Mixy's Art Blog

Black holes and bewilderment.

I was reminded of this article recently

Food for thought. Illness is illness, wherever it’s located, it’s all real. ‘All in the mind’ is a real place!

The writer, broadcaster, actor, avid twitterer (to name but a handful of labels), Stephen Fry, has spoken at length on this subject. Living with bipolar he does so with the hope of enlightening and openly addressing something that is still treated as shameful, embarrassing, or a weakness.

Ask someone with depression ‘what caused it?’ and you ostracize them, you’re suggesting blame – a thing or an event which can (could, should) be reduced, eliminated, forgotten, overlooked, gotten over. And it must be valid, it must have the appropriate magnitude. Maybe a bereavement or a diagnosis, a catastrophe that outweighs someone else’s definition of manageable.

Chances are there wasn’t a single event that triggered the episode, maybe it was a long grinding line of things added up to a tipping point. Or maybe it came from nowhere and side-swiped them.

Be kind, don’t judge, you don’t know their story.

Sometime stream of conciousness

Your heaving wheezes
On my bony shoulder,

Your angered fears
My limp empty smile,

Anxiety fatalism,
Fatuous platitude.

Outside looking in,
Inside looking out,
Eyes never meeting.

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part Next

I want to draw together some of leftovers and dangling ends from recent posts. The person who will enable this is Franz Ackermann.

Faceland/White Crossing I - Ackermann — Faceland/White Crossing I – Ackermann

There’s a charm to this portrait that hooked up in my head with the (so far very much) unconnected themes I was juggling. It was my missing link. Ackerman’s brought the map like quality in, and that high contrast, vector style I love as well.

So, am I going to show you the portraits now… or am I going to keep you hanging on?

Well, kinda neither…

The screen print portraits are still a work in progress as other priorities have leapt the queue in my sphere of makings.

But I’ve been dabbling with other prints and watercolor doodles. The first of which is………

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part 3.5a

Did I tell you how much I love to screen print? There’s something of an alchemy in screen printing I never knew til I began to experiment. If you enjoy an unpredictable path to imagery I urge you to give this a try if the opportunity comes your way. It’s the most magical thing!

For instance: painting the screen with Procion (fabric) dye at letting it dry, then printing with white ink on white paper, you get this kinda effect of a shadow, dimensional kinda thing.

A similar process is described here by Kerr Grabowski

The photos are poor quality (from phone, wobbling with giddy excitement at the print!) but you get the idea.

Then there’s the masking off areas with torn paper, and going back to doodle in the gaps. Some overprinting and joining the overprints in the same way

White on black on white; orange and blue on monochrome, semi-opaque, translucent and solid intense blockiness. Go on, let the imagination do the running! Let the ideas fly.

Oh, but wait a mo, didn’t this have something to do with self portraits? isn’t that where we began?

Did the gecko run off with the wrong end of the conversation and get lost down another rabbit hole?

Maybe, maybe not.

Check back again and we’ll see if these loose ends can be knitted back up into something resembling a thing again. (A real thing? well, maybe, yes)

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part 3

If it’s all looking a bit disparate with uncongealed ideas; If you’re still following, I commend you! And I forewarn you – it’s maybe gonna seem more scattered before it starts coming together – but bear with me…

Yester-post I was explaining how the combined doodles that emerged from the Zak Smith – Dominic McGill ideas were the raw ingredients for my silk screen design.

Next step was to dismember and re-member them into new shapes and surprises. Photographed and scanned, reduced to monochrome, printed, chopped, rearranged, photocopied, resized, rechopped, glued back together. Began to look like this:

It’s taking on mappy qualities, and I like the metaphor of this too. It’s a journey of loops within loops. Mapping the ineffable unmappable.

Part number next: the silk screen printing.

Next exciting installment coming up soon 😉

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part 2

Yesterday I was telling you how Zak Smith’s art was the starting point in this little project of mine. At the same show I got to see the work of another favorite artist IRL, Dominc McGill.

Moloch - Dominic McGill — Moloch – Dominic McGill

Again there’s a lot of mono with splashes of color, intensified contrast. I love the mishmash of text in art, increasingly it’s something I use in my own work. It was around this time the Tate Modern was showing Mira Schendel.

Much of Schendel’s work was displayed hanging so you could walk round, through and between the pieces, be involved, enveloped, almost engulfed.
So I’m aborbing this work, there’s an osmosis going on. I’m gathering ideas and doodling them together.

Some Klimt, some Zak Smith. Little bits of color

Elements are coming together to form something new, something else.

Not so much with the straight directions and the boxy, something else.

I really don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m riding the wave.

Gallery postcards, chopped up, collaged.

Destination is way down the list. Would probably be a distraction right now. Fuck destination.

As is my way (whenever I can) I moved on from here to screen printing. I’ll show you where that went next time.

More Than The Sum Of Its Parts – Part 1

There’s a project I’m working on, a commission that’s a continuation from a college brief last year (I’ll share that with you in a future post), which has led me on to begin a series of self portraits.

