Materials and creativity
Second Edition / June 2020
Welcome to the second issue of Haus-a-rest. In this issue we explore the wonder and invention of artists. In lock down or not, there are no materials that are not fair game for adaption, combination and making. As before each artist submitted an image and three lines of insight. The open call was overwhelming with submissions from all over the world.
In this issue we explore materials and how they can be combined to create but with the added twist of being at home and with limited access to supply. Necessity became the mother of invention. With comment from Susie Olczak., Paul Neale, Avishay Zawoznik and Divya Sharman.
A big smile form me and a huge thank you to everyone involved.
Thank you, Jenna
Changing Landscapes
During lock down all objects within the house started to look like potential materials. I would sit and spy a chair or cupboard and consider, can I use this? The shed was raided, as was the airing cupboard. I returned to lino printing and discovered how to use a sewing machine borrowed from my daughter, I started to print this piece but quickly ran out of fabric Then I had the idea to call out to my local neighbourhood. Help, artist in need of old shirts and rags. Bag loads of old materials were left at my door and I was off. This is an on-going piece with 262 printed pieces sewn together as my home landscape changes.
Jenna Fox
Instagram: Jennafoxartist
Rest
Artist name
Susan Williams MRSS
DescriptionI found the wool in my cupboard and drew a body shape on my sofa.
It was inspired by a 48 hour art challenge by The Royal Standard.
The work looked like an absurdly relaxed body with undertones of a crime scene outline of a dead body, eternal rest.
Website
www.susanwilliamsart.com www.axisweb.org/p/swilliams https://vimeo.com/user42447236 https://www.instagram.com/susanwilliamsart/
PODCAST
Listen to Divya Sharman has interviwed students of art from across genres and continents
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/articulate/id1511768315
Earth, Fire, Air, and Water
I’m driven by materials and the challenge of different processes. I make work which combines and contrasts them. For example, making a heavy object look like it’s propped up with a fragile form. I often think about the hierarchy of materials and why one is seen as more significant. I’ve transitioned from using architectural materials, known for ‘proper’ sculpture, like metal, glass and stone. Now I use paper, card and tape. I consider only using more irreversible options when the work will have a long-term home. This allows a more sustainable but also playful approach to making. My interest in materiality began with clay, using this malleable substance to create sculptures that ranged from handheld to as tall as myself. Experimenting with the Japanese art of Raku and seeing the surface of the ceramics crackle as a result of heat. I revisited Raku recently with Charles Ogilvie using his London garden pond to cool ceramics fired in our homemade kiln.
I learnt to weld whilst living in Kyoto, Japan. I’d tried it once before but was very much a beginner and the language barriers meant an added challenge. I also poured bronze as part of a lost wax bronze casting project. We were given detailed instructions in Japanese and then turning to us two British students we were told “ganbatte” which translates as good luck. It was a baptism of fire so to speak. I then learnt how to TIG on a residency at Benson Sedgwick Engineering. It was fun to have some of the men coming to ask me if I would quickly TIG something up for them towards the end. In such a male dominated world, I felt this was a great testament to the way I was brought up alongside my three brothers. In my house I was taught that as a women I could do whatever I set my mind to.
Stone was the next material I found that kept coming up within my work. Both the use of real stone and imitating it. My first studio was shared with a stone carver and I learnt so many skills. For example being able to polish metal is a similar process to stone, as is knowing how to make anything square and level. It’s interesting when working with something both physically difficult to pick up and manoeuvre. It’s also sobering to realise you are working with a material that is geologically so old. So layered and often with unexpected details inside waiting to be uncovered.
Neon and glass are two of my favourite materials. Neon becomes a way of containing and controlling the shape of light. Like stone it uses gas, a substance that is millions of years old. I enjoy combining it with unusual materials like stone or submerging it into water. Water comes up again and again. I experiment with containing it, submerging into it, projecting onto it or reflecting into it.
Susie Olczak 5th June 2020
Recommended web site for on-line lectures and artist connections: https://consciousisolation.wixsite.com/consciousisolation
Lock Down Stories
Author Avishay Zawoznik (IG: @zavishh)
A selection of pieces from 30 days of isolation, creation and sharing While personal space reduced following the COVID-19 crisis, space for creation and self-expression only expanded. People’s filters and barriers have vanished as humanity was eager to share its dramatically changed way of living. One of the greatest manifestations of this phenomenon has been the Instagram “story” – A feature for uploading pictures, videos and text, available for only 24 hours from time of posting. The combination of a temporary platform and a new way of living has brought people to upload content that reveals an impressive representation of the spirit of times, be it directly or indirectly. During a period of 30 lock down days, I gathered fresh Instagram stories by random, isolated people across the globe and mashed them together into new musical and visual short pieces, built solely from snippets of their footage and sounds. Results were uploaded daily to my own Instagram story, how could I not? The daily pieces included sounds of musicians practising alone in their houses, some wearing their masks, along with less conventional sounds – the disassembling of a puzzle, the scrambling of an egg, the inelegant landing from a handstand, and more. Some examples of snippets from the complete project featured worldwide pep talks in light of the situation, sounds of the flipping through a Haggadah on the eve of Passover, a blessing for Ramadan during the holiday, and geothermal bubbles from Iceland on Earth Day. Thus, the project became a collection of short stories, making a whole, diverse, vivid account of these weird times, a silver lining of unintentional togetherness for the cloudy isolation we’re all sharing. Watch it here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB15xHdm6AE
The Kitchen Sink Project: Unapologetically Creating Space
Written by: Naomi Even-Aberle
The Kitchen Sink Project was first visualized and imagined when I was in my last semester of graduate school; and we, as soon-to-be graduating MFA candidates, were asked about our goals. At the time, one of my goals was to be a guest curator and be invited all over the world to curate exhibitions, galleries, community events, and maybe even a Biennale - or two. Lofty goals at the time, and in some cases seemed impossible.
