I’m in a thoroughly rotten mood today, and as my Bohin needles have arrived (and huffable hedgehogs!), I think I’ll load up four Bohins and play with the foliage today. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Current Hours: 1,107. Skeins Used: 165. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
That patch of very dark brown? That’s one skein. (Approx. 1 x 2″) There are a couple of bald spaces though, so time to pre-wash another skein of DMC 3371, because it’s prone to colour bleed. That takes me to 163 skeins used. Back to work!
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Karl Blossfeldt, Cucurbita sp., pumpkin, tendrils (courtesy D.A.P.).
Karl Blossfeldt, Polystichum munitum, western swordfern, young furled frond (courtesy D.A.P.).
As someone who gets obsessive about shooting plants, all the various bits, and finds them endlessly fascinating, Karl Blossfeldt has long been a revered icon. There’s a new book of his photos out, and they remain some of the most beautiful botanical photos ever taken. That beauty is magnified by the fact that Blossfeldt was using a homemade camera.
Karl Blossfeldt originally made detailed photographs of plant specimens as teaching tools for his applied art students, building his own camera to magnify the sculptural qualities of seedpods, pumpkin tendrils, and horsetail shoots at up to 45 times their size. The 1928 publication of his book Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature) suddenly brought the Berlin professor widespread artistic acclaim, with critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin describing the “astonishing plant photographs” as revealing “the forms of ancient columns in horse willow, a bishop’s crosier in the ostrich fern, totem poles in tenfold enlargements of chestnut and maple shoots, and gothic tracery in the fuller’s thistle.”
[…]
We’re so familiar with macrophotography today that it may be hard to return to the early-20th-century context and imagine how these images would have startled viewers with their revelations of intricate beauty in even the smallest bud of a violet. Yet they remain compelling examples of looking closely at the world around us.
I love macro photography, and indulge in it often enough, but for me, none of it takes away from Blossfeldt’s work. There’s a joy and purity to his photos which are simply unparalleled.
Work, Work, Work 80. After playing about a bit, I decided to use DMC Perle 3 for the foliage; I have it in abundance, thanks to the generosity of Kestrel, and in all the colours needed for Autumn foliage. I hadn’t noticed at the time Kestrel sent me all this bounty, but all of the Perle is vintage, all the labels are old style, and there’s not a bar code in sight! As I’m already using a good amount of vintage threads, that makes the choice all the better. The quality of it is fantastic, and it’s a joy to use. Current Hours: 1,098.5 1,100.* Skeins Used: 161. For those who don’t know, one skein is 8 meters (8.7 yards). Click for full size.
*Updated to include today’s hours.
© C. Ford.
All images © Jan Cieślikiewicz.
All images © Jan Cieślikiewicz.
Null Hypothesis is Jan Cieślikiewicz’s series, and they are stunning photos, most of them likely to leave you with an open-mouthed “wtf?” as they tend to evoke many questions, and a desire for more information.
The other series are just as worthy of your attention:
All images © Jan Cieślikiewicz.
All images © Jan Cieślikiewicz.
Many of them are delightfully inexplicable without further information, which is a wonderful challenge for a species that is constantly on the hunt for facts and absolutes, and insists on narrative. Go have a wonderful wander, and poke your inner existential angst a bit.
Work, Work, Work 79. Got the branch tied in, now, it needs to be reseated in the frame so I don’t have to do contortions to reach. Time for more tea. One nice thing about DMC is that they never change numbers, so even if you do find a nice pile of vintage, you still know what colours you have. Current Hours: 1,087.5. Skeins Used: 159. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
As I noted earlier, back into my stash of vintage thread (deliciously fat, fluffy threads, with such luster!), selected two DMC Mouliné Special, and a Star Six Strand, and look what someone did, decades ago! Oy. Treat your thread well, and don’t wrap wire around it, twisted all about in the strands. Auuugh. Oh gods, they put on cello tape too! Double Auuugh.
Oh, all that ill treatment was to secure this to the skein:
© C. Ford.
Time to tie colours in. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Selected character studies, oil on board, dimesions variable. All images courtesy the artist and Paul Kassman Gallery. (Click for full size!)
In a performance at the Metropolitan Opera and a parallel gallery exhibit, artist Mark Ryden imbibes his sugary design aesthetic through costume and fashion prints. In his latest venture, the Portland-based artist creates classic, painterly pastel works with a childlike fantasy.
The art show, The Art of Whipped Cream, opening in May at Paul Kasmin Gallery in NYC, features the final realizations of each costume from the opera, Whipped Cream, a graceful choreographed feat by Alexei Ratmanksy. His illustrations encompass the bedtime dreams of prima ballerinas, pink, and lots of candy and pastries. Ryden’s merry band of misfits includes a smiling half-dragon, half-muppet creature, and tiny humans masquerading as multilayered cakes. The two-dimensional drawings at Paul Kasmin are rendered in oil on board and graphite on paper.
[…]
Mark Ryden’s solo art exhibit, The Art of Whipped Cream, shows at Paul Kassman, May 20–July 21, 2017. Find more information about the show, here. Purchase tickets for the ballet, Whipped Cream, taking place at the Metropolitan Opera House, here.
Oh, I wish pain meds kicked in much faster. Current Hours: 1,083. Skeins Used: 158. Remembered to bring out the vintage thread, too. I love working with it. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
A bit further on today. Total Hours: 1,075. Skeins Used: 158. Oh, and I heard that Hedgehog Handworks was closing, and unfortunately, it’s true. That’s a bit of heartbreak. I did manage to grab 2 more beeswax hedgehogs (oh, they smell glorious. Makes your day better having a huffable hedgehog) and a couple of packs of Bohin 22s. Probably be a bit of a wait for them, but that’s okay. Like all arts, embroiderers have specialist gear and tools, and there’s often lively debate over the best this or the best that. Needles, of course, come up often. While there are different viewpoints as to the best, Bohin always comes out at or near the top. Fabulous French needles. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Scientists are speculating that perhaps the inspiration for Munch’s The Scream may have been rare nacreous clouds, rather than a volcanic outburst. There is a definite resemblance, I must say. No one will ever really know, but I’m glad I got to learn about and look at nacreous clouds!
Via Raw Story.
