Geekography

I have a MILLION (okay, 13) other things to be doing at the moment, but I’m so excited about the project I’m working on at the moment that I’m skipping ahead. 
It’s called: ‘Happiness Is…’
it is a community postcard project (think PostSecret/Candy Chang/art therapy/questionnaire kinda mash-up) where you can write, draw, paint whatever you want in response to the question: ‘What makes you happy?’
I’m sending the cards out to as many people as I can in the hope that I’ll get at least a few replies to hand in with my own at the end of the year (and if I get enough, maybe display them on one of the art campuses?)

More posts about his very soooooon, but for now here is the template. You can photo reply to this post or email me if you’re not a tumblr user.

So… postcards… how to they link in?

After seeing Oona Grimes talk about her personal experience with postcards (Postcards From the 7th Floor) it was decided. My medium was going to be postcards. I knew I wanted to do something via the post anyway, after Moyra Davey and Eugenio Dittborn included it so successfully in their works, but once Oona Grimes discussed postcards as well as how she benefited from collaboration, I knew I had the seed of an idea in my hands.

Happiness Is…?

The Happiness Is…  concept came from a combination of Candy Chang’s collaborative projects and PostSecret’s ‘group therapy’ style approach. I wanted to do something that people would appreciate, not just put up with. Something people would want to join in with, enjoy being a part of. I wanted to take the idea of anonymity and make it optional, too. Sometimes people want their voices to be heard.

So, what’s next?

Next is for me to design and create postcards and send/give them out, hopefully to people from different backgrounds, to get a range of results. I want people to be able to do them in their own time, to be able to sit and think without time constraints.

New York Diary: Postcards!

I have an unhealthy obsession with postcards. Black and white postcards line the walls of my room (I pick them up wherever I can and it’s become kind of an obsession), I always send them when I’m on holiday and more than anything, I love getting them in the post. They are a snapshot in time, a teeny fragment of what is happening in that person’s life… you only have a small amount of space so you have to think carefully about what is important, what needs to be said. 

Unfortnately though, we don’t send them as much as we used to (myself excluded, I send enough for everyone), and they’re becoming less and less common outside of tourist destinations. I remember as a child my village used to have its own postcards, despite never seeing any tourists. It was just for people to say hello to one another. To catch up.

The exception to this, is of course, PostSecret. Frank Warren’s enormously successful community mail art project. Thousands of people have submitted postcards via PostSecret since it began in 2005 (myself included) and many have since been compiled into books. In my eyes, it cts as a form of therapy. People tell Frank the secrets they can’t tell anyone else; keeping it vague and anonymous means no-one will know it is you, but at the same time, your secret can help others. Sometimes they are funny, others are sad, overwhelming. Some make you angry. The amount of emotion someone can put across on such a small piece of card is incredible.

New York Diary: Pigtown Books Publishing Party

Somehow my stepmum (who works in New York) managed to blag us some tickets to a publishing party… yeah, I don’t know how she does it either… but anyway: 

I met some amazing people, people who change business cards like currency.

Richard Amari - A comic book writer and illustrator (and undoubtedly one of the coolest people I’ve met) and Meredith Mundy -  a children’s book editor, Lynwood Shiva Sawyer - a writer and freelance publisher, his lovely wife Jill and Ann - a New York librarian. We went for sushi. It was yummy. Someone asked to have their picture taken with me because they thought I was famous… it was a good day.

And of course, I wouldn’t want to forget the lovely Tony Lo Bianco - actor in The French Connection, who promised (with a wink) to find me film work should I ever find myself lost in New York. 

New York Diary: The Met

Oh my god, the Metropolitan Museum. There are no words. It is the most incredible place, full of the most beautiful things. I was told endless times before I visited: “It’s only a suggested contribution, you don’t have to pay to go in,” but I wanted to, because somehow I knew I was going to love it.

Burne-Jones, Dali, Klimt, Hopper. If there had been Waterhouse and Rossetti, there would have been all my favourite artists under one roof…. dreamy.

However, as much as I love them (the pre-raphaelites especially) I only want to include relevant pictures in my research, so I kept out as many as I could (a few may still creep in though…)

Edward Hopper

Hopper’s ability to capture a moment has always astounded me. Since the first time I saw Nighthawks, I have been in awe of his attention to detail, his ability to suspend a second in time, just by the looks on the faces of his subjects. To me, his style emulates how painting was before the advent of photography; observational drawing, without the carelessness shown by some more modern-day painters.

Office in a Small City

Tables For Ladies

Alphonse Maria Mucha

Mucha’s piece Maude Adams as Joan of Arc was originally designed as a poster advertising Friedrich Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans. The aesthetic quality is incredible, it puts modern-day movie posters to shame!

Chuck Close

Lucas

Mark

And I’m just going to quietly mention Klimt….

<3

New York Diary: MoMa; selected related works

Sanja Ivekovic - Lady Rosa of Luxembourg (from Sweet Violence)

A beautiful piece of artwork with an incredibly controversial background (story here), but the part I am most interested in is at the base of the sculpture. 

Ivekovic includes rows of words that at some point or another have been used to describe herself, or her piece Lady Rosa. Shown here:

it is especially effective as the use of several languages makes the text internationally identifiable, therefore bridging the gap that using text in art can create. The choice of words and phrases such as ‘whore’ next to ‘La Resistance’ juxtaposes strength and weakness, showing all sides to the piece. I feel like viewers can relate to Ivekovic’s sculpture because she is a martyr, and I believe most of us have felt that way at some point in our lives. It is endearing, powerful and most of all, different.

