to glamorize, and portray our world to be better than it actually is, others simply find art in our ordinary lives and our simple bodies. Mueck is one of those artists, and is now well known for his super realistic sculptures where he portrays humans at key stages in the life cycle, from birth through middle age, to death.

LINUS LOHOFF

   PHOTOGRAPHY






BOBBY NEEL ADAMS

         

PHOTOGRAPHY,, AGEMAPS ,,2007

The point at which the images are physically torn together becomes the boundary line (or bridge) between decades of passing time,
to me they provide an eerie life-map, staring towards our future.' - bobby neel adams
Greenville museum of art  and  international centre for photography



STUART BRISLEY


                    


Sweating the Hole 2006 

Stills from video on DVD. Camera Roger Karshan. 

Exhibited Stuart Brisley: Works 1958-2006, England & Co 2006

Hi this my first blog
dont really know what im doing here yet, but this is my record of work i am doing in 1st yr at art school, (supposedly)
the first project we were given was based on motion and movement in as broad a sense as could be. i found this subject matter to be really exciting from the moment i read the brief. it is the kind of project that we could take in any direction that we could conceive as there is movement and motion in every possible aspect of life. the most difficult task initially was choosing the path i could take in which i could best investigate motion and movement.
to begin this task i made a mind map using key words which i could associate with movement.
the words that most appealed to me were speed, power, strength, stealth, grace, etc. then i thought what could i use to study these key words and the natural world seemed to me the most obvious choice namely predatory animals. once i had decided on this i then picked lions as the strongest source to tie in all these key words under one project
cats to me are really interesting creatures.the way supple way that they move from the graceful way thay they walk, to the stealth cunning and sureness of movement in which the they stalk and hunt their prey and also the sheer agility and power they can display whether it be in play or the the outright ferocity in the killing of food.they can jump from heights whilst retaining an amazing sense of balance, they can twist an turn and change direction while in full flight. they can hunt successfully as individuals or as an intelligent collective pack when after larger prey

all cats with no real exceptions follow the same basic physical structure an movement though for me i found the idea of the larger wild cats, lions in particular an interesting study point for my project because they display more raw ferocity speed and power that your typical domestic cat doesn't have.

 i began my research an work by gathering images of the big cats from national geographic and other magazines also from images i looked up on the internet an videos from youtube
from here i began a series of reference drawings in my sketchbook of lions in various positions including some anatomical drawings so that i could understand the way in which these cats moved

my next task from here was to try and capture through drawing and other mediums the movement of these animals. my first idea was to do a progression of charcoal drawings on the one page by drawing a lion in one position ,photographing it then erasing it slightly and redrawing it in a slightly different position an repeating this process until i had turned the lion around almost 360* whilst leaving an impression of each drawing on the page. 

Then as a further take on this I wanted to do a series of sequential drawings but to, at the same time, record the progression in stages of each drawing. Again I used charcoal for my drawings as I think this medium helps to portray the temporary nature of motion. 

To help me understand the movements of these magnificent animals, as well as looking at videos and documentaries i also studied the photographic work of Edweard Muybridge, a pioneer in the field of photography, especially in the study of the capture of movement in the natural world

With help from the work of Muybridge and You Tube I was able to construct a Zoetrope, a kind of simple form of animation or moving picture. It consists of a spinning cylinder with a series of sequential frames set inside which when looked into gives the illusion of motion.

From here I began to think on a larger scale, so how best to represent the movement of my lions than to try to make a moving sculpture. This I realised was a very big undertaking but drawing inspiration from The Handspring Puppet Company's theatre production of "War Horse" I set to work constructing my life size representation of a fully grown lion

I first of all set to work drawing out some plans to give me a sense of scale to base my newest project on. Once I had this I set to constructing the head and neck from different types of wire and pieces of bamboo

For the body i used stainless steel construction wire which I bent to shape and then welded in place. This was a time consuming task as each piece needed to be the correct shape and positioned right before welding.

well its been a long time since i've written in this. Its been an eventful year, some great some bad, here's whats happened since,,,. any way this was me hard at work building my lion

            

















             

 Some plans for the legs,,,, these were the hardest part to figure out. Drove me mad on a few occasions. I tried a few different ways and materials to make the legs but as i needed them to move i settled with timber which enabled me to make the pivot joints i needed.

   

 once i had the legs figured out i then set to building up the body using again strips of bamboo tied with wire. .

 Here's a few more pics' of me busy at work.

 

As you can see during the process of building my lion I ensured to maintain a tidy workspace at all times

My sculpture is finally beginning to take shape.

Although I mainly focussed on my lion ( probably a little too much sometimes as I was letting other aspects of my project fall to the side ), I did however attend life drawing classes every week which i found a helpful and at times a much needed distraction

whilst making my piece I was always thinking about how i would get my lion to move, and the answer was to makes a stop motion piece so I began by making a simple piece using cardboard cutouts just to see how it would be done. I created this with a small digital camera and my laptop and as I didn't have the correct software on my laptop it didn't work out too successfully however it gave me the general idea as to how i would go about making my final video.

                                  

finally my lion is complete and ready to take a bit of a walk around.......

  

  "Jeeze this lift is taking long enough"

  "lift goin' down"

  At this stage I began to do some drawing studies of the lion not to any great personal success I might add 

So now I had him made it was time to start on my video so i first had to do a test piece so i set up suspending the lion and taking a series of photographs and changing the position between each shot as you can see below

Having now achieved this to some success it was now time to set up for "take three" and do the piece for real