Leaf

So we have arrived at the last Thursday in May and we are coming to our final Thursday Club of the Bealtaine Sessions.

In response to the work we have been doing so far Emma has kindly dug out this fabulous drawing from the Crawford Gallery collection. Leaf by Kathy Prendergast  is a massive 236 x 190 cms - so when we encounter this ‘in the flesh’ its scale reminds us that we could almost be looking at a reflection of ourselves - we become embodied in the leaf.

The leaf is drawn in blue chalk and the choice of material and colour is a curious one: chalk is a delicate medium, mobile and liable to blur on any surface, here it speaks of fragility, impermanence and loss, and there is a practical need to be careful in the making of it, the blurring across some areas of the drawing gives a sense of movement and motion blur, animating the veins in a ghostly way. The green of life is not present here - blue is an ethereal colour, cool, distant, nostalgic even, perhaps frozen.  In a material sense Leaf could be a ‘blue print’ – suggesting the idea of a prototype, however the sense of a pocket sized plan is strangely inversed here because of Leaf's monumental scale, somehow doubly dwarfing us in its potential to be scaled up, or read like a map - we become tiny in its landscape.

I can imagine the artist, leaf in hand, gazing at its complexity and noting each tiny vein on every branching form, rigorously, obsessively even, translating the lines, on an epic scale, to the paper, where there is huge potential to get lost in The Leaf. Imagining this scenario brings the intent focus of the artist into being and I begin to see the time spent, drawn out in passages across the image, each containing marks with different characters. I am brought to imagine a daily ritual and all the different fluctuations of moods and energies brought into being in the leaf.

Kathy Prendergast has also made a drawing of a hand on the same epic scale, this time in a brown chalk, lending it an earthy presence.

TASK

This week we are going to try a variety of approaches:

You can take a lead from KP and scale up.

If you have the space  you can find the biggest paper to hand (wallpaper is always good for this), or you can join several smaller pieces together - zoom in on The Leaf and you will see where KP has joined several pieces of paper together.

Your size of ground is dictated only by the space you have to work in! NB: It also depends on how much chalk you have.

If space is tight you can work on a regular-sized piece of paper and drawing only a tiny section