Anna-Wili Highfield

Check out these taxidermal/sculptural pieces by Anna-Wili Highfield. I think this a stellar example of how craft, both in the sense of craftsmanship as well as technique/aesthetic, plays a role in how a piece is read.

To quote my Clay/Kinetic professor:

Unless a work is about the craft, there should only be enough craft so that we don’t even notice or want to say anything about the craft.

- Joe Manino

Anna’s sculptures show a very strong sense of materiality, so much that it comes across visually, in the form of paper tears, copper joints, and found-object imperfections. Even then, the process-oriented aesthetic is kept neat enough to not be overwhelming, with a finish that displays intentionality.

Owlet Nightjar
2009
22cm x 10cm x 8cm
Ink, water colour, archival cotton paper, cotton thread, painted timber base

Deer
2005
1.1m x 1m x 50cm
Copper pipe, palm bark, driftwood and enamel

Reblog: http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/anna-wili

things we watch at 8:30am

“Rabbit”, Run Wrake, 2005

We’re starting the animation project for our Electronic Media Studio class and Suzie showed us lots of cool animations on Thursday. This one really freaked me out and its been stirring in my mind a lot lately. I watched it again today, because I think I will be influenced by it quite a bit in this project.

Christoph Niemann

Christoph Niemanns’ graphics are a reminder of how storytelling, visual legibility, and directness in its most blunt and literal way can translate into really smart images.

Christoph Niemann, 2009, Wireless Gingko

 

Check out more of Christoph Niemann’s stuff at the New York Times Blog he runs: http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/bio-diversity/

 

A Bloody Genius

http://www.benlong.co.uk/spirit-structures/61-2

Check out the work of Ben Long, a sculptor based in UK.

Ben Long, Two-Part Modular Spirit Structure (Fisco L25 series), 2010 Powder coated aluminium spirit levels, polyester resin end-caps 87 x 87 x 175 cm

“Informed by the steel skeleton frameworks of modern architecture, the utilitarian spirit level is used to construct open geometric structures. Each of the vials embedded in the aluminium profiles indicate these artworks to be perfectly assembled and in precise harmony with the physical laws that govern all building and construction.” – Ben Long

What I’ve been doing with my eyeballs

Japanese Ceramics Gallery in the Art Institute of Chicago

 

Scott Burton, Three Quarter Cube Bench, 1986, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

 

 

Stairwell in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

 

 

Charles Ray, Hinoki, Cyprus, 2007, Art Institute of Chicago

 

 

 

 

 

Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (Self-Potrait with blue bowl and table)

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Justin Lin, 2010

Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (Self-Potrait with blue bowl and table)

Stop-Motion Video of Bread Dough Rising in Chinese Soup Bowl filmed in Singapore

150 lbs lump of Bread Dough on Studio Table in Pittsburgh

Final Project for CMU School of Art

60-101 – Concept Studio I, Prof. Jennifer “Sensei” Myers

 

This work is about dislocation, and the inhibitions we have within ourselves that change according to where we are. Do we respond to the surroundings we are in, or do we remain who we are and control the way we live despite the changes in living environment.

The material of this work addresses the issue of uniformity of the site and issues of transnationality. Yeast all over the world is, for the most part, the same. With exceptions of small nuances specific to local strains of sourdough.

This work is also a personal work about leaving home. I used to make lots of bread with my mom. Kitchen time was mom time.

Does my mom want me to grow up? At what point does she remember me? Does she have the same impression of me? I wonder if her projected image of me is the same as what I am right now. That is to say, am I changing in parallel to what she thinks I am? This work presents two images and attempts to create a dialectic involving two different presentations of the same entity.

In this work, I am using bread dough as a metaphor for myself.

I have grown up in a very controlled environment, where everyone tries very hard to express control over their actions and their growth. This work is a response to the change in paradigm.

I am leaving myself to change according to the environment.

While the bread in the blue bowl that my mom makes appears constricted in its container and small, the apparent rise is obvious and dramatically triumphant, although controlled and restricted. The bread here in Pittsburgh might be massive and free to grow whichever way it wants, but it just flops on the ground in a rather unshapely manner.

Tugboat Printshop (THIS IS NOT MY WORK)

(all images taken from http://www.tugboatprintshop.com/index.htm)

"BONFIRE", 18" x 26.25" Color Woodcut Print on Ivory Somerset Paper. Paul Roden and Valerie Lueth, 2010. Edition of 100.

