Studio Work ABOUT my art & others

 by Theo Jansen a brand new 18-meter-long  Strandbeest  scuttles across the sands of a beach in The Netherlands in this video by Dutch Artist Theo Jansen, who has been releasing his otherworldly creatures each year since 1990 Throughout the summer, Jansen experimented with connecting several units together, which could work in succession.   Animaris Rex  s a herd of beach animals whose specimens hold each other as defense against storms,” he says. “As individuals, they would simply blow over, but as a group, the chance of surviving a storm would be greater.” Propelled by the wind with a series of large sails, the individual modules move in tandem to form a single entity. taken  from 'thiscollossal'  - a fabulous art 'magazine' that comes to my email regularly.  Colossal is worth a traipse around - be prepared to go down many a rabbit hole. ..... Gina

This print has come from the #pocketfinds i had been conducting over last summer.  Collecting plants, shells, stones, etc and rearranging them to photograph became an ongoing project.  (so many ongoing projects including writing haiku, collage and research each day/week). I wrote about the #pocketfinds project  here  and i put up a short video of some of the pieces here including this book. I have decided to float this one out as a limited print -  details here. I would love to hear what you think.

I ordered book board - archival acid free - but got the thickness wrong (no surprise there).  It was so thin i could not use it for book covers at all ... so i went into my default 'what if' ... and a book idea percolated to the surface of my brain.   here it is in progress. working on another 'what if' book idea - for a workshop - going to finish the idea first and then send out information on a workshop to make the book (contact me if you are interested in getting update email regarding the workshop and details)

  Asemic work represents the need to be immersed in the intuitive awareness of things. I have been making asemic works long before it became 'fashionable'. I started out in the 90's as a calligrapher studying by snail mail for 2 years via the Digby Stuart College in London.  I soon realised, having mastered the various styles (italic, Roman, Celtic, Copperplate, etc) that the freeform mark making excited me most.  I was inspired by Mark Tobey, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns and Willem de Koonig. There is a meditational element to asemic, working with silence and illegibility to express what cannot be described.  Mark making, abstraction, non objective taking one to the depths of being, of consciousness beyond the literal. I began writing about my forays into asemic here . and a little asemic book is talked through on our you tube channel .

 i am getting ready to do more chemigrams as soon as the rain (and winter) clears. Spring maybe, summer definitely.   So what is a chemigram? Here is a technical rundown - in short:  A chemigram is a camera-less photographic image.  You apply darkroom chemicals directly onto photo paper resulting in a unique, abstract image.  This technique is a mix of photography, drawing, printmaking.  Artistic experimentation, i think, is key. Mark making experiments yield a diversity of possibilities. This is undertaken by applying resists, allowing light to affect the paper (exposure), and placing the paper into developer and fixer solutions.  The image relies on direct interaction with the darkroom chemicals on the photographic paper. Outcomes are affected by the different resists, chemical interactions and exposure times resulting in unique and often abstract images.  have a look at the book of experiments i created whilst exploring chemigram technqiu...