Breaking Up Boredom.

Having a large area to fill can get very tedious and boring. You can always go the distraction route, by putting a movie on or playing an audio book. Audio books don’t work for me, I find them annoying. Movies are fine, but they either need to be ones you have seen 5,000 times and pretty much know by heart, or a bad movie that won’t engage your attention much. A good movie you don’t know or know well will slow you way down. If I do movies, I do the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies. They basically provide background distraction, and are a good way to time yourself, as each movie is around 80 minutes. There are other little things you can do, even if you are working to a pattern. If there’s a large area, break it up with various shapes. By the time you’re done, you’ll have a nice, subtle pattern, which is especially nice in large areas done in one colour. You can also take a couple of seconds to randomly doodle, which gives you a goal (one doodle covered, two doodles covered, etc.) and can make the stitching area seem less formidable.

Current Hours: 1,029. Skeins Used: 149. Click for full size.

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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

The Good of the Hive.

Wow! I so love this, I love everything about it, because it breaks my heart to see people being so callous about bees, even here in farm country. Bees are vital, and we should all be working for healthy bees and a healthy environment.

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In an effort to raise awareness about the plight of the humble honey bee, New York-based artist Matt Willey founded the Good of the Hive Initiative, an ambitious project to personally paint 50,000 bees in murals around the world. The number itself isn’t arbitrary, it takes about that many bees to sustain a healthy beehive. So far Willey has completed 7 murals including a large piece at the Burt’s Bees headquarters, and he keeps meticulous notes about the number of bees in each piece which he shares on his website.

For more info you can read an interview with the artist at the Center for Humans and Nature website, and follow his progress on Instagram.

Via Colossal Art.

Looking at Police Brutality.

Police Cross Line 3, 2015.

Police Cross Line 3, 2015.

In works such as Nick Cave’s Soundsuits or David Hammons’ Untitled (Rock Head), material evokes the metaphorical and mythological meanings of the black body. Recently, some artists have chosen to symbolically explore its heft and value by emphasizing elevating materiality over the modernist privileging of form. In the artist Dáreece J. Walker’s Black is the giant exhibition of painting, sculpture and text, for instance, the artist’s use of cardboard examines the weight of the black body politic in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement.

[…]

“It’s about a conversation,” says Walker to The Creators Project. “A conversation about how myself and other black Americans that I’ve spoken with feel devalued or not considered in the overall societal structures.” He explains, “There’s a lot of stigma and media bias toward people with dark skin and particularly here in the United States there’s been a lot of police brutality.”

“The reason I used the medium cardboard is because the associations it has with being easily replaceable or disposable. It’s a sentiment that I feel that started to spread through the media representations of black men. It seemed that, through the coverage, black lives didn’t matter as much.”

The Saint, 2015.

The Saint, 2015.

The exhibition includes two wooden sculptures, The Martyr and The Saint, that speak to the portrayal and discrediting of black victims of police brutality in the media. The abstract works allude to the media coverage branding Trayvon Martin a “thug,” as well as the selection of imagery of black victims of police shootings that inspired the black Twitter hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. A poem entitled “If They Gun Me Down” by Daniel J. Watts, a Walker collaborator and Hamilton star, presented alongside Walker’s objects, aims to capture the bleakness of the representation of black life by the media, even in death:

If they gunned me down

would the media paint a picture

of a poet

or would I be politically portrayed as a perilous person with potential to be a paraphernalia pushing pistol popping pilferer?

If they gunned me down, would you be shown the hopeless romantic mama’s boy who writes about how his grandmother taught him how to blow kisses or would you be presented with a production still of the anti-violent “This is how we shoot back” as I brandished a metaphor into the camera?

If they gunned me down

will the photos in which I hold some sort of stone cold pose as I throw two fingers into the air be recognized as peace when they land on judgmental eyes or will they be both misconstrued and inappropriately affiliated with gang culture

by the media vultures that will surely circle my dead carcass ready to feed without taking me or my deeds into consideration?

Full Story at The Creators Project.

Carpet Bombing

Detail of Jim Ricks’ Carpet Bombing. All images courtesy of the artist.

Detail of Jim Ricks’ Carpet Bombing. All images courtesy of the artist.

Carpets made in Afghanistan have a history of representing the imagery of war, but a recent work by artist Jim Ricks gives a conceptual perspective to this tradition. Carpet Bombing is a giant, handmade rug that depicts a “Drone Survival Guide” created by Amsterdam-based designer Ruben Pater. Pater’s diagram is a one-page illustration of various drone aircrafts, which references similar guides that were used to identify aircrafts in past wars. Ricks traveled to Afghanistan, where the drones on Pater’s survival guide are in use, to have a rug made by Kabul-based Haji Naseer and Sons Carpet Makers.

Carpet Bombing on display at Rue Red in Dublin. Photo: Andrew Hetherington.

Carpet Bombing on display at Rue Red in Dublin. Photo: Andrew Hetherington.