Pre- art school days I would have seen this as a self-indulgent vanity, but, (of course) the art school years have shifted my perspective. My subject is simply the face I’ve seen the most often. (Although I’m mainly on the inside looking out, but that’s another discussion for another time.)

Inspirations that bobbed up my horizon and found their way to develop the style for this came from a London gallery trip a little over a year ago. Firstly, Zak Smith at the Saatchi gallery. I was quite entranced.

Things I Drew and Pinned to the Wall – Zak Smith

Do love me a bit of monochrome! And the boxy, graphic-novel-layout going on here. This picture tells a story, and it looks like a story.

Girls in the Naked Girl Business: Mandy Morbid (II)

Girls in the naked girls business is a series that speaks to Smith’s parallel career in adult movies. Splashes of vivid brightness in the field of mono. More metaphors.

zak_smith_girls_detail5 — 100 Girls and 100 Octopuses (detail)

100 Girls and 100 Octopuses is just that, and visually combines the storyboard layout with the chunky blocks of color. Largely blue.

One of the reasons I was so enraptured was the instant association with an artist I’ve adored for such a long time. You’ll know this image, even if art isn’t your thing

The Kiss - Gustav Klimt (1908) — The Kiss – Gustav Klimt (1908)

A century on, Smith’s images resonate the essence of Klimt‘s in visual language and sexuality. Completing a circle perhaps.

DIY-TV

A big life shift contains and consists of many minor life shifts. A happy change I’ve made is I now live in a house without at TV.

Seriously? Yep!

‘But you’re gonna get one, right…?’ Nope!

But hey, I got music, radio, podcasts, I got the all-encompassing-web. I got you guys! Most of all, I got way to much to do and think and make and be … TV’s a thing of the past in my world! ……… well, except for ……….. I have got my own special variation that came about through serendipity.

As I unpacked the boxes of belongings, I kept the strong n sturdiest for future use.

I’m not gone get rid of this, now am I? Double walled = super tough, it’s a big flattish box I used to move biggish paintings.

When I noticed its original use, its next incarnation began to enfold in my head. My very own better-than-a-tv…

messy glue-y icky… not a neat corner in sight!

The big flat sides glued together (the smaller side edges will come into play in a future project, doubtless) Covered in a layer of paper and another of sheeting for a clean flat white drawing-pin-in-able surface. (but could equally be something bright n cheery, or mixy-matchy with furnishings – and is infinitely changeable too)

stapled into submission, the corners didn’t square up too bad

And at last, the postcards and flyers I gather up at shows and on gallery trips get to see the light of day.

So over time the ‘picture’ will evolve; it only shows images I love and inspires instead of distracting 🙂

back and forth and backth again

Like a meandering meandery thing, so much to say, so little sense of order…!

Amongst the changes I’m progressing through in recent months, I’ve re-aquired a bunch of stuff that’s been in storage for a number of years. Some of which: a veritable shedload (well, technically, half a van load) of miscellaneous textiles which are gradually cycling into new creations. From linen to clothes and curtains, some are older than I am, some scrips and scraps, but they all have fantastic futures as somethings beautiful and/or useful (in most cases, I hope, both).

the seat from where I'm typing to you! — the seat from where I’m typing to you!

Then at the same time the gods of synchronicity have sent some gloriously inspirational folks to cross my path. I can’t leave them unmentioned in this post.

I encountered Raggedy Rags earlier this year at the London Knit & Stitch Show.

Raggedy Rags – Dress like nobody’s judging

Drawn in by the delight of uniquely upcycled clothing and the wonderful mantra I’ve since adopted as my own: Dress like nobody’s judging. I wish I’d gone back for that red coat, but I did leave with a head full of fresh ideas. And I’ll catch another coat another time.

Then the colorfulicious Katwise pinged up on my web-wanderings radar. Recently her splendidly multi-coloured home has been featured in articles all over the place, you may have seen it? As an artwork it’s amazing even if it surpasses your personal technicolour tolerances.

https://i0.wp.com/katwise.com/house_slices/house_003.jpg — living the rainbow dream

But beyond this, it led me to her sumptuous knitwear regenerations.

Katwise Elf Coat - Recycled Sweater Tutorial - Plus size

If you have even an inkling of a desire to learn more I can really recommend her ebooks.

Between these guys and the web-rabbit-holes I’ve explored as a result, I’m all fired up for some cosy winter sewings coming up soon. Just need Santa to bring me a serger (or eBay, gotta be a little realistic) and I’m good to go!

from then to here – bit 1

hey folks 🙂 So good to be back amongst you and to see what you’ve been doing and making and sharing. I love your beautiful minds and words and colours – thank you all for being here!

gapingvoid

Y’know the one where life gets so full that some of it sloshes over the edges? I guess those bits don’t get lost; they just mix n mingle in the briny blend in which we bob.