Inspirational pictures

The calendar still says: it's winter... and we even had wintery temperatures the other day.

frozen heart...

shepherd

Colour of the month

My first introduction to daily art occurred when I was studying about conceptual art, and almost at the same time I also discovered Kathleen Loomis' blog, on which she regularly reported about her daily art projects. I have been making art on a pretty regular basis, and taking lots of pictures, almost every day before, so I was very attracted to the idea of doing something in the art realm according to self-defined rules on a daily basis. The inspirational power of daily art made itself felt already by just following Kathy Loomis' blog during the first half of 2010. It grew much stronger through our cooperation project 'Daily Mail' which started in September 2010. Last year I then started my own daily art project "Daily Oak" which ended on December 31, 2011. When Daily Oak was nearing its end I knew I wanted to continue with something similar, but it took a while for me to make up my mind what I would be doing. (I have started several 'daily' projects which are more comparable to daily finger exercises on the piano than to real art making, but those were not enough. But taking part in the Bauhaus-workshop last November gave me the final clue for my new daily art project for 2012. The initial idea had been hovering around me for quite a while, yet had long refused to take a definite shape.

As we were thinking about yellow triangles, blue circles and red squares I decided it would be worth the while to concentrate on taking photographs that focussed on colour. Each month will be dedicated to either a primary or a secondary colour. The primary colours will appear during the months that have 31 calendar days, while the secondary colours will appear during the shorter months. The photos will be posted at least twice a month, and numbered, one photo for every day. Preferrably the picture will have been taken on that day, but if no beautiful purple flower was in bloom that day and happened to appear right before my camera I may go to my photo files and pick a purple picture from there.

So for the first six months of the year the pictures will concentrate on 'one colour'. After that time I will decide how I will continue for the remainder of the year – I might choose to simply do a second round, or I may do ‘double occurrences’, or perhaps something else yet.

The first month of the year is dedicated to the primary colour red.

Here are the first four pictures for RED:

1

2

3

4

Daily Oak: December report

Number of days missed: 0

Number of days with more than one visit: 5

Number of visits with more than the two standard perspectives taken: 11

Total number of pictures taken:

This was probably the hardest month to continue my daily art project “Daily Oak”. I tend to be rather affected by the diminishing amount of daylight during the winter months, and this feeling somehow projected itself onto the project. It seemed like the tree was forever covered by a gray and dismal sky, with only a minimal amount of snow. Looking at the pictures in hindsight now, I realize, that wasn’t the case all the time, I did indeed catch a few bright moments when a wink of sunlight was out. Although I did miss at least three or four instances when I looked up from my work, saw that the sun was out and wanted to head for the tree for a visit, but by the time I got there or even before I had reached the bottom of the stairs that momentary glimpse of sunlight was gone.

Perspective a, December 6, 2:01 p.m.

Perspective b, December 12, 11:13 a.m.

Perspective c, December 25, 8:58 a.m.

My attempt to ‘repeat’ the solstice documentation from the summer solstice was also doomed due to uncooperative weather. December 21, the last day before the longest night of the year, and December 22, the first day after the longest night of the year, were both so gray and overcast that it really didn’t matter when I would have gone, the scenery would always looked the same. Either day I only went for a single visit:

Perspective a, December 21, 1:32 p.m.

Perspective a, December 22, 11:30 a.m.

However, I did manage to get a few nice and sort of sunny shots of the tree:

Perspective a, December 2, 2:43 p.m.

Perspective c, December 3, 11:15 a.m.

Perspective b, December 19, 3:42 p.m.

Perspective b, December 26, 2:25 p.m.

Although it was a bit sad to know that the project would be finished at the end of the month, it was also clear that it was the right time to end. It was a wonderful way of getting closer to nature through getting to know more about trees, the yearly cycle of light and dark, and the consistent (self-)obligation gave a certain structure to my creative day: when would I go to the tree? Take an extra trip or combine it with another errand? Which time of day would be likely to produce a good shot with regard to the position of the sun? How likely would it be to catch a glimpse of sunlight, or would it be just a gray day? For a while I still kept looking for a potential other tree to continue the project next year – different species, at another place – but because I couldn’t find one that really met my conditions (free standing, not an oak, within approximately 10 minutes per bike from my home) I finally gave up on that idea for 2012, or this location. Instead I came up with another idea for a daily art project that I will introduce to you here in the next few days.

