2nd Year Assessment

Assessment morning arrived with great anticipation at SCA. Everyone was happy with he way their work had turned out and it was great to see it all finally installed.

        Me, Kirstie and my work Portrait of the Young Man as New Romantic

                    Portrait of the Young man as New Romantic 2010

2nd year Glass and the wonderful Kirstie (centre) behind Spike's glass maze 9/11/10

Katie-Ann and her fabulous mirrored apples

Sarah and her blue glass curve

Nadine and her glass safe

Jane's wall of Tribal people

                                Katie-Ann and Sarah trying out Sarah's dessert bowl

Should have used a spoon

SCA Last Meeting of the year

Here are a couple of photos from our last studio meeting of the year. It is a very busy time for everyone - hence the need to eat lunch while listening!

L-R Katie-Ann, Kayo, Jane, Sue, Erica,Karen and half of Nadine.

L-R Erica, Karen (seated), Spike, Wayne, Nadine and Rob.

Mutant Materials 10

Just found an article on the facebook page for New Glass Art and Photography Berlin featuring one of my favourite images - the daguerrotype that is credited with being the worlds first proper photograph.
We looked at this image in our art theory class earlier this year and I think it is just beautiful so it was nice to see it pop up on this link from their page.

The story is that the exposure time for this image was ten minutes so all the people that were passing by in the street didn't stay still long enough to register on the photo - all except for the guy who was standing having his shoes shined. This is what makes the image look quite strange - it seems like this normally busy city street is totally deserted in the middle of the day except for the one guy having his shoes shined seemingly oblivious to the fact that the city is deserted.

This last image brings me back to the beginning of my work on Mutant Materials for the moment - to where I started in post one with a Daguerrotype photograph and the history of photographic images on glass. 

For my own work I am very interested in the power of these old images, in the history, stories and memories contained in them. For next year I am very much looking forward to exploring the ideas that these images bring up and to exploring how they might cross over into glass and light.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130754296&sc=fb&cc=fp

Mutant Materials 9

Another artist I have been looking at for Mutant Materials is Canadian Jeff Wall.


Wall's illuminated images aren't technically Duratrans, they are actually silver bleach transparencies which are also called Cibachrome (Ilfochrome since 1989) I have had a look at the Ilford website for more information, but it looks like even the ilfochrome has been superceded and photographic paper is not something I wan't to get into at this time, so I'm not pursuing that one. Having said that, I do know that Cibachrome is kind of the forerunner of Duratrans in that it was the most common way of producing large format photographic images before the development of Duratrans. I haven't been able to find out exactly how Wall used the Cibachrome - the image can be transfered from a slide to large format paper/film or the image can be exposed directly onto the paper with a special camera to produce a one-off image, but the effect he has achieved is that of large format lightboxes.
I included Wall in the presentation for a couple of reasons -
1. His images are very much an early version of the Duratrans idea and must have been a great inspiration to artists such as Brown and Green in their methods
2. I love his images and feel that the way they are illuminated gives them such a powerful aura that is quite different to those of Brown and Green or Janet Laurence.
At the time that he made these images, Wall was very interested in Romanticism and the cultural history of the 19th century. He talks about using his works as a crystal and of passing his ideas through a historical prism that has been inspired by other works.
Works in particular that I looked at are -


Destroyed Room 1978. This work was inspired by Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus a work which to wall signified the end of a grand political era that was quickly replaced by an era of introvered domesticity that seemed to him to simmer with unresolved violence.

Picture for Women 1979. This image is a detailed study of Manet's The Bar , a painting which fascinated Wall for it's revelations of the social structures prevalent at the end of the 19th century.

Restoration 1993. This picture is not directly inspired by another work but is an example of Wall working with his ideas on how we connect with our history.

tp://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/image/roomguide/rm1_destroyed_room_lrg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/rooms/room1.shtm&usg=__utM1EQBy77dF076PEkW16V1fQRs=&h=505&w=750&sz=93&hl=en&start=0&sig2=xAttXT3a5UOH8UIsSICQcw&zoom=1&tbnid=QNRnW98djYZ0FM:&tbnh=131&tbnw=167&ei=VY_HTPqFHNSVcfO2rbIF&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDestroyed%2BRoom%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1589%26bih%3D1233%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=121&vpy=81&dur=669&hovh=184&hovw=274&tx=136&ty=96&oei=VY_HTPqFHNSVcfO2rbIF&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=70&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0




