Anni Albers - Original Op Artist?

I'm doing some research for a vj animation i'm currently working on for Slow Motion Heroes. It's for the upcoming "Wall of Sound" gig on the 28th of December. I'm doing a short projection animation of about 4 minutes, each minute reflecting one of their 4 eps, at the moment i'm working on the (soon to be released) "one liners" ep. My idea was to make something based on op-art, initially I had the work of Sol LeWitt in mind, the textile designs of Anni Albers (which I LOVE!) also sprang to mind as being very similar. I just wanted to share some of the images i've found here. If you're interested, Gunta Stolzl (her peer) also has some amazing textile designs, very inspirational stuff!

Le Chat Noir November video!

Dare Media in Cork put together a lovely video on the recent Le Chat Noir Vintage Fair!

First Time Oil Painting

We're doing a colour module in college at the moment, I tried oils for the first time last week & here are the results, pretty ropey! But it was definitely interesting and enjoyable. CLUE: paint the whole thing in acrylic first, and then just use the oil to highlight tones, light and shadow. That helped me anyway, parts of it I tried painting only in oils & they turned into a mucky mess.

Le Chat Noir Vintage Fair!

I'm just back from Le Chat Noir's second vintage fair, i'm on such a happy buzz after it! It was a lovely day, I paired up with my friend Sarah to run a stall with prints, badges, screenprinted tees, some hand-drawn shirts, vintage clothes & jewellery. Jill (from Wild Floral Couture) and Leona did a great job organising it.

There were some fab stalls from Turquoise Flamingo, Wild, Mercury goes Retrograde, Rosa Through the Looking Glass, Alice Halliday, Peacock and Ruby, Miss Daisy Blue.... the list runs on! I'm focusing on the Cork stalls here, there were loads of great stalls. It's also really inspiring seeing so many women starting their own businesses, in these times of "no jobs here" they're really making opportunities for themselves. I wonder as well is the massive interest in vintage at the moment anyway related to the global economic collapse? Maybe people are looking for ways to consume less and live more sustainably via recycling. Plus I guess vintage is just gorgeous!

So you can possibly tell i'm in a bit of a gushy mood after what was a really fab day! Here are a few photos from the first Vintage Fair in May and Le Chat Noir photo shoots, can't wait for the next event!!

New tee designs

With the Christmas markets coming up i'm putting together a few new tee designs.

I also just bought a badge maker, world domination, here I come!

3d Visual Elements

As part of the Applied Art course, we presented our 3d visual elements group project today. Here are a few shots of our installation. We focused on using cardboard, newspaper and bamboo and a limited number of motifs throughout the piece. We aimed to use careful construction, repetition and composition to balance geometric with organic forms, and heavy lines with lighter lines. We've to take it all down tomorrow, it's going to be hard after the work and thought that's gone into it!

Johnny Burger Pimp

Who is the mysterious Johnny Burger Pimp? I don't know, but his work is great.

My First Raku!

My first piece of raku ceramics! The process was so interesting, after bisc firing we painted our pieces with copper oxide glazes. I painted this piece with a turquoise copper oxide glaze, the bright copper is as a result of the fire in the cooling process (cooling in damp sawdust!) burning all the oxide out of the glaze, leaving only the copper. It's science!

Here's some photos of the process:

Lisa Yuskavage - Dublin Contemporary 2011

I finally visited Dublin Contemporary yesterday, it was great, a lot of really interesting work from the gamut of contemporary creative disciplines. I particularly enjoyed the exhibition in the RHA, maybe this is partly because I preferred the layout, I found it easier to assimilate the art in the big bespoke gallery spaces than in the small rooms in the main exhibit. Having said that, some people said they loved the feeling of going into each individual contained space, that it felt like stepping into a different universe each time.

Lisa Yuskavage really stood out for me among the painters there. I had come across her images in print and online before but they really didn't prepare me for the reality of her paintings. The work is BEAUTIUFUL, lovely soft tones, very private yet inviting scenes, gorgeous female figures. If you can see her work in the flesh I highly recommend it, it's stunning!

Hopefully i'll get a chance to post more about the exhibit, i've been up the wall since I started back at college!

Jewellery at Future Makers

I'm just back from the Future Makers exhibtion at Wandesford Gallery. A lot of very inspiring pieces, too much for one blog post, so i'm going to concentrate on the jewellery here.

