Altered Book: Constellation Of The Great Bear

September 24, 20102 Comments

When I pulled the bear out to work with I started thinking about polar bears but then inspiration led me (and I can’t remember how) to the constellation of Ursa Major. I felt this was a much more interesting idea to work with and sorted through my other materials looking for further items to incorporate into the composition. I was glad to find a star map in my paper box to use as the end pages in the book. But when I rediscovered the rusted bed spring, scavenged from Bowen Island a year ago and forgotten about, I then had everything I needed to complete the work.

I really wanted to do more with this book. The last two I’ve made have left the books as flat canvases. With this one I decided to fold and cut the pages and make it a three-dimensional piece. I spent a long time cutting and shaping the space in the pages where the bear would rest because I wanted to make sure he would sit flat and be well supported. The rusted bed spring also needed a lot of careful work to have it supported where it’s inserted inside the book. I reinforced things between the pages with cardboard so the spring would float over top rather than rest on the pages on the outside.

The metal stars and red thread were a final touch. These are meant to echo the star shapes and the lines that connect them on the end pages map. I always find working with thread rather aggravating because it slips away from me as I wind it around things like the spring and stars, but I love the affect.

This work will be available for sale during the Eastside Culture Crawl in November. I’m creating as much new work as I can to entice people to visit me for the Crawl.

Materials used: book, wood bear, rusted bed spring, red thread, metal stars, star map from an encyclopedia, glue, and gel medium.

Drafting a Tree Made of Knowledge

September 7, 20102 Comments

I decided to take part of last week off because even though there was a tonne of work I needed to do I was feeling far too depleted and brain dead to accomplish anything. I needed to brainstorm new ideas for an upcoming project but since nothing was coming I realized I needed a break. The PNE show took up a lot of my time in a way I hadn’t expected and it was a drain on creative energy after awhile. Towards the end of last week I could tell I made the right decision about taking a step back because the creativity and ideas started to flow again. Phew.

I need to create new work in time for the Culture Crawl in November, but first I need to put something together and write a proposal to submit at the end of next week. I won’t say much about what this one is all about because it’s in early stages. It’s an open-ended opportunity and I’m using it as an excuse to work collaboratively with friends and to create a large installation piece. The paper tree pictured here is a prototype for part of what I’m hoping to do on a much larger scale.

I’ve had the idea rolling around in my head for awhile about making a tree, and there are many different ways I could do it (and still can). I wanted to tie it into the altered book work I create and even contemplated making a tree out of books. Making the prototype helped to formalize my ideas and now I have a clear idea how to proceed with the larger version.

It’s a bit rough around the edges but I didn’t want to be too precious with it because it’s meant to be a first draft. My biggest frustration while working on this were my limited drawing skills, but they’re good enough to make the outline of a tree.

I’m hoping the final version will be magical enough to fill the view with wonder and awe. That’s not a lot to ask of my work, is it…?

Forgotten Knowledge: The Completed Set

August 9, 20106 Comments

I finished the last book in the Forgotten Knowledge series last Friday morning and felt a mix of relief, satisfaction and sadness at finally getting them all done. I arranged them on the dinning room table in a circle to take a look at them for the first time as a set. They look amazing.

While there are about a million ways for these to be displayed, for the purposes of the Container Art space they will be hung on the wall fully open. I hope you can drop by the PNE and visit the show. More photos to come once this work is installed.

The “What The Hell Am I Doing” Crisis

July 4, 20102 Comments

I attended the opening of Eco Madness at Gallery Gachet on Friday evening and I must say, the experience really put me into a tailspin about where I’m going and what I should be doing with my work in future. I put a lot of effort into writing up a proposal to submit for the show and also running around to get the work printed and framed. It didn’t feel worth it once I took a look at the rest of the show, not because the rest of the work wasn’t good, but because there was such a wide range of styles and mediums that it didn’t really work together. It was especially disappointing to discover the positioning of my work on a wall that is in a hidden corner and hard to view.

I had a crisis later in the evening wondering what the hell I am doing, why I’m doing it, and should I even keep bothering. The answer to the last question is YES YES YES because this is something I love to do and I’m doing it because it makes me happy. Maybe I’ll just avoid group shows in future because too often I don’t get enough out of them other than something to put on my resume, and I already have enough of those.

Below is part of the submission I put together for Eco Madness. I had proposed four of the Imaginary Girl nature themed portraits and two were accepted into the show. At the very least it was an interesting exercise in writing down thoughts I’ve had around some of these portraits. The image below is a mock up of how I wanted to hang the grouping of four images.

