All of my comments are highlighted in red and all the important bits of information within the text of others is highlighted in green.
Artists Burn Designs Into Wood To Create 'Fire Drawings'
I really struggled initially to find inspiration for my project. I was set on the idea of using fire to represent something ordinary being extraordinary. This is because it is an every day thing that we take for granted, to keep us warm, to light a candle for decoration, even to cook our meals. And yet in fact it can be dangerous and even deadly. And at the same time, so beautiful, dramatic and fantastic. I found this project of artists burning their designs into wood and it really inspired my direction to how I could bring fire into art without being too corny.
London-based design firm Studio Glithero creates art pieces by scorching designs into wood using fire, titled‘Fire Drawings’.
Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gameren, the duo behind the work, first etch their designs into the wood panel with flammable paint, which then burns slowly after being lighted up.
According to them, “the protagonist in the Fire Drawings is a flame. It travels through time over a path of flammable screen-printed paint, multiplying or merging together, drawing, leaving a decorative charcoal trace as it goes along”.
Fire Drawings
The protagonist in the Fire Drawings is a flame. It travels through time over a path of flammable screen-printed paint, multiplying or merging together, drawing, leaving a decorative charcoal trace as it goes along.
Each piece in the series choreographs a different path of a flame, that starts burning from a single fuse and then branches and multiples towards a climax; A burning circle of fire. The remaining charcoal pattern resonates a memory of a moment that has already been. Literally and metaphorically it is the ashes of a process.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2140766/Pei-San-Ng-Artist-produces-works-matchsticks-sets-fire.html
Amazing blaze! Artist produces works made from matchsticks - and then sets them on fire
These amazing matchstick sculptures can take weeks to produce - but once they are finished the artist gladly sets them on fire.
Pei-San Ng creates her works using thousands of matches and will often set her work alight for added effect.
She will use up to 2,000 standard matches for each creation to give them a unique look.
The process begins with an initial hand-drawn image before she lays down a grid to suggest where each match will be placed.
She then individually glues in place each matchstick, a painstaking process which can take several weeks or even months.
Depending on each image Miss Ng will then decide if burning the sculpture will add effect to her work.
Miss Ng, 35, who lives in Chicago, Illinois in America., said: 'The reason I use matchsticks is to create two artworks in one, an object and a performance.
'The first artwork is the object, the image of the Phoenix for instance, where the matchsticks become a very tall pixel.
'The thousands of red tips, like pixels, blend together to form the image.
'The first step in my creative process is to think about fire. The image that I create must have some connection to fire.
'I created the Phoenix, based on the mythological bird that rises from its ashes.'
After studying biology in Los Angeles, California, US, for four years Pei-San moved to Chicago.
There she changed her course of study to interior design and eventually architecture.
Following a few years experimenting with plaster, textiles and video art she eventually settled on the matchstick as a repeatable module.
The inspiration for Miss Ng's conceptual artwork came from Ai Weiwei's marble surveillance camera.
Pei-San, originally from Taipei, Taiwan, added: 'I'm most inspired by other artworks that have a level of meaning, both an initial visual and then a deeper idea.
'I like Ai-Weiwei's camera because when you see it is made of marble you realise the meaning of permanent surveillance.
'Conceptual artists have always inspired me to create art that makes people think about the relationship between the image and the materials.
'My artworks must be made out of matches - if they were made out of toothpicks or cotton swabs, the potential for fire would be missing.
'The danger or excitement of the fire is added to the image.
'If the sculpture is of the word 'love', the concept of fire and love creates passion.
'If the image is a dollar sign then fire plus money equals the idea of waste or indulgence.'
Miss Ng has exhibited her work widely across Chicago as well as all over the internet and each image will sell for around £1,200.
http://peisanng.com/about/artist-statement/
I love Pei San Ng's work and it relates very strongly to what I am trying to do with my project. I am also trying to create two meanings through my film, about time and burning. I think it's incredible how long she takes over a piece of what, only to burn it at the end! It has inspired my work to make me want to really highlight the meanings behind my work and the danger and also excitement of it too.
Pei San Ng
Pei San Ng’s artworks blend the regularity of the mass produced unit with the elegance of the hand drawn line.
Her works are clean and precise.
“I like to design with modules. In the past I have created installations using dozens of identical Ikea lamps or Mason jars. These modules end up resembling pixels that form icons or symbols.”
The urban landscape has always been an inspiration for Miss Ng, both professionally and creatively. Theme and variation of modular skyscrapers and office buildings roll through the desert hills and smog of Los Angeles blending the natural with the man made.
Miss Ng’s most recent work uses the red tipped match as the module. “In Chinese culture red is a very lucky color, matches evoke danger. I think that by mixing those two messages the audience is forced to take a second or third look. I want to tempt the viewer to destroy my artwork.”
“When you look at these pieces you realize that – if you light the matches then you change the work, it becomes a performance, and the artwork is potentially destroyed, there is a tension there, you get a moment of satisfaction and then you have nothing – I like that tease” The artworks exist in an interesting place between object and experience – imagined experience or a remembered one.