I had very little curatorial experience under my belt, and I was worried that my visual arts focus on martial arts and communities would not be the springboard into curation that I wanted and needed to move forward.
One of my professors told me a story about how he gained his curatorial experience by curating a 10" x 10" x 6" box. He gave it a gallery title and worked with artists from all over the world to curate tiny travel shows in this box. He basically gave me permission to create my own opportunity and unapologetically build experiences to achieve my goals. Thus, The Kitchen Sink Project was not only envisioned but created in the fall of 2019.
Now The Kitchen Sink Project is a curatorial and exhibition project between myself and my husband, Nik Aberle, in Rapid City, South Dakota USA. We are taking inspiration from the phrase, "everything but the kitchen sink". The phrase originated around the early 1900s and the first print reference can be found in 1918 in the newspaper The Syracuse Herald. The expression became popular during World War II, where it was said that everything but the kitchen sink was thrown at the enemy. As artists, we believe that creating space to nurture, grow, and share the process and work of other artists is important. To this end, we curate an exhibition space within our very own kitchen. Unlike the original idiom, the project strives to leave nothing out - even saying yes to the kitchen sink.
This project has been an integral part of coping and working through the pandemic. So far we have a full year scheduled out with amazing artists from all over the world and a large diverse exploration of medium and content. We have worked with a painter from Pakistan, a video collage artist from Macedonia, a performance video artist from Detroit, and we have many more artists scheduled. The learning curve has been pretty steep in determining how to give space and agency to artists and maintain an identity and goal that is also true to The Kitchen Sink Project. My role is the connector and planner, while my husband's role is behind the scenes, doing tech set up, and being an idea generator. It works well for us, and it has brought us closer together and provided amazing energy to our relationship and our respective art practices.
Since both of us are artists our selection process is quite diverse - because we ourselves make very different art. Personally, my favourite part is being able to meet and engage with other artists and artistic practices. My personal artistic exploration has exploded since working and meeting other artists from around the world. I now have more ideas than I know what to do with and The Kitchen Sink Project connects with more and more people every exhibition.
Lock down. Creativity. Materiality Author Paul Neale
As this utter catastrophe was kicking off, just before lock down, it is doubtful that anyone deliberately sat down and wrote the three words above with a view to ameliorating their own personal situation.. Changes have been foisted upon us, as the powers that be grapple ineffectively with the unforeseen, desperately spinning their ineptitude into a coping strategy for the nation's salvation. It is now seriously weird out there. And it will remain so.
Lock down has bought us time and quite frankly, rather a lot of it. For many, the hours, days and weeks are all too easily filled with bewilderment, anxiety and financial worries. Mental health issues for some. The future, as it appears, is not the one people had envisioned for themselves.
We are told to work from home. Artists often do, one way or another and with Covid 19 at the back of the collective mind, many will have come to the conclusion that hammering away at the same old thing is no longer going to work. Time then to listen to those previously ignored inner voices. Time to tease out different strands of creative practice. Time to experiment, re-evaluate and respond. Renegotiating the relationship with materials or more fundamentally with what is at hand, can be crucial at times like this. It is something that artists are doing right now. The results will be interesting. The Pandemic may or may not end up being adequately addressed, nevertheless a new iconography of anxiety and dread is evolving.
It is a challenging time to be an artist, not just in terms of materials and their manipulation. To be an artist now is to accept the challenge of what for
many creative people, is their own personal year zero. We are all artists-in-residence now, at the Covid 19 Arts Centre.
www.paulgneale.blogspot.com
Diaspora artists’ post colonial identity and their experiments with textiles. Author Divya Sharma
This essay focuses on diaspora artists living in Britain navigating and straddling two cultures and have resolving their post colonial identity through materiality and in this context textiles. I talk about the practises of Yinke Shonibare, Lubaina Himid and Jasleen Kaur who understand the versatility of textiles in going a long way in carrying the burden of history to talk about the link between the individual and their national identity.
https://www.artbydivya.com/single-post/2017/10/17/Diaspora-artists%E2%80%99-post-colonial-identity-and-their-experiments-with-textiles
Next issue is the challenge of exhibiting at home
see our open call page for more infomation