I LOVE jewellery. I especially love progressive, modern, design-orientated pieces, anything bold, colourful and witty gets my vote! These are some of my favourite pieces from the show, featuring Filip Vanas, Theresa Burger and Sam Hamilton.

I just came across Future Makers flickr stream! Wohoo! Happy browsing, the work of Charlene McFarland, Anna West, and Bridget O'Gorman also really stood out for me.

Santa.... if you're out there... I really really really want one if those Filip Vanas rings... (this one)....

Drawing 101

We had the first week of Drawing 101 in college this week, 3 full days of drawing! Delighted! Extremely intensive though, absolutely exhausting, standing at your easel concentrating for the best part of 7 hours. Here's some of my work, observational drawings on garlic. When I started on Wednesday morning that 2B pencil was full-length, looks like i'm heavy on the pencils!

London / Brighton, Summer 2011

Some photos up on my flickr of my trips to London and Brighton this summer, that's the nicest "bicycles will be removed" sign i've ever seen! Incidentally the photo of Alexandra Palace was taken at the I'll Be Your Mirror show. We just went for the Sunday and it was AMAZING, incredible venue, God Speed You! Black Emperor and Portishead blew me away, God Speed You! had some great visuals as well, their whole set was incredibly integrated into one mind-blowing piece. Great buzz in the Rose Garden that day too!

It was my first time being to Brighton, such a great spot as well! We basically ate ourselves almost unconscious at Terre a Terre (twice!), Food for Friends, Jamie's Italian and not forgetting the incredible breakfast at possibly the best B&B i've ever been to (bar Anngrove Lodge of course!), The Twenty One.

I love London! And Brighton!

Culture Night 2011

Another great Culture night in Cork last Friday night! We strolled around to the Wandesford Gallery, the Backwater Artists, Christchurch at the Triskel, the English Market and Camden Palace.

There was a great atmosphere everywhere we went, it's really heartening to see the number of people who come out and engage with the various shows and events around town, there's a great sense of community. Camden Palace was rocking as usual! Loads of music, art installations and people having a good time. The dogs were also back again en masse, this time for sale.

The photos featured here are all from Camden Palace, unfortunately i'm not sure who the artists are!

Not Pop

A while back I previewed EP artwork for Cork band Slow Motion Heroes' upcoming new EP, Not Pop. The lads released the artwork on Facebook this week so now I can show the full thing here! Not Pop is the follow on EP from Pop, the idea was to create two very contrasting EPs in terms of musical style, I was contracted to do art work for both so I tried to reflect this in what I produced. Looking forward to the Not Pop release on Oct 8th in Bradleys on Barrack St and seeing the work in print!

You can download the EP from here, strongly recommended, it's fantastic!

The Market Bench Project Pt 1.

I made my first market bench maquette! Based on a chilli, it's made from recycled clay so unfortunately we won't be firing it. Can't wait to paint it!

We're all making a number of benches, my second bench is based on fish fillets, hopefully not obvious from ground level but very apparent in an aerial view. I'm thinking of Jean Jullien's work here! In the New Year we'll pick one bench from all of our designs to make.

Beginning the Market Bench project

BIG NEWS!! I'm a first year undergrad student at Applied Art in Crawford College of Art and Design as of this week! Wooo!! As a result i've bid a sad goodbye to DEIS. I've had a good 5 years here and have great colleagues. I'm really excited, also scared about money but mainly really excited.

We started our first ceramics project yesterday. Making a bench based on the theme of market. I got myself down to the fine English Market and took some snaps. I was thinking of doing a ridiculous / hilarious tacky bench commemorating the Queen's visit, covering it with fish motifs in reference to that brilliant photo, in the style of the typical ridiculous / hilarious tacky ceramic monarchy memorabilia! I've kind of gone from that idea now though, instead i'm thinking of making a giant chilli bench, bright, colourful, and I love chillies, is that enough of a reason?! Art college: you tell me! I was at Electric Picnic earlier this month and they had this great art piece in the Body and Soul, a giant table & chairs, it creates a lovely surrealness sitting on something that makes you feel tiny, so I guess that's what i'm going for with this chilli! I'm also thinking of the fab Mae West couch created by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali.

Here are some of my pictures from today, I love the market!