oops
An experiment gone awry.
I love a bit of decay incorporated into things, which is why I love old buildings, Michael Eastman’s photos, and the furniture I inherited (although a small fund to keep the chairs glued and un-wobbly would have been a good thing to inherit along with). I’ve been working on a way to include that in some of my pieces, but how best to partially destroy my work?
Here is a piece I’ve been wreaking minor destruction on, pre-destruction:
It definitely needs some decay, so I go to work on it, trying to balance giving it some integrity while still leaving it vulnerable:
Then I become Kali, speeding up the destructive force of time, and the result is:
Far too much decay!
Tomorrow, back to the easel, so to speak. I will repair it to wreak (less) havoc on it another day.
At least it won’t need this treatment:
Done to erase the result of another experiment. One not to be repeated.
urn
These are from this summer, all in my mom’s neighbourhood.
I’m working with photos for a few days to distract myself from some technical difficulties with the other series I’ve been working on. I’ve looked around to see if anyone else is doing a similar process with inks, pencil and encaustic, but haven’t seen any, so I’ll go back to experimenting with the propane torches tomorrow. So far nothing big has caught fire or blown up, that’s good anyway.
Earlier this evening I was showing a friend the website of one of my favourite photographers, Michael Eastman – his Cuban and Italian photos are incredible. Then I learned of the death of Roy DeCarava, another amazing photographer. I was trying to pick a few of his photos that I liked best, but it is so hard to choose. This is one of many, and this, and this. They are so evocative.
Now that I have loaded my photos onto this post I’ve decided I don’t like the way they look small. I love how art has such a different effect at different sizes (except when it doesn’t work small on my blog). I spent the day at an art museum with some friends recently, and was loving the difference between various pieces close up and at a distance. And the texture, that fantastic delicate texture of drawings and miniatures, it’s all completely lost in reproduction.
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