These guys are crazy. I’ve seen them somewhere on Etsy before today. I was looking them up again for a project and just realised the studio is half an hour away from school.

I need to find out which buses go here, otherwise I’ll jizz on my screen looking at their work.

CHECK OUT TUGBOAT PRINTSHOP HERE

in case MOE decides to dump me, sweeping their studio floor will be my back up plan.

Tugboat printshop dudes lifting the paper off the block, "AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL".

Carnegie Museum of Stuff (art and dinosaurs)

Cartographein Cerebrum in Review

(several photos taken from Diana Nicolette’s Facebook uploads. Thanks Diana!)

I’ve got so many people to thank and so much to think about. It boggles me mind how much is implicated in just a small show like this. Just some acknowledgments to make that I haven’t formally made yet (in order of what comes to my mind first, sorry if I missed anyone out! Either I’ve already thanked you some place else or I’m dosed with too much caffeine to blog sensibly)

Singapore Tote Board + Lee Foundation (FOR LOTS OF MONEY)
The wonderful friends at Fill Your Walls Gallery and My Art Space: Angie, Ben, Debrah, Grace, Chan Kerk, William (for putting up with my nonsense and artistic whims)

Grace again (for being my printmaking slave)

Keith (for volunteering as lensman for preview night. It never occurred that I needed someone to do this for me, until after the night itself and I realized I would have collapsed had I tried to take photos on my own…)

Poon (for helping with the set-up and your music offer that didn’t pan out)
Ming(for being my bastion of artistic reason, and offering to do the fishing line installation which didn’t happen, lets try it next time!

My other dear friends, Losh, Toh, Clem, Daryl, Foe, Nong etc… For all the outings I had to pangseh to do work, all the SMS’s I daoed cause I was distracted, and for listening to me whine when I got pissed. Sorry, I must have been a jerk of a friend the past few months…

Friends at Singapore Tyler Print Institute (Li Se!!!!), Teachers of The Art Department of ACS(I)

Family for putting up with my mess at home/studio.

God from whom all blessings flow. So many things that viewers think are results of my planning and premeditation (such as the lighting, venue, furniture, people connections…) were actually not things I controlled. These things just… happened. Lots of people asked if I put the lights in the ledge myself, or if I measured the ledge before making the work so that everything fits in the ledge. Well, I didn’t do any of that. I wasn’t even supposed to have the show in the attic. Everything just clicked into place when my work started to come together… I say its God setting paths in an order that I cannot even start to understand. My craft is a gift from God, and it is my belief that I should let the craft lead my path, and let the work carry me to where I should go.

I’m trying to thank and recognize everyone who came down or helped for the show, but I’m really awfully sorry if I missed you out, its just too many people to acknowledge. “Solo Exhibition” is such a misnomer.

And I guess I have one last person to thank, Vashti Bunyan, that dreamy folk singer, who’s song inspired part of the title/concept of the show (from which I mentioned a line from the lyric in passing to Mingyi who suggested it was a great show title). I hope I’m not screwing any copyright. (Vashti I can pay you with cookies and hugs if you want…) She’s my lullaby when there was so much on my mind and I couldn’t sleep.

I’d like to walk around in your mind someday
I’d like to walk all over the things you say to me

I’d like to run and jump on your solitude
I’d like to rearrange your attitude to me

You say you just want peace and you’d never hurt anyone
You see the end before the beginning has ever begun

I would disturb your easy tranquility
I’d turn away the sad impossibility of your smile

I’d sit there in the sun of the things I like about you
I’d sing my songs and find out just what they mean to you

But most of all I’d like you to be unaware
And I’d just wander away
Trailing palm leaves behind me,
So you don’t even know that I’ve been there

-I’d like to walk around in your mind, Vashti Bunyan

Yarn

If you are in Ann Siang and have half an hour to spare, head over to Woods in the Books, a bookstore 2 shophouses away from Booksactually, because there are some amazing line drawings currently on exhibit in the shop.

“Yarn” is curated by Keyakismos, a Japanese husband and wife team comprising of Tamae Iwasaki and Eitaro Ogawa, and features works by 3 relatively young Japanese artist, Izumi Kawai, Yoshie Sata, and Yurie Fujiki. This small but very intimate display of line virtuosity on paper (which seems to be a fascination of Japanese and Korean artist) left me in deep contemplation of what can be done using just lines alone. The amount of work put into each drawing is incomprehensible.