Artist Statement:
My nature themed photos are a small grouping of images within a larger portrait series of women titled, “Imaginary Girl”. My intent when using natural settings is to convey a strong connection between the human subject and the environment. It is as if they are woodland creatures peering between the leaves that frame them. The women are fully integrated into the natural setting rather than merely using it as a backdrop. The idea is that nature is a place of nurture for human beings as it is for every other living creature. It is a place to slow down and clear one’s head, to recharge and become centered, and to take shelter.

I know I am made from this earth,
as my mother’s hands were made from this earth,
as her dream came from this earth and all that I know, I know in this earth…
and I long to tell you,
you who are earth too,
and listen as we speak to each other of what we know:
the light is in us.

~ Susan Griffin

Altered Book: Forgotten Knowledge

June 30, 20102 Comments

For the past two weeks I’ve been working on a proposal to do a large scale project of altered books. I’ve never done something like this before so it’s been quite a challenge to figure out the best way to approach working with multiple books in a series. Normally I make my altered books as one-of-a-kind pieces and can spend as much as ten hours on each one. For this project I’ve had to simplify how I work with them, come up with a common theme, and develop a process I can apply to making each one.

My plan is to take twenty-five volumes of a set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias and insert natural objects into a niche custom cut from the pages of each book. The book pictured here is the second one I’ve completed, and as you can see the shape I had to cut was fairly complicated. The objects I chose to work with in this piece are two seal vertebrae scavenged for me from Pebbly Beach, Bowen Island, by Anne. The bones are very beautiful and I like their odd shapes protruding from the pages like two gargoyle faces.

I was over on Bowen last weekend and spent most of a walk along the beach and forest collecting things to use for this project. I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to come up with twenty-five different items but I came home with piles of stuff to work with.

Pictured here are crab bits, drift wood, oyster mushrooms, a pine cone, lichen, seaweed, and bones from a deer. (I had to scrounge through decaying remains to collect those, which is not for everyone).

I’ll reveal more about this project in coming weeks. For now I’m counting down as I work my way through the twenty-five volumes. As of today there are twenty-two more to go.

Kirsten Chursinoff: Low Tide

June 14, 2010

Kirsten Chursinoff has been working hard over the last few months to create new work for her upcoming show, Low Tide. As mentioned in a previous blog post, she’s a fibre artist who creates colourful scenes of nature using quilting and embroidering techniques. Her current work explores the theme of marine life found along the West Coast of BC.

From Kirsten’s press release:
With ‘Low Tide’ I’ve focused on the marine creatures found along the coast of British Columbia, especially at low tide, but also plunging a little deeper into our emerald sea – exploring the illustrative qualities of embroidery and art quilting.

The show opens Thursday June 17th from 6 to 8pm, at the Crafthouse Gallery on Granville Island. Kirsten will also be doing an artist talk on June 22nd at 7pm, with details below on how to RSVP to attend.

Kirsten Chursinoff: Low Tide
Craft Council Gallery, Crafthouse
1386 Cartwright St.
Granville Island, Vancouver.
June 17 to July 25, 2010 Open 10-6 daily
Artist Talk: Tues. June 22, 7pm, RSVP for artist talk to kirsten (at) chursinoff (dot) com

A Visit to the Rennie Collection

June 13, 2010

It probably says a lot about me that I’d never heard of Bob Rennie the “condo king” before visiting the new gallery showing his art collection. Along with his reputation as a top name in Vancouver real estate, he’s also a passionate collector of contemporary art and is the owner of the third largest private art collection in Canada. The newly renovated Wing Sang building, located on Pender Street in Chinatown, houses the aforementioned gallery owned by Rennie. I visited the other week to view it’s second ever show.

(An example of Richard Jackson’s work. Not from the show).

The current exhibition is a retrospective of the collected works of Richard Jackson. He’s a contemporary artist working with painting and sculpture, and is very much influenced by his background as an engineer. He’s all about the concept of what he creates rather than the content and uses multiple canvases and thick layers of paint to create wildly colourful abstract installations across the walls. Many of his pieces involve a huge amount of paint and were created on site in the gallery. I was really impressed with the show not just for the quality of the work but because of how well the show was put together. It’s rare to see an art show in Vancouver as tightly curated and as polished at this one was.

Even if contemporary art is not your thing, the architecture alone is worth a visit. The Wing Sang building is one of the oldest in Chinatown and they’ve done an extraordinary job of restoring it while maintaining some of the original details. My favorite spot was the rooftop garden with its excellent view of the city. The space is half covered in aged metal beams as a patio, and half in a lush lawn with two permanently installed sculptures from the collection. There were also red poppies blooming in planters placed around the edges of the roof and a blue sky overhead to complete the picture of a lovely oasis hidden from the city. I could’ve stayed up there for hours enjoying the sun.

