"Steal like an Artist"

"Steal like an Artist"... a cute little book full of quirky bits of inspirational wisdom. Author: Austin Kleon.
Bought it from the School of Life bookshop in Melbourne last week,  and ironically the sales girl there said that she used to work in an art bookstore, and the most stolen book in that shop was this one:) Taking the title too literally?

 

Vanitas Designs on Etsy

Vanitas Designs is my new Etsy shop and I finally uploaded items to sell today...a series of cushion covers made from collected vintage tapestries.
Here is a link to the shop and another one here for Vanitas Designs facebook which I also only opened today:)Would so appreciate a like on facebook...I need 25 likes to set the website address properly (made a bit of a booboo by omitting that bit in the set up).
I love making things as I find it much more relaxing sometimes than the cerebral challenge of bringing a large painting together....most of my paintings invariably go through  a "lost" phase. It's great to step away and take up another activity..hence Vanitas Designs which is the result of my time-outs!

Had lots of fun playing with the different tapestries and sorting out which one to go with which backing material; sorting out the vintage buttons to secure in the back...and of course the pompoms. I had no idea really how to make them but thank goodness for Utube..can learn anything there. I took the very simple method of just twirling the wool around my four fingers, tying the wool in the middle once pulled from the hand, and then cutting the loops at either end....a slight haircut of the pompoms, and voila! They are fun!
These cushion covers are around 18 x 18 inches or 45 x 45cm and sell for $25AUD plus postage.
The next upload for Vanitas Designs on etsy will be a series of miniature round picture frames  containing thumbnails of my vanitas florals and bugs..will let you know when they're finished.

 

Website updated

Have been quite busy with one thing and another lately but have finally updated my website.
You can have a look here if you like:)   www.karencipressi.com

Be back shortly!

Artists wanted for charity exhibition 6th 7th September 2014 in Brisbane

Art Exhibition 6th 7th September 2014

I am on a subcommittee for a local Brisbane charity, TOS, (non-denominational) and this year one of our major fund raisers will be an art exhibition entitiled Mobility for Life. The funds raised will help one of our ongoing projects, a mobility aid project in Assam, India. The monies will buy crutches, wheel chairs and tricycles for many disabled and poverty stricken people in this region, enabling them to gain some level of independence and even employment in some cases. Moreover, the devices themselves are made in the local area thus providing much needed work.

The Mobility for Life art exhibition will be held at the Brisbane Theosophical Society in Wickham street, Brisbane on Saturday 6th and Sunday  7th September.

We had great success with our initial art exhibition in 2012. Water for Life,  thanks to all the wonderful artists who contributed their works for display. That year we were able to finalize payment for a water bore in a drought ridden village in Kitui province in Kenya...that village is now thriving.

So once again we invite artists to display their works at our exhibition. To download an entry form please go to facebook.com/mobilityforlife . Please like us in order to spread the word about the event.  If you do not use facebook but would like to know more about the exhibition you can contact me at karen.cipressi@gmail.com

Look forward to hearing from you.

The gorgeous heritage listed building in Wickham tce which will be the venue for the exhibition.

 

Harvest with Joachim Froese

This week, Goma opened its free winter exhibition, Harvest.... a celebration of all things food.

Joachim Froese is a participating artist who, on the opening day,  had a public conversation with assistant curator Sally Foster.  Froese is a photographer whose broad body of still life work is steeped in the tradition of Dutch still life, and  hence my interest in his work despite the fact that I am a painter and he a photographer. Froese maintains that photography is as much about construction as painting is, and one of his great inspirations is Vermeer. Interestingly, he believes that Vermeer, along with many of the Dutch masters, probably constructed much of their work with the aid of a camera obscura, and  would have been digital artists if living today...a very reasonable statement considering how inventive and innovative the Ducth were at that time in the field of optical science.

Froese's  work is not separate from art history and theory, and for him the creative process begins with his reading. From his reading come his ideas,  followed by visual responses..more ideas follow, interspersed with more reading and so it goes. The results are meticulously staged and beautifully crafted photographs that gently reverberate with the loaded symbolism of the vanitas theme.  The flesh of the figs falls away; the two papayas have been photographed sequencially with the fallen seeds subtly moved between shots so as to infer a passage of time. Beautiful work.





The three works in the Harvest exhibition are from Froese's second Rhapography series and were direcly influenced by the Spanish still life artist, Juan Sanchez Cotan.. Cotan's paintings exhibit an almost monastic simplicity and austerity but are amazing in the seeming modernity of their compositions (of course I realize contemporary art rests on an historical basis and I suppose that is what Froese is highlighting). Below are a couple of Cotan's works...the momento mori theme without the extravagance of the Dutch still lifes.

 


I was utterley stunned when I first came across  Cotan's work, and no wonder he has had innumerable artists  pay tribute to him through their own art.