http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.eugenedelacroix.org/The-Death-of-Sardanapalus-1827.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.eugenedelacroix.org/The-Death-of-Sardanapalus-1827.html&usg=__AGc8GeAKUi1gHdxzI_-6dBxrbhQ=&h=402&w=470&sz=48&hl=en&start=0&sig2=cqvoyYi4vJsXH5SdvSVusQ&zoom=1&tbnid=0_auMQdmtzPMkM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=172&ei=8I7HTLPDCcS8cZCujbIF&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddeath%2Bof%2Bsardanapalus%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1589%26bih%3D1233%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=508&vpy=74&dur=380&hovh=147&hovw=172&tx=116&ty=127&oei=8I7HTLPDCcS8cZCujbIF&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=69&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0


http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://courses.washington.edu/hypertxt/cgi-bin/12.228.185.206/html/viewer/jeffbar2_400.jpg&imgrefurl=http://viewoncanadianart.com/2008/01/08/thoughts-on-jeff-wallfrom-the-ft/&h=294&w=400&sz=28&tbnid=Xrv9AdfzuPTNvM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3DPicture%2Bfor%2BWomen%2BJeff%2BWall&zoom=1&q=Picture+for+Women+Jeff+Wall&usg=__5NK27uC63rNpSWarVnjgtBB2rYw=&sa=X&ei=tI_HTKWYBYyycY6l4LEF&ved=0CBkQ9QEwAA


http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.daverobinson.id.au/manet_bar_folies_bergere.jpg&imgrefurl=http://warmwarmerdisco.wordpress.com/tag/rull-gud-dj/&h=461&w=615&sz=73&tbnid=QmYYljYdeowXYM:&tbnh=102&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3DManet%2Bthe%2Bbar&zoom=1&q=Manet+the+bar&usg=__kJGWShYy1bxMa_NjGa-q8MW2QNg=&sa=X&ei=-o_HTJvsEIWwcfSt-IUO&ved=0CB4Q9QEwAQ


http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A7826&page_number=3&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Mutant Materials 8

Presentation is done now, so here's a bit about the other artists I was talking about in the presentation.


Janet Laurence.


Janet Laurence's work is primarily concerned with our interaction with the environment and the consequences of that interaction.
Her meticulous explorations have seen her bringing together all manner of natural materials - plant matter, wood, ash, metals, wax and chemicals into works more akin to scientific experiments than just art.
Further to this, Laurence uses systems of classifications - boxes, rows and grids to emphasise the scientific connotations of her materials and her role as alchemist in the creation of her works.
In tandem with her use of natural materials Laurence also employs the use of photographic images taken from nature, which are then reproduced as transparencies and layered over each other to create ghostly vistas of the natural world.
As with Brown and Green it is the intersection of different worlds that give her work it's vigour - the contrast of the tactile "realness" of the natural materials she uses, whether it be a tray of seedings, spray-painted plant stock shrouded in tulle, a stuffed owl in a perspex cloche or a pile of charcoal from a wood fire - these textures are balanced against the subliminal beauty of her photographic images.
It is for these photographic images that Laurence uses Duraclear and Duratrans to great effect. She uses Duraclear mostly to produce images of luminous transparency that layer together to create works with a ghostly aura - in her work Selva Veils 2005 Laurence has had the images printed onto long, large strips of acetate that curl at the edges like a roll of film negatives, these strips have been installed to hang loose and overlapped on the gallery wall as if they are hanging to dry in a darkroom. The imagery seems a soft and subtle memory of a landscape lost. In other works, photographs of ornamental gardens are reproduced on Duraclear to document the effects of human intervention in the landscape, here too, the medium suggests something that is not sustainable and that is of a fundamentally ephemeral nature.

Selva Veils 2005

Duratrans is used by Laurence to make translucent lightboxes such as those in Forensic 1991, where these lightboxes are used to highlight images in her classification works, illuminating her notions on order and disorder in the natural world.

Forensic 1991

In recent times Laurence has started to use Digiglass to construct public works that are of a more durable nature than if they were made of Duratrans - I will look at Digiglass in another blog.
Here are a couple of works using Digiglass.

                                   The Breath We Share 2003

                                              Ghost 2009






More to follow.

Mutant Materials 7

I've been looking at artists who use Duraclear and Duratrans in their work. 

I really love Melbourne artists Lyndall Brown and Charles Green.

They started working together as a collaboration in the late 1980's. in their work they create illusory worlds that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, past and present. They have a shared interest in history and the concept of "memory as archive" - meaning I think, that they use visual records such as old photos, documentation of historical events, etc. as this archive from which they make constructed scenarios that are like strange dreamlike memories. They began by putting together montages in which different views of cultural, social and historical information could be layered to make a new history (or memory). This technique soon led them to rediscover painting - they began to faithfully reproduce these montages as actual paintings and this in turn led them on to start photographing the finished paintings and turn them into the large Duratrans lightboxes that they are now well known for.

