Charles Avery and presentation prep

My presentation prep is as of yet nonexistent. However, I have decided that I could not bear to put anyone through me reading out the essay. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.

So what I need to do is highlight those points that I feel are most significant and important, make a page with all the images so that I can show those as I speak, and sort out a better organisation of the content. I looked through my essay earlier and realised I could have perhaps re-organised it for better reading. But then again that’s what happens when you keep going back and looking at the work you’ve already submitted and it being too late to make changes. ‘Tis not good for one’s stress levels.

The presentation is on Wednesday so an update will be up by the end of the week (IA).

Now to the work of Charles Avery. A kind friend from my saturday workshop sent me the link to the ‘Walking in my Mind’ exhibition site: http://walkinginmymind.southbankcentre.co.uk/html/exhibition as she found it very interesting to see some of the art works.

One of the artworks was the Untitled installation by Charles Avery which is very unusual and I couldn’t possibly explain it so here are the words from the exhibition site  (http://walkinginmymind.southbankcentre.co.uk/html/artists/view/charles):

Charles Avery creates drawings, charts, sculptures and texts that combine to form installations. Since 2004, his work has focused on a single, epic project, The Islanders, an encyclopaedic investigation of an imaginary island and everything it contains – its people, customs, mythology, topography, human history and bizarre natural history – as seen through the eyes of an anonymous explorer.

The image that caught my eye was that of the Eternity Chamber:

Untitled (Eternity Chamber), 2007 - by Charles Avery (Image taken from http://walkinginmymind.southbankcentre.co.uk web site)

Now, I’m sure if you have seen my recent posts you will recognise this set-up. It looks like that human kaleidoscope image with the kids playing around inside (see post Excitement begins). I like how the pattern has been placed above and below the mirrors to create the eternity of colourful triangles using a geometric grid. This is very close to an idea I was contemplating to create, except with my own patterns which have more detail and will possibly look much more complex when mirrored in such a way. I would also probably create it at a much smaller scale. But I still need to figure out how to build the thing! It’s cool to see this and the use of colours is something to consider.

So far I have kept my work black and white and I think I will continue to do so as the effect of light and shadows is very important. These effects are more visible in high contrasting colours such as black and white. But if I have time I might dabble in some coloured pieces – see how they look.

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Eye of the Tiger

I hope my titles are not misleading people to view my posts for the wrong reasons lol – I just like to make them a little interesting.

Ok so Mission started and partly accomplished. I said I wouldn’t post anything until I had created some patterns and well I can’t say I finished a whole pattern but I spent at least a couple hours just doing the base work for one.

I’m quite surprised that it took as long as it did actually – just to create the grid. I took photos using my mobile (my proper camera is somewhere in a box, somewhere in my dishevelled house) so they’re not that great but the aim was to document the process.

The bare necessities

Ok so I was using large (A3) squared paper so that I would be able to keep my straight lines accurate.
I used 5cm as my radius and started drawing circles from the centre of the page outwards. This method has been demonstrated in Islamic Design: A Genius for Geometry by Daud Sutton, and is supposed to be the traditional approach to creating Islamic geometric patterns. If you’ve read my Project justification then you’ll know why this is important to me. As it isn’t my usual method I thought I’d give it a go and see where it takes me.

Ok so the circles start overlapping as seen below:

circles overlapping but spreading too

I then carried on until I had filled the whole page with the circles:

As you can see this has created a tessellated effect simply with the construction of circles. After this I wasn’t quite sure what I needed to do next. I misplaced my book 😦 and so I played it by ear – well tried to remember what I had read in the book anyway. As I’ve said before I havn’t got access to my stuff.

So then I started connecting the mid points of each circle – creating horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines – a sub grid.

This produced another set of shapes on the sub grid of lines not just the circles. I’m not sure that the vertical lines were correct but it looked ok so I carried on:

Adding lines

I looked closely at the page (which was a bit mesmerising) and picked out shapes that I liked the look of. I usually do this in the creation of my pattern work. Breaking down shapes using lines and particular measurements and then seeing what new shapes are created. In the close up below you can see some of these smaller shapes within shapes which were created simply by the addition of the straight lines. I would now need to consider which shapes I would choose to highlight and use in the pattern and which ones would perhaps form a subtle background to the main pattern.

The shapes

Ok so I think this process was useful. The main thing that I found difficult was the accuracy! Even though I made sure the compass stayed at the same radius throughout, and that the connecting lines and dots and movement from one circle to another was the right place, there were still wider spaces between shapes than there should have been. The most annoying thing I found was the compass kept slipping!!! this was highly irritating and meant I had to rub out bits here and there.

But it’s been a learning process and I need to do this a lot more so I know how to neaten up my grids and start doing different kinds of patterns. I am really looking forward to the next stages of these experiments.

Now I really need to find that book!!