If the best art makes the viewer ask new questions, then Miss Ng is breaking new ground. When was the last time that you asked someone “Can I light your art on fire?” Pei gets asked that question often.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171344
After researching lots of different quotes about fire from poems and books etc, I was transfixed by this one, "Time is the fire in which we burn" it's from the poem that I have posted below. It's very powerful and gives my project deep meaning. In my film I am burning the words "time" "fire" and "burn" which is very suited to this quote. It is deep and also quite dark but I like it.
Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day
BY DELMORE SCHWARTZ
Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(... that time is the fire in which we burn.)
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn ...)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(... that time is the fire in which they burn.)
Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;
Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
“TIME IS THE FIRE IN WHICH WE BURN”
I title my post a comment made in Bryan Mendez’s “Time Travel”, because I found it to be intriguing. I want to focus on what my thoughts stem from when I read that. “Time is the fire in which we burn,” meaning that we are consumed by time. We run, run, run all day long to make sure that we are on time, and finishing everything we have to do. But this also speaks of something else to me..we are not only consumed by time, but we are directed by time. The power of fire is the power of time over our lives. We are all so into time that we have let it become the director of our lives. Why do we let that happen? Why do we allow the time to take over? Is time even real? I want to argue that it is, not just because we think it is. The earth moves around the sun, which makes for there to be a time change. You look at time lapse photography, and tell me that you don’t see a change. Things can change in just a certain amount of time, whether that be relationships, or actual physical changes. Overtime we age, which we can all see also. We “burn” away in the time that surrounds our lives. What I mean by this is that we are changing, we are alway, evolving, things are always becoming something different. We are not the same for the entire time we are on this planet.
Joanne Robinson describes the quote perfectly to suit my project suggesting that it means "we are consumed by time" the same way that the flames consume the matches that I have made the words out of.
http://weburbanist.com/extraodinary-art-from-ordinary-objects/
Extraordinary Art from Ordinary Objects
Using ordinary materials to create art has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, limiting ones palette means having to work around problems that may arise as well as relying on variable quality of the materials available. On the other hand, there is an implicit element of novelty and there are inherent opportunities for imbuing works with multiple meanings. These artists and materials may be unusual but the results range from conventional to extraordinary.
Creative Carvings from Ordinary Objects:
What do egg shells, books and pencils have in common? They can all, in the right hands, be carved into iinteresting works of art. Shells are delicate though this makes delicate carvings in them all the more impressive. Pencils seem like such simple objects until a skilled craftsman dissects them in completely unconventional ways. Books are already filled with meaning, images and words which can be brought out in unique ways by carving them in different patterns.
Portraits and Sculptures from Ordinary Objects:
Who would have thought toothpicks could be turned into incredibly intricate sculptures, that nails could be used to hammer out a gigantic portrait or that packing tape could be transformed into compelling layered portraits? Whether it is the sheer amount of time and materials or the aesthetic result, these artists stick to their essential materials and replicate and develop their work from each piece to the next.
Even More Art from Ordinary Objects:
This collection features some particularly compelling works of art from ordinary materials. One painter uses hands as his canvass and creates beautiful animals by using a combination of paint and proper shape and angle for photo-documenting his creations. Another raises awareness about trash and reuse by shaping used cell phones into strange sculptures. Yet another takes everyday push-pins as the basis for composing pointalistic portraits of friends and family.
Creative Art Cars and Art Car Designs:
Nothing is more ubiquitous than the automobile in modern culture. Most of us take what we get and live with it, fix it when needed and fret over bumps and scratches. Some people trick out there cars for efficiency and speed. And some people take things to the extreme and transform their ordinary vehicles into amazing works of mobile art.
Furniture and Architecture from Paper and Cardboard:
Paper and cardboard sound like some of the flimsiest materials and yet some designers have employed these in the creation of relatively complex and sturdy industrial, architectural and furniture designs. While some of them can only survive indoors others have actually been constructed to resist wind, rain and other outdoor elements.
Post-It Note Pranks, Sculptures and Murals:
The Post-It Note as a universal and rather conventional material which some creative people have turned into works of comedy or even art. From pasting them all over a car to creating complex patterns or interactive art installations the possibilities turn out to be practically endless – all the more surprising given the relative simplicity of a Post-It Note itself.
All these incredible works of art go to show how popular transforming the ordinary to extra ordinary is. It really is incredible how some of these Artists have adapted ordinary objects into beautiful pieces of Art.
Stanislav Aristov
A burning desire to create something beautiful has led a Russian photographer to come up with incredible mini sculptures made from spent matches.
Stanislav Aristov, 30, makes the pieces of art by bending the matches into the desired shape while they are burning and then using a macro lens and studio flash he shoots the fire, matches and smoke.
Highlights include seasonal sculptures of a brightly lit Christmas tree and a burning star.
As well as a host of animals including a matchstick dragonfly, a glowing butterfly and a tail-blazing lizard made out of the charred remains of matches.
The artist from Yekaterinburg in Russia said: 'I came across this type of art by accident.
