It seems to me that these stones are an audience in the circle watching the tide –
Watching
– but really it is their balancing act that is the attraction!
Balancing Act
With each StillWalk I produce, I select nine or ten images as stand alone shots and make them available for purchase. These are two more from the “Coastal Walk” in Spring in South West Scotland. The photos are available to buy at PhotoBox.
Looking out to sea and waiting – that is what these “standing stones” appear to be doing!
My StillWalk, “Coastal Walk“, in Scotland in the Spring features these shots. The balanced stones looked as though they were just biding their time and waiting for some spectacular event – or perhaps they were just soaking up the sun while they could.
Sculpture on the Beach
Patterns in the Sand
Light plays an important part in all art work and its display. Despite the display and this photograph revealing the shadows and surfaces of this piece of work by Duncan Ayscough, when seeing it last week at Craft in the Bay, Cardiff, it was difficult to describe just what the ceramic form was doing with the light in the gallery other than absorbing it – like a Black Hole.
The photo cannot do it justice – the matt black surface seemed to negate the existence of light and in other pieces (not those shown here), the form seemed to be a “normal” vessel but when taking a closer look, we realised that the black surface of the interior was deceiving us! If I had taken a closer look still, I fear I too would have been absorbed into that Black Hole.
Fascinating work and well worth a visit if you’re in the area – or even if you’re not! This work must be new as it does not appear on his website yet.
Duncan Ayscough
Duncan Ayscough
The first photo here is not an exhibit at the second gallery we visited last week – the Howard Garden Gallery at Cardiff Met University. The video below the photo was an installation art work which had to be viewed in a dark room. If you want to be able to see the video, I suspect you will also need to darken your room.
Personally, I liked the crack in the dark by the entrance more than the piece itself but I enjoyed the rest of this exhibition by Avtarjeet Dhanjal. More info on the show can be found here – hmmm, just discovered it finishes today so here is a quote from I’m on that web page.
“When growing up in the Panjab, India, I was not aware there was such a thing called ‘Art’; though my mother decorated our house with beautiful wall murals using clay. It was never called Art. One could find many other examples of beautiful objects of daily use; those enhanced the quality of life. To hold a beautiful object on your hand, or to stand facing a unique work of art, one feels a delight whether one has any formal education in aesthetics or not. This is considered the intrinsic worth of a work of art” – Avtarjeet Dhanjal.
Crack in the Dark
Avtarjeet Dhanjal
Avtarjeet Dhanjal
Avtarjeet Dhanjal
Avtarjeet Dhanjal
This trough was half filled with water but because the blue plastic itself was shiny and reflective, it was almost impossible to see the water. The installation shown in the video above also used “invisible” water.
Avtarjeet Dhanjal
We have been to a few galleries lately and in one way or another, light played an important part in each one. Light may always be relevant to art but in these exhibits, the artists had used light as an important and “material” part of the work.
These first shots are from an exhibition called “Difference Engine: Accumulator II” at Oriel Myrddin in Carmarthen. I wasn’t told not to photograph, so I went ahead (on my phone) and feel justified by advertising both the gallery and the artists. More information on the show can be found on the gallery website.
There were other works in the exhibition as well as these and it was well worth the visit but I particularly enjoyed the use of light in these pieces.
I received the Very Inspiring Blog Award almost two weeks ago but I have been so busy with setting up StillWalks project exhibitions, that I have not had enough time to think about this. The award was given to me by Hannah Duncan Creations. Hannah is my youngest daughter and she is partly to blame for my lack of time to deal with this.
Hannah is currently a Foundation Art student and we have been taking her all over the place for university interviews. All five have now been done and I am proud to say she was accepted to all them. Now she has to choose!
Rules for the Very Inspiring Blog Award are below. Thanks, Hannah for nominating me for this.
Rules:
1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. State seven things about yourself.
4. Nominate fifteen other bloggers for this award and link to them.
5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.
About Me:
1. I was born in Scotland.
2. I grew up in Northern Ireland.
3. I trained in England.
4. I live in Wales.
5. I am an artist.
6. I originally trained in tapestry weaving (see Design Fibre ICT)
7. I have a wonderful wife and two amazing daughters.
8. I love walking.
Nominations: no particular order.
9: Ooggetuige
10: Traci Carver
11: Helen’s Journal
13: Life Pieces
14: PhoPort
15: Licht Years
These are two examples of images I would be unlikely to use – except for one reason. They might form a necessary part of the bigger picture, the image sequence that tells the story of a StillWalk.
An image will tell a story in its own right but as part of a sequence with the intention of taking the viewer from one place to another, both visually and aurally, a StillWalk video needs sometimes to have those joining words or conjunctions that help show progression along the route.
Why would I not use these particular images? There is nothing wrong with the quality of the original images and I have no objection to traffic in an image, particularly in town. However, for some reason the car in this photograph annoys me. Is it because it is the only one or because it is a taxi (no offence to taxi drivers intended)? Maybe it’s because there are no people in the scene?
I like the structure of the shot with the bollards on the left and the wall and railing uprights on the right, the shadow of the balcony on the right and the progression from modern to older architecture on the left. I like the way the spire in the background divides up the sky and the colour is correct for the time of day / year and weather . . . but for some reason I don’t like the car!
All comments are welcome about this.
York
I don’t like the crop in the image below. The original needed straightening and in doing so I have lost the point of the weather vane and the chimney which both fitted neatly into the original frame – frustrating.
York
I used to use tufting in my tapestry weaving – the long tufts of wool would hang down over the surface of the weaving. Sometimes I would wrap them with bright, lustrous cotton.
The textures I have used in my more recent weaving are rather different! Barbed wire is often the main textural feature of my weaving and although the reason for using it lies in the theme of “conflict”, we see it in many places around us.
The photos I take for StillWalks are often informed by my interest in texture. The images below illustrate different kinds of tuft and barb to those I have used in my tapestries.
You can see my tapestries at Design Fibre ICT and the StillWalk these images are from in the Old Churchyard Walk.
Tufted
Wool and Barbs