I love going places where there is an ongoing experience long after the event..on hand of Froese's talk I have ordered a book by the art critic Norman Bryson, "Looking at the Overlooked"...great title for a series of essays on the still life genre. This book is in transit at present making its way to my door..love buying online...like sending pressies to oneself. They arrive on a day when one least expects and it's Christmas all over again.

Have a great day, and enjoy your own creative endeavours, whatever they may be!

Terrain...Indigenous art

On Monday a friend and I met at QAG to have a coffee and a wander. We inevitably ended up at Goma, and on the third floor was an exhibition entitled Terrain..so good!

This exhibition is a celebration of media which comes directly from the earth and the artists' environments. There are baskets made from spinefex with insides  smeared with  rich red dirt; fibre dyes are made from flora collected; everything resonates with a sense of site  and place.
There is a meditative quality and a sense of rhythm to the objects on display. Stitch after stitch; knot after knot... the works evolve into wondrous artifacts which still echo the places of  origin.

Go see!

 

VGA, Melbourne museum, and Goma visits

Recently I have visited a few exhibitions and here are some of my highlights.

The Victorian Gallery of Art was wonderful. I was particularly delighted with its display of Renaissance paintings from its own collection, and also the three Dutch Baroque florals..yes only three amongst the many rooms of mostly religious works.

Artists like De Heem (below) excelled in the secular depiction of fruits and flowers, whilst alluding to the transcience and impermanence of life. Stilleven, still life painting, became a celebrated  genre in its own right.



Jan Davidsz de Heem
Still Life with fruit
Oilk on canvas, 1640 - 50

"De Heem invented thge Pronkstilleven, or the sumptuous still life"..(VGA)

(The green square in the top left quadrant is a  reflection of the exit sign on the opposite wall:)

Close up of de Heem's painting.

Leopold Stoll
Flowerpiece, oil on canvas, 1837
There are 39 varieties of fruit and flowers in this work, and since the the 15th century Dutch artists had taken a scientific approach to the renderings of flowers and fruit. Accuaracy of detail was vitally important as can be seen with close up photos of  Stoll's painting.

Jan Francois van Dael
Flemish Flowerpiece 1811
Oil on canvas

Below..close ups of van Dael's Flowerpiece..

As the gallery rooms wound around, gradually the viewer entered the art of the 20th century. Here are a few pieces that stood out for me, although there were so many more.

Bonnard
Siesta, Oil on canvas, 1900
Gorgeous work.. and below is a close up of Bonnard's paint application..strong use of impasto.

Mark Rothko,
Untitled..Red, 1956, Oil on Canvas.
This is the first time that I have seen a Rothko other than a digital image..I did not weep!!





David Hockney
The Second Marriage, 1963
Oil, gouache and collage of torn wallpaper on canvas.
This was a large work and I loved the use of different media, and also the configuration of three cnavases sided together to form the illusion of a box..metaphor for marriage??

Whilst in Melbourne, I stayed with my Mexican friend, and so we were both keen to see the Aztec exhibition at the Melbourne museum. I won't go into the details of Aztec culture, but I have taken some photos of the stone sculptures on display..haunting portrayals of a culture that flourished for only two hundred years.

Back in Brisbane, I finally went to Goma in the last days of its much advertised exhibition "Falling back to earth" by Cai Guo-Qiang, and have been thinking how I felt about this exhibition. Strangely, I don' t really seem to feel connected to it at all. The exhibits are definitely large spectacles and quite beautiful to see, but I didn't feel touched or excited or intellectually stimulated by it. Of course it's interesting to read the didactics, and the blurbs put out by the gallery about this artist and his philosophy, but all said and done, it did not "touch" me in any particular way. I had been surprised to read that the "Heritage" exhibit was inspired by the artist's visit to Stradbroke and his very Arcadian view of the lakes. The ensuing exhibit was very much more global in context than specific to the original site. As I sat and gazed at the replicas of animals surrounding the constructed lake, and the leaping wolves in the next room, I wondered how many Chinese factory workers had sewed and fabricated these items without any understanding of the eventual purpose of their work. I had felt quite devoid of emotion and wondered if the labourers behind these works had also felt as listless.


I much more enjoyed the fallen gums on display..only because they were natural and so very tactile. They at least did not have a manufactured quality but still resounded with all the wonderous shapes of an organic life form.


Later in the day, I  made my way over to QAG to see what paintings were on offer, and once again I was thrilled with a line up of early Northern European oil paintings depicting religious themes. They were from about the early 15 th century and ranged from Flemish and Dutch to German works .(sorry but I did not take any photos here! ) I was smitten by the gorgeous patina of the oils on old oak panels. These works were intimate in scale, and the artist's hand was still evident in the brush stokes and the gentle application of the glazes. Five hundred years had not erased the feeling of personal involvement.

I will leave now with a quote from Alain de Botton and John Armstrong as read in a VGA flyer..
Art edits down cpmplexity and helps us to focus, for a brief period of time, on life's most meaningful aspects".      I like that!