The lightboxes have the effect of turning their paintings into huge, magical lantern slides that have a very nostalgic feel to them.

The strange juxtaposition of images, gathered together from such disparate sources as illustrations from old anatomy books, early French and Japanese photography, through to images of earth from space and photographs of beautiful evening skies, combines with the intersection of traditional painting and digital technology to give these works a surreal, ghostly other-worldly effect that is quite sublime. 

Using the back-lit Duratrans lightboxes lends these works a transcendental quality that is very like that of traditional stained glass windows, they are beautiful and powerful in a way that is almost spiritual even though they are constructed out of materials that are in everyday commercial use.

They are represented by Arc One Gallery in Melbourne.

http://arcone.com.au/index.php?navi=Artists&navj=Profile&aid=1&navk=LYNDELL%20BROWN%20&%20CHARLES%20GREEN

Mutant Materials 6

There are three artists I'm looking at in relation to printing and transparent/translucent materials - Jeff Wall from Canada, Melbourne duo Brown and Green and Janet Laurence from Sydney. 


I contacted Janet to talk to her about her materials and methods and consequently spent last weekend working with her to help get her latest exhibition ready for installation - opening night at Breenspace Gallery was last wednesday 22nd september. Although this particular installation was more of a collection of objects (it is a variation on the installation Janet created for the Sydney Biennale this year), very often her work comprises of printed images on glass or duratrans acrylic sheet. These are the works that I am interested in for this assignment.

Lyndall Brown and Charles Green are represented by Arc One Gallery in Melbourne

and a lot of the information I have found is from them.

Jeff Wall's work with illuminated images started before Duratrans and Duraclear were developed, but his work shares similar qualities with that of my other selected artists that make it very interesting to me. 

His more recent images, like this one from White Cube Gallery in London, are quite different to his earlier work, but still retain his intensity of vision.

http://www.janetlaurence.com/2010/04/the-sound-of-green/


ttp://arcone.com.au/index.php?navi=Artists&navj=Exhibition&aid=1&eid=267&navk=LYNDELL%20BROWN%20&%20CHARLES%20GREEN&awid=1929&name=How%20Nature%20Speaks&date=2010


http://www.whitecube.com/artists/wall/

Mutant Materials 5

Digiglass is another method of using digitally printed photographic images with glass.

Digiglass is also now being used as an element in architecture, particularly in public and commercial spaces such as the following:

Washington Hyatt Hotel

In this hotel huge laminated glass boxes have been constructed in the entry foyer with beautiful autumnal tree illustrations on them.

Digiglass has also been used to great effect in the architecture of this Melbourne school.

So, what is Digiglass.

As can be seen in the above illustration from Digiglass's website, this is a method of capturing a digital image between two layers of safety glass. 

This method can be used to produce artwork and illustrations that are suitable for commercial and architectural applications that need to withstand exterior weather conditions. The glass is specially toughened to suit the application and the inks used in the production of the image are uv resistant.

Janet Laurence is using Digiglass on an increasing basis as it is perfect for exterior installation works such as  

                             

                            Ghost Glasshouse 2003

                                            

                                          Ghost 2009

http://www.janetlaurence.com/2009/10/ghost-glasshouse/

http://www.janetlaurence.com/2009/11/ghost/


http://www.digiglass.com.au/

Mutant Materials 4

Duratrans and Duraclear


For the presentation I am going to concentrate on Duratrans and Duraclear. 
These are the trade names for the large format colour transparency film created by Kodak in 1979. 
The film was designed for making large backlit display transparencies for commercial applications - it is widely used in public places such as airports and train stations, shopping centres, fast food outlets, and public spaces for advertising and information purposes on a large scale.

http://www.leachcolour.com/Leach_retail/Pages/DuraTrans.html

http://www.signbuyer.co.uk/duratran-transparencies-2015-p.asp

http://www.spectrumfoto.com/printing.html

http://www.eacgs.com/products/duratran

The photographic image is reproduced from a negative onto a large format film that can then be applied to an acrylic substrate for support when being built into a lightbox.

The features of Duratrans and Duraclear are:

High resolution images at 300dpi for crisp edges and true colour.

Variable pixel size to ensure smooth colour transitions.

Higher colour saturation than with other processes.

Higher opacity black for crisper images.

Long pigment colour life than inkjet printing.