There’s more to Carpet Bombing than the illustration of a poignant pun, as Ricks tells The Creators Project, “I think there is a tendency to ‘read’ the carpet like a poster and stop there. What I think is important about the piece is that not only is the graphic appropriated, it is always shown horizontal and flat in the gallery, as a carpet should be, thus reversing the observer from drone back to human again, and that it can be sat or walked on, activating the work in the way that is in keeping with the Persian carpet as a social space.”

The Creators Project has the full story.

Marvel Fan-Fiction and Scottish Indies.

Cover for All-New, All-Different Avengers Annual #1. Illustrated by Alex Ross. Photo courtesy of Marvel Comics.

Cover for All-New, All-Different Avengers Annual #1. Illustrated by Alex Ross. Photo courtesy of Marvel Comics.

‘Annual’ releases exist in a strange place in the comic world. Created as a way to tell a different story in a series without interrupting the main plotline or numbering, some see annuals as a marketing gimmick. But, as evidenced by All-New, All-Different Avengers Annual #1, they can be a bold chance to think outside the box. This issue sees everyone’s favorite teen from Jersey City, Ms. Marvel, logging onto her favorite fan-fiction website to write some stories about her fellow heroes. Once logged on, she sees that other people have written stories about her and her friends, and she’s shocked but compelled to read on. The rest of this comic, then, are those fan-fiction stories of Marvel heroes. Layered, and with plenty of goofiness and a variety of styles, this annual does exactly what it should: it tells weird stories the regular comics certainly couldn’t.

[Read more…]

Depicting Hysteria.

NSFW.

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Alexandra Levasseur.

The second annual 4%ers exhibition is at the Athen B. Gallery in Oakland. The group show of female artists explores the origins of hysteria and the artistic expressions that have come to represent it. First conceived in San Francisco at the FFDG gallery, the show has since then changed locations to host a new set of artists with what it calls a “slightly wilder premise,” according to the gallery.

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The gallery explains that the term, “hysteria,” was coined by an ancient Greek physician named Hippocrates, who used the word to explain ailments and afflictions thought exclusive to the female body. Hippocrates believed the uterus was the constitutional source of female woes, “often expressed as a restless, wandering womb, creating disorder within the body and distress in the woman experiencing it,” writes the gallery. Hysteria was understood as a nervous disorder and diagnosed on physical indicators: “gestures, motions, gaits, and non verbal utterances.” Without any legitimate grounds in medicine, the expression and mitigation of its symptoms often came in the form of artistic practices, such as painting. Although the diagnosis is no longer considered valid in formal medicine, the artists in the 4%ers show believe the concept of hysteria has impacted “the way women are supposed to act, look, and express themselves, physically, sexually, and artistically.” Now, they seek to reclaim the word through their own artistic expression.

[Read more…]

YASH.

“Where trees don’t grow” Wall for Artscape 2016 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

“Where trees don’t grow” Wall for Artscape 2016 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

 

From Spring Remake 2016 in Snösätra, Stockholm.

From Spring Remake 2016 in Snösätra, Stockholm.

 

Stockholm 2015.

Stockholm 2015.

 

Wall from “Spring remake 2015” in Rågsved, outside Stockholm, Sweden.

Wall from “Spring remake 2015” in Rågsved, outside Stockholm, Sweden.

Linus Lundin – who works under the pseudonym Yash – has done most of his work in the Swedish capital, where he has lived for the last five years after moving from the small town of Gnesta.

His colourful murals are marked by their emotive faces and depictions of animals interacting with humans. Each one takes around five days to complete – not including the extensive planning and sketching that is required beforehand.

“It’s important to get the expressions right in my paintings,” he explained.

“I get my inspiration from my own feelings and the feelings of those around me. I ponder about and depict security, the search for something, and anxiety quite a lot. I also think a lot about the relationship between humans and animals.”

Incredibly, Lundin has no formal education in art beyond high school level. Instead, he developed his style by putting in hours and hours of hard practice.

“I just went out and painted, but there’s a lot of time and work behind everything,” he noted.

“I’ve painted murals for over ten years now, but they didn’t always look like they do now. Finding my aesthetic has been a long process. I was lucky enough to have a wall in the small town I grew up in where I could develop my work legally.”

Full story here. You can see Yash’s artwork here.

So Very Ordinary 2.

I have a thing for the mundane, things so mundane they are invisible. All the things that no one sees. I drive Rick a tad spare when we go walkabout, because I’ll be hanging way back there, staring at a chain link fence. I enjoy all the invisible things just the way they are, and I enjoy playing with them too. This little bit of ordinary is chain link fence (part one). Click for full size.

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© C. Ford. All rights reserved.

So Very Ordinary.

I have a thing for the mundane, things so mundane they are invisible. All the things that no one sees. I drive Rick a tad spare when we go walkabout, because I’ll be hanging way back there, staring at a chain link fence. I enjoy all the invisible things just the way they are, and I enjoy playing with them too. This little bit of ordinary is a taillight on a school bus converted into a camper. Click for full size.

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© C. Ford. All rights reserved.