'Mount'

Tracing a mountain - elements of work in progress

Silent Collision

September - Equinox - the sunlight just strong enough to expose this sculpture. Like Blue Moon - just smaller - it is a 3-D cyanotype. And like Blue Moon, it consists of nothing but silk threads - and light. However, here two spheres touching each other are embedded in the blue block of vertical threads. Silent Collision was repeatedly exposed to late September’s sunshine thus leading to varying cyan-blue shades that merge into each other.

dimensions: 15cm x 21cm x 44cm

studies

Structures drawn with lead pencil on paper (bottom) and nylon thread 'webbed'  (top) - positive and negative.

Sculptural aspects of language

Two texts from Between the Lines that depict language and writing as something that is tangible, akin to a sculptural process:

On writing, by Max Frisch, (one of my favourite writers) describes vividly that the substance of a text lies between the words and lines. "[...] language is like a chisel, which pares away all that is not a mystery, and everything said implies a taking away." The art is to come as close as possible to the surface of this mystery, to reveal it without scratching its surface, a surface that has no substance "[...] it exists only in the mind and not in Nature, where there is also no dividing line between mountain and sky."
From: Sketchbook 1946 - 1949

Thoughts on words, by Naoki Higashida, compares spoken language to a blue sea in which you can swim, dive and resurface.
From: Fall down 7 times get up 8, a young man's voice from the silence of autism

"...it's kind of like being there"

I like the quietness of her work:

'Vija Celmins is an acclaimed Latvian-American artist whose work is famous for its astonishing patience. She can take a year or more to make a woodcut that portrays in minute detail the surface of the sea. A postcard of her work now sits above my desk, a reminder of the power of slow thinking.' 
From: The New York Review of Books Disarming the Weapons of Mass Distraction by Madeleine Bunting



Vija Celmins:
“I have been painting this image for maybe three years, on and off. So, you know, tedious for some, for me it's kind of like being there. [...]
I've always liked the scientific image because it is sort of anonymous. [...]
I still really like a lot of solitude - it's impossible to do anything without it. [...]”

'Abbrechen'

The art of throwing sand - while simultaneously pressing the shutter button.
This happened while clearing up Aufbrechen.


Taking down temporary work is part of the process, so to speak. I remember it was fun.


Rediscovered while sifting and sorting images & documentation.

Blue Moon

More photos of Blue Moon: The photogram of a sphere, cyanotyped into a body of silk threads that are attached to and sewn into two acrylic glasses.

Capturing the luminosity in a sculpture like this is one of those things. The camera "sees" an image that looks quite different from what my eyes see - as if it has its own idea of how to "translate" luminosity, shading and depth into 2D.

Blue Moon was photographed with nothing but the natural November light filtering through the north-facing studio window, and thus became a subject for familiarising myself with the manual settings of our camera...

New blog:

between the lines is a growing archive of texts - texts that accompany me and I keep returning to, lines that make me muse and think.

Globe's sister

A dream come true: Globe's sister so to speak - but while the former has been screen-printed, Blue Moon is cyanotyped: white silk-threads have been dyed with a photosensitive solution and exposed to sunlight. In other words - the sphere has been 'blue-printed' into a body of white silk-threads that are sewn to two acrylic glasses.
Depending on lighting the blue varies from royal blue to a dark cyan.
Thus, this was - and is - a photo challenge too.



Details


silk-thread, acrylic glass, weights (sash window)
33cm x 33cm x 82cm (109cm including weights)
Read more about the process here.
see also Themes / Process (May- September 2017)

work by other artists

Korean artist Seon Ghi Bahk
http://mymodernmet.com/jaehyo-lee-stone-installations/
mymodernmet.com/seon-ghi-bahk-an-aggregate-charcoal-sculptures
--------
zhu jinshi suspends boat with 8,000 sheets of folded rice paper
https://www.designboom.com/art/zhu-jinshi-suspends-boat-with-8000-sheets-of-folded-rice-paper-12-12-2013/
---------
Xawery Wolski knitted wire
https://xwolski.com/art/general/
------
Sabine Reckewell
sabinereckewell.com/sabinereckewell.com/Linear_Installations__1979-1981
----
Sui Park
www.suipark.com
www.behance.net/spark19

Blueprint

After a lengthy exposure period - it turned autumn and sun light is receding... this threaded silk piece has been processed as any cyanotype / photo / photogram:

exposure - stop(bath) - rinse and dry

--------
PS: this was four years ago - a layered version.

www.ruthasawa.com


image source

“An artist is not special. An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.”
Ruth Asawa