The following websites have got good information on the product.

http://duratrans.com/

http://duratrans.com/faq.php

http://www.visiongraphics.com.au/duratrans.php

http://www.bpconcepts.com.au/Content_Common/pg-Duratrans.seo

Mutant Materials 3

Frescography


Frescography* is a method of producing room-scale digital images that can be realised on paper, canvas or glass.
Murals are composed from a data bank of images that can be re-configured to suit the space and the required design and are then digitally printed. The technology uses CAM software programs such as Dreamworlds Design Studio**, Frescomaster and Artshop which are all capable of producing large scale images on wide format printers - most commonly the vutek*** printer.

*http://www.dreamworlds.com/frescography/
**http://www.frescography.com/
***http://www.efi.com/products/production/superwide/VUTEk/index_ad.asp?      gclid=CNrn5o2yg6QCFQ25bwodUwsuHg

Mutant Materials 2

Printing and glass, it seems to me, really goes back to the origins of photography. There has long been a tradition of painting on glass with stained glass windows, but with the advent of wet-plate collodion photography in the 1850's images could now be fixed to a glass plate and reproduced*. Until the photographic negative film was developed by Eastman Kodak in 1885 this was the best material for exposing images onto, and even then for many years, until the technology of film had improved, glass plates gave a better quality image.

But glass as a medium for printing has only really come into it's own since Harvey Littleton founded the Studio Glass movement in the early 1960's, so it is here that I will start my investigations into Print and Glass.
Littleton developed a process of using glass as an etching plate for print instead of metal which he termed "Viteography"**. The advantages of glass were many - the glass is inert and therefore doesn't react with the chemicals in the printing inks, the glass surface wipes more cleanly so sharper contrasts can be achieved, a glass plate will not warp or deteriorate with the pressure of the printing process - so the prints will remain consistant (although there is of course more danger of the plate actually breaking) and finally, the transparency of the glass allows for much easier registration of print layers. 
Many of the artists who have worked with the vitreographic process seem to be those involved in the studio glass movement in America, such as Dale Chihuly and Ann Wolff.

Dale Chihuly Venetians, 1994 Edition of 50 - APs only image: 30 x 22," paper size: 36 x 30" Ann Wolff My Dark Mother, 1984 Intaglio vitreograph on Arches, Edition of 50 image: 9.5 x 9.5," paper size: 16 x 15"

Despite these advantages though, vitreography has remained a niche method of producing prints - no doubt due to the fragility of the plates and the fact that alterations cannot be made once work on a plate has commenced. Also, the prints themselves are still produced on paper - the plate itself is not the work, which is really what I am interested in.


Next I will start to look at transparent and translucent print surfaces and what current techniques might be used for printing on them.


*http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/collodio.htm
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eastman/sfeature/wetplate_step1.html
  http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/videoDetails?cat=2&segid=1726
**http://www.littletoncollection.com/Vitreography%20processes/vitreography_processes.htm

Mutant Materials 1

Ok, this is the start of my "Mutant Materials" assignment. 
For the assignment I'm going to look at current technologies in printing and how I might incorporate them into my work.
Printing on glass is a technique that I'm very interested in as a major component of my art work. So far, in terms of images, I have only just started with some basic manoeuvres in photoshop - I can do simple adjustments to my image, create CMYK separations and have a limited command of channels. When I join the Bachelor of Digital Media course at QCA next year I hope to markedly improve these skills in order to start producing the sort of images I really want to use in my work. Along with this, this assignment is an excellent opportunity to start investigating the kind of options that might be available for me to use in printing my work - while my initial focus is on printing glass, I am open to print combined with any transparent or translucent materials such as acetate or perspex. I am also open to different methods of producing the image - currently I am screen printing enamels and then firing them, but I expect my repertoire to expand depending on what I discover in my investigations.
So, where do I start?
Well, I shall start with the internet, that repository of all that is new and exciting and from there work out if there are journals or books I need to access. I will talk to people I know in the advertising and printing industries to find out what what technologies they might be using that could be of interest to me, I will look at contemporary artists who use print in their work and I will look at commercial printing.
Hopefully some interesting asides will be thrown up along the way.
Next stop - the internet!

Skull Etching

This week we have been learning how to create an etching. My skull is inspired by Callum and Wills obsession with them, I was so pleased with the result that I printed eight of them. Next week we will learn how to put tone and tint into them.

Latest Work

Here's my latest collection of wobbly blown glass tumblers. Believe it or not I am actually getting better at this and my next batch might even be straight.

Recent Casts

Here are a couple of recent efforts. The goblets are mine but the fabulous fish platter is by Deb Cox. My own fish bowl needs some work on the mold design. Hope to produce two more in a couple of weeks.

Rob's big "eye"

We all loved watching Nadine and Marcus helping Rob with the making of the "eye" bowl.