To go on a guided tour of the Rennie Collection you need to reserve a space on their website. The tours are free and take place three times a day on Tuesday and Thursdays with a maximum of fifteen people at a time. I highly recommend you do it.

Becoming a Paper Engineer

May 10, 20101 Comment

Last week I began exploring the idea of creating books with pop-ups and movable parts. I was inspired by an artist call for submissions and decided to use this as an excuse to push even further the creative possibilities of my altered books. My first step was to go to Chapters and start looking at pop-up books in the children’s section to get a feel for how these things are constructed. I was really blown away by some of the books I found. [1][2][3]

I ended up purchasing Paper Engineering and Pop-ups for Dummies because it seemed to be an excellent resource for the kind of information I was looking for. None of the sample projects involve incorporating the techniques into existing books but they will help develop my own ideas.

So far I’ve been experimenting using the projects in the book as a jumping off point, and I’m trying to focus on learning the technique rather than trying to produce a finished product. The above two photos are of two pop-up cards I created using cardstock. I came up with my own design rather than following the instructions because I really didn’t want to make a pop-up card with hearts. I kept things simple though and made sure not to worry about what I was making. It’s important to “let go” when experimenting.

This airplane card is my first attempt at creating a pull mechanism, and again I was modifying the idea to suit my own purposes while learning the technique. It’s fascinating learning how to create a mechanism out of paper because it is way more complex on the inside than the simple movement of pulling the tab on the outside would imply.

This 3-D paper pop-up of a lotus flower is a design I came across online as a video demonstration. It looks really beautiful and complicated, but it’s actually very simple and made from a single piece of paper.

Next up, exploring more techniques and translating what I learn into creating an altered book with found objects and moving parts.

Altered Book: King of the Beasts

April 27, 20104 Comments

I’ve had a love of lions since I was a kid because I was born under the astrological sign of Leo. I have also always wanted one as a pet because taking a lion for a walk would be so cool, at least until it decided to eat someone, or someone’s dog, or me. I have a whole list of inappropriate pets but for now I’m maintaining things at one small bird and two small fish. But I digress…

I think the significance of lions as my birth sign made it difficult to settle on just the right setting for this wooden lion in an altered book. I tried to make him a home in about three or four of the previous books but nothing felt right. I ended up doing a bit of internet research on lions to help inspire me but the reality of the situation for these creatures in the wild is quite depressing. They once ranged all over parts of Europe, Asia, India and all of Africa and now have mostly been wiped out in the wild.

More of my research led me to the rich symbolism of lions. They are often called “King of the Jungle”, but this is a misnomer since they don’t live in jungles at all but prefer to dwell in savannah grasslands and semi-arid plains. In ancient cultures the lion is considered a solar animal symbol (Leo is a sun sign) but lions are actually nocturnal. I took all of these bits of information and tried to incorporate them into the imagery of the book.

The rolled pages with brown leaves stamped on them became the grassy plains and also reference the jungle, while the stylized wood pieces (from a musical instrument) are the palace of the king of beasts. The two tarot cards were a lucky find so that I could include both the sun and the moon in the book. The crown on the lion’s head was the finishing touch that I added as an afterthought but it gives it the right bit of whimsy and ties things together.

Materials used: book, tarot cards, wooden toy lion, wooden musical instrument parts, Japanese paper, rubber stamp and ink, and gel medium.

Altered Book: Living Well, Sip by Sip

April 22, 20102 Comments

First off the basic idea of this book, the style of folding the pages, was completely inspired by a wonderful altered book by Sharon McCartney. I liked the shape created by folding the pages in half lengthwise and tucking each one into the book. I also loved the idea of creating a niche within folded pages to contain an object instead of ones glued together flat as I’ve done in the past.

This work started out as a home for a wooden lion, and then was briefly destined to be a home for a wooden kangaroo. Neither seemed quite right so I brought out the stack of teacups to play with. These little teacups have been waiting in the wings for awhile to make their way into a book. I wanted them to be stacked irregularly, and with this book I managed to pull it off. Only the cups at the top and the bottom of the stack are attached to the book, the rest float freely and can twirl and twist in place. (See the video at the bottom of this blog post for a demo.)

I was thinking about the idea of “tea time” as I worked on this, so I chose a few small gears from my collection of watch parts to decorate the end pages along the side. There are also two small spoons to tie into the tea theme. I bought these from RubyDog’s Art House as part of a tiny cutlery set, and the spoons are my favorite.

To demonstrate the moving part in this altered book I shot this quick video using my laptop’s built in camera. You’ll need to turn the sound up on your computer because it’s a bit quiet.

Materials used: book, card stock, watch gears, metal spoon, ceramic teacups, rubber stamp & ink, metallic paper decorations, and gel medium.

Canvas to the Imagination

Rachael Ashe – Art | Craft | Life

Category: art