When I told somebody about this project a few weeks ago he asked me what I was going to do with it all. Was I aiming to get an exhibit? What was the purpose of it all? I’ll have to do a bit more thinking about that. Certainly, when I have time, I am going to make myself a photo book to document this in real, not only on the internet. Apart from that? We’ll see. I have another temporary project in mind that includes my Daily Oak, later this year.

This is the last picture of Daily Oak, taken during the 2011 Daily Oak project:

Perspective b, December 31, 2:30 p.m.

Happy New Year 2012!

Wishing you all the best for the coming year...

Anything goes.

My son has been playing the drum set since September, and is taking lessons. Sometimes he  sits down to play at half past five in the morning, more frequently he waits until way past half past six, and although he has made terrific progress in that short time he hasn’t really mastered the art of playing in low volume.

Just before Christmas his teacher invited all his students for a “Christmas Party”. The children brought Christmas cookies, the teacher served children’s punch, and then they watched two DVDs featuring different drumming events. I am not going to muse here about whether that is an appropriate agenda for a Christmas Party, or whether that might have taken place at any other time during the year just as well. Because it was my son’s first Christmas Party with this teacher, and we didn’t really know what to expect, my husband and I agreed that we wanted to go along, but that we would take turns. I went there with my son and my husband followed later, so I could leave. During the time I was there, I got to see the larger part of the DVD featuring a drum-musical “Stomp”. 

I have to admit that I had not thought about drum-set when I had promised myself that my son would be allowed to take lessons on any instrument he chose. I did not even consider drum set a real instrument. But my son has been a drummer all his life, looking back I even understand now that he already was a drummer while I was still carrying him. So he has taught me a lot about the fascination of rhythmic instruments, and I am beginning to understand much more about it, and even have started to enjoy it.

But I had not been prepared what I got to see in this film. It started with several people tied to a high scaffolding with climbing gear, and a large number of drummable items tied to it also. There were wheel rims, beer barrels, pipes in all sizes (metal and plastic), plastic containers, tin buckets, anything that resembled cymbals, and many more that I could not identify. Nothing that would ‘normally’ be called a drum. And those people were drumming, you bet!

Followed change of scene: broom ballet. The swishing sound, hitting the broom’s head on the floor, tap-dancing-shoes, ten people – you’ve probably never seen anything like it. Before my husband took over I still got to see Basketball-Drumming in an American backstreet, wet from rain, and a card-players-drum-quartet. When I left, not a single word had been spoken in the film.

So how is all this relevant on this blog? My son had been drumming on anything he could lay his hands on for quite a while before he finally got the drum set. Of course, this should have showed me a lot – namely that anything can be drum, anything goes. This was definitely brought across in the film: the whole world is a single drum. It reminded me of  Margit Amann von Gelmbotzki’s description in the supplies list for the Bauhaus-workshop in November: „Anything that fits under a sewing machine can be sewn!“ Or of the way of thinking of surface designers who look at things only under the evaluation of „can this be used to print on fabric?“ I myself have quite a collection down in the basement, waiting for the day when I will finally start using it. Just a few days ago I looked at the plastic roll which constituted the interior of a strand of satin used for wrapping gifts and decided that I was going to add that to my collection and test how it can be used in printing on fabric.

Anything goes, anything can be turned into art. Why do I still stick to fabric, piecing, threads and quilts? It might not be long now before I finally come up with a good idea what to do with those metal shirt hangers which keep accumulating in our basement after my husband’s shirts come back from the dry cleaner and I feel sorry to throw them away:

Wishing you...

... all a very merry Christmas!

Inspirational pictures

It's winter...