'I was playing with a pack of matches while I was deciding what to photograph for a competition.
'It was while I was watching the match that I began to think of how it represents life.
'There is the burnt part representing the past, the smoke of memories left and the untouched part of the match the future. < I love this quote it's so beautiful and makes me feel that what I am studying has so much more meaning to it than I first realised.
'The fire is the life. Matches of course are quite normal objects but it turned out they can be presented in very unusual ways.'
This is my favourite of all the work I have studied. How incredible are they? They are each so beautiful and are completely transforming something that was originally seen as an ordinary thing to some amazingly extraordinary. His work has inspired me in so many ways.
The music that I chose is called 'The Promise' and is from the album 'The Piano-Sountrack' (This is the soundtrack to the film 'The Piano'). I have done a little background research on where the song comes from and on what the film itself is about.
A mute woman along with her young daughter, and her prized piano, are sent to 1850s New Zealand for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner, and she's soon lusted after by a local worker on the plantation.
Below is a review of the film by Roger Ebert:
"The Piano" is as peculiar and haunting as any film I've seen.
It tells a story of love and fierce pride, and places it on a bleak New Zealand coast where people live rudely in the rain and mud, struggling to maintain the appearance of the European society they've left behind. It is a story of shyness, repression and loneliness; of a woman who will not speak and a man who cannot listen, and of a willful little girl who causes mischief and pretends she didn't mean to.
The film opens with the arrival of a 30ish woman named Ada (Holly Hunter) and her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), on a stormy gray beach. They have been rowed ashore, along with Ada's piano, to meet a local bachelor named Stewart (Sam Neill), who has arranged to marry her. "I have not spoken since I was 6 years old," Ada's voice tells us on the soundtrack. "Nobody knows why, least of all myself. This is not the sound of my voice; it is the sound of my mind." Ada communicates with the world through her piano, and through sign language, which is interpreted by her daughter. Stewart and his laborers, local Maori tribesmen, take one look at the piano crate and decide it is too much trouble to carry inland to the house, and so it stays there, on the beach, in the wind and rain. It says something that Stewart cares so little for his new bride that he does not want her to have the piano she has brought all the way from Scotland - even though it is her means of communication. He does not mind quiet women, is one way he puts it.
Ada and Flora settle in. No intimacy grows between Ada and her new husband. One day she goes down to the beach to play the piano, and the music is heard by Baines (Harvey Keitel), a roughhewn neighbor who has affected Maori tattoos on his face. He is a former whaler who lives alone, and he likes the music of the piano - so much that he trades Stewart land for the piano.
"That is MY piano - MINE!!" Ada scribbles on a note she hands to Stewart. He explains that they all make sacrifices and she must learn to, as well. Baines invites her over to play, and thus begins his singleminded seduction, as he offers to trade her the piano for intimacy. There are 88 keys. He'll give her one for taking off her jacket. Five for raising her skirt.
Jane Campion, who wrote and directed "The Piano," does not handle this situation as a man might. She understands better the eroticism of slowness and restraint, and the power that Ada gains by pretending to care nothing for Baines. The outcome of her story is much more subtle and surprising than Baines' crude original offer might predict.
Campion has never made an uninteresting or unchallenging film (her credits include "Sweetie," about a family ruled by a self-destructive sister, and "An Angel at My Table" (the autobiography of writer Janet Frame, wrongly confined for schizophrenia). Her original screenplay for "The Piano" has elements of the Gothic in it, of that Victorian sensibility that masks eroticism with fear, mystery and exotic places. It also gives us a heroine who is a genuine piece of work; Ada is not a victim here, but a woman who reads a situation and responds to it.
The performances are as original as the characters. Hunter's Ada is pale, grim and hatchetfaced at first, although she is capable of warming.
Keitel's Baines is not what he first seems, but has unexpected reserves of tenderness and imagination. Neill's taciturn husband conceals a universe of fear and sadness behind his clouded eyes. And the performance by Paquin, as the daughter, is one of the most extraordinary examples of a child's acting in movie history. She probably has more lines than anyone else in the film, and is as complex, too - able to invent lies without stopping for a breath, and filled with enough anger of her own that she tattles just to see what will happen.
Stuart Dryburgh's cinematography is not simply suited to the story, but enhances it. Look at his cold grays and browns as he paints the desolate coast, and then the warm interiors that glow when they are finally needed. And if you are oddly affected by a key shot just before the end (I will not reveal it), reflect on his strategy of shooting and printing it, not in real time, but by filming at quarter-time and then printing each frame four times, so that the movement takes on a fated, dreamlike quality.
"The Piano" is a movie people have been talking about ever since it first played at Cannes, last May, and shared the grand prix.
It is one of those rare movies that is not just about a story, or some characters, but about a whole universe of feeling - of how people can be shut off from each other, lonely and afraid, about how help can come from unexpected sources, and about how you'll never know if you never ask.
I have also bought lots more packets of the Swan matches to use for my final shots as the flames off them were lots more dramatic and effective.
