Project number thirteen: frozen sunlight behind the charlottenburger schloß
This was created on the pond that lies behind the charlottenburger palace in berlin. The pond lies in a very pleasant park which I happened to be visiting with my daughter in the afternoon. I had suspected that there would be more than enough ice to work with, so I had brought along a hammer and a chisel. A handful of people were on the ice on the pond, and some of them were skating, and the sun had been shining all day, so the atmosphere was perfect for this kind of thing. several of the tourists came over and started taking pictures.
A day later I came back and did some skating myself.
Project number twelve: throwing snowballs at a wall can be therapeutic
i should have people pay me lots of money to give them the chance to throw five hundred snowballs at a wall. throwing five hundred snowballs at their boss, or at least at an effigy of their boss would probably be more motivating, but throwing snowballs at a wall is surprisingly satisfying in and of itself.
Project number eleven: needle flower number two
This is a continuation of an idea started on project number seven.
like all of my unsold projects it will be for sale in my shop on etsy.
Project number ten: red letter day
i’ve used scarlet oak leaves stuck on to plane trees several times before, but never in this fashion. i like the endless possibilities, and that leaves looks like some letters from a foreign alphabet.
art should be dialog. i used to think that ‘real’ artists created art for no other purpose than to get rid of the ideas that happened to be chasing around in their heads, but i had a good talk with an old teacher of mine (actually he’s not old, but he was my teacher about 20 years ago) during which i realized that art is ultimately dialog. even if an artist shouldn’t care about how most people will react to his artwork, the artwork itself is a statement about what the artist thinks.
if the artist has been influenced by other artists, then his art is like an answer to a question that the other artists put. and if his art influences later generations then they will in turn continue the dialog.
i think this is probably quite obvious to most musicians, or writers, but painting can become very abstract. why an artist paints can become quite abstract, which is a shame. dialog is important.
Project number nine: working with the wind
i created this in lehnin, during a pumpkin festival last fall. john barry, a friend of mine took the photos while i blew the leaves through a pipe.
this is the first time that i worked directly with the wind. its something i have been meaning to do for quite some time, so although i’m not altogether satisfied with how these pictures came out (my camera is too slow) i am satisfied that i did it at all.
Project number eight: havelschlange
the havel is a large body of water west of berlin. ’schlange’ is german for snake.
created this one one misty morning while marin was fishing in the havel.
he didn’t catch anything, and at the time i was disappointed with the outcome, but time heals all wounds, and i quite like it now. it is made of pine branches.
rules update
its been ages (two months) since i last updated this blog, and i was actually planning to make it a weekly affair, so i’m changing some of the rules i specified at the beginning of this project, namely i will continue to offer pictures on auction here, but if they don’t sell, they will go on sale at my shop on etsy forever, or until some etsy buyer decides to buy my artwork.
Project number seven: needleflower
This project wouldn’t have happened if a certain etsy user called vintology wouldn’t have insisted that i create a new piece of artwork for a relative of hers. She liked the philosophy behind project water me!!! -I suggested sending the recent work i did while on leave in kasachstan, but she was having none of it…
Which was, of course, most encouraging. So i left the house without a clue of what i would do, and this is what i came up with. It’s the first work i’ve done using pine needles for something other than sewing leaves together. The first time i did it it was much too cloudy for a good picture, so this is the second attempt, created in a hurry on a cloudy day during a short burst of sunlight.
on leave
I’m going to be in a foreign country for the whole of august, so i’ll start posting again in september.
Project number six: iris meander ruhwaldpark
This is a second take on what I did on my third project in lehnin. I definately like it better than the first one.
