Hello.Dot.

It has been a h-while.

I had a blockage of the conceptual kind. The concluding part of my work came out fine, but personally i lost the connection. I had to have a sit down with myself and ask the question why?
I've always been pushed to work conceptually, well at least for the last 4 years and i suppose this took over a little. I tried to remember, why in  my previous work, i was so happy. I still considered my concept whilst allowing materials to speak for themselves. Now i'm too concerned with the philosophy of the art and rather than using things i love, i used that which i believe i 'should' use.

So i decided i'll just do what i loved. There's nothing wrong with that. Originality cannot be forced, and i think that's what i was trying to do.

I had a wee browse of the internet and this is what i found that i felt spoke to me

Gracia Haby

These sketchpads by Gracia Haby are g-g-g-g-gorgeous. they're so simple, the juxtaposition between the sepia tones of the antique paper and the desaturated colour of the classic illustrations speaks for itself alone. It makes me think of decoupage, something i always wanted to do.
Love love love

---------------------------------------------------------------

Valerie Hegarty

This is Valerie Hegarty, and she is amazing. Her work from what i have seen mostly consists of paintings, and frames effected somehow, in a sense de-construction. Walls cracking paintings, scenes of a beach wreckage, bullet holes. It is, similar to the work before, so utterly simple but all about the way original work has been altered. Because it's more installation based it seems less about materials at points but this brought back through the focus on the paintings and frames. I like the idea of this masterpiece being brought down, thwarted by natural forces.

-------------------------------------------------------

Xiang Yang

It's not so much all aspects of the piece that i'm interested in, rather the use of thread. It completely baffles me how the artist Xiang Yang manages to use thread to this magnitude, stretching all of them out, yet they remains perfect, un-knotted. From then it is not the stitching, nor the image that is most important rather this thread presented as a whole that become the fundamental part of the sculpture.
I've been wanting to use thread in ways other than just stitch to show it's tactile nature.

----------------------------------------------------

Kate Mccgwire

 

Obviously by proxy i must reference some bizarre art in which taxidermy is used.
It can't be explained why i love animals so much, even more so out of the mortal realm.
Death is just fascinating, that standstill on time, and the rare occasion in which we are privileged enough to witness it from the objective, unattached and allow different, new emotions to take over.
These sculptures are quite different from anything i've seen with the use of animals as mean of material. You are no longer able to tell these are feather, their voluminous forms appear like waterfalls or creatures, inward looking, giving tales of space shared, and used. The first one makes me think of a phoenix coming from the ashes and how it would look upon it's rebirth. Shapes turning inwards on themselves, contours transforming, you cannot choose one thing that the shape could become, making the shapes open to anything, excitingly ambiguous.

------------------------------------------------------

Julie Krakowski

These pieces of textile work are Byjulie Krakowski. They are both amazing but it is the first that i can find charming. She works with materials, fabrics, altering them through stains and burns. The cigarette burn typically would be considered as 'ruining' whatever it effects, however Byjulie manages to make even the most un-enchanting, ethereal, by adding precious gold stitching and rather than the burns seeming to be of mischance, they take over the cloth fabricating patterns of their own. It's amazing, the look as though they were always meant to exist in this way. The brown and gold, colours of nature remind me of moth holes, and are fairytale like.

Stunning!