Barbara Kruger

I love Barbara Kruger’s work. Seeing a piece of hers up on the wall and not just on the pages of some falling-apart book in Sion Hill library was kind of a dream come true. I wouldn’t say there were many artists in the last… hundred years or so that I genuinely admire, but Kruger is one of them. Her feminist standpoint, her inclusion of text, her combination of black and white and red; I just love it. 

Untitled (more commonly known as You Invest in the Divinity of the Masterpiece)

Christopher Wool

People seemed to have one of two reactions upon seeing Chrisopher Wool’s Untitled. They grimaced or they laughed. Despite the distinct lack of grotesque imagery, or imagery of any kind, Wool’s painting had the ability to provoke a strong reaction from its viewers, which is very impressive.

I love the bold, dark letter, they are matter-of-fact in a military kind of fashion. It feels as though we are being told there are cats, in a bag, in a river and there is nothing we can do about it. It may not be happening right now, because there is no punctuation and therefore no sense of urgency; but we are helpless to stop it. Clever. 

New York Diary: More MoMa!

Louise Bourgeois - No (3) second version and No (3) second version variant  

I love Louise Bourgeois’ No prints. I should probably start by saying I love nything that includes typography, because that is what immediately draws my eye in modern art. They say a picture tells a thousand words…. well, so can a word. For me, Bourgeois’ No is all about defiance, and not just in the common sense of the word. The repetition, to men, seems as though she is not only emphasising its importance, but strengthening its meaning. The inclusion of the two monochrome variations adds a sense of juxtaposition in everything except the message. To me, it is all about strength.

Louise Bourgeois is known for her work being autobiographical, with wikipedia describing her as the founder of confessional art.

Photostat, 1973

Kit Lee

There’s something about Kit Lee’s Murine Tears Plus which is a little haunting. I’m not sure if it is the washed out look of the image, or my attempt at deriving meaning from it. My immediate thought is ‘tears’. It looks like a pill packet or medicine, but the inclusion of the word tears makes me wonder exactly why the artist has chosen this brand.

Ellen Gallagher

Ellen Gallagher’s DeLuxe pokes fun at advertising. Gallagher takes images from wig advertisements, mostly from the 1940s-60s and edits them in a somewhat grotesque way. It is reminiscent of magazines in a dentist’s waiting room: moustaches and monobrows drawn on by children. But obviously there is more to it than that. Gallagher says she was originally attracted to wig adverts because of their grid-like structure, but came to realise it wasn’t just that, but the accompanying narrative which went alongside, and began to tell a story (source).

Georg Herold

Will The Russians Go To War? was one of the hardest pieces to find the name of in my notes, simply because I couldn’t see the connection between the title and the subject matter! Once I began to research the topic, however, the connection became more clear. After translating a few of the letters pasted to the wooden structure, I realised that they relate to the title, each one is an opinion, political quote, analogy etc about the war. The structure is reminiscent of fencing, but one can’t help but relate to the most famous wooden structure of all time, the crucifix. The papers attached to the structure tell the stories and opinions of many, some controversial, held up for all to see.

Mariana Castillo Deball 

Mariana’s paper folding at the MoMa made me look at things in a different way. Every mark and line was deliberate, folded as delicately and purposefully as a piece of Japanese origami. It made me look closer at the work, try to figure out what each image was trying to depict. 

New York Diary: MoMa

Look! It’s me, in New York! I don’t look very excited… but trust me, I am.

The Museum of Modern Art is somewhere I have always wanted to go. Especially since I visited in December 2010 for four days and didn’t have time to cross it off my to-do list. Needless to say, I left a day for it this time.

I was there all day and I still didn’t manage to take it all in. I mean, I wouldn’t usually consider myself a fan of modern art, but I could’ve sat and stared at Robert Rauschenberg’s Surface Series for hours:

(album here.)

James Rosenquist - F-111

James Rosenquist’s enormous oil-on-canvas painting, to me, relates strongly to the work of Warhol and Lichtenstein. Rosenquist was working at the same time as these two, and F-111 burst him onto the pop art scene. 
(Personally, I prefer the accompanying sketces. They act as pieces of a puzzle, showing the thought behind each section of the finished piece.)
F-111 has the bright colours, familiar imagery and contrast of meaning that conform to the guidelines of art in the popular style, but the composite materials and methods used in the fifteen collages are, in my opinion, the real success story of the piece.

Eugenio Dittborn

Dittborn’s work is centred largely around travel. His airmail artworks, such as this one (8 Survivors, 1986) are created on a large sheet, folded and posted in specially made envelopes. Once they arrive, the sheet is unfolded and displayed alongside the envelope. I think the distance travelled adds to the story, and a bit like Moyra Davey’s work in the Whitney, every mark just adds to the character. 

The faces themselves aren’t of specific people, but, taken from newspapers, magazines, police photographs, children’s drawings and ethnographic textbooks, they represent survival itself. Dittborn was living in Chile when it was under military dictatorship, which is clearly where a lot of his inspiration has been acquired; the faces of 8 Survivors are said to represent the thousands of political prisoners that went ‘missing’ at this time.

I like the idea of mailing artwork. I’m not sure why but I feel like this has been the inspiration I have been looking for; the printing techniques, the use of mail as an art form (or in this case, more of a form of escapism) and the colours are all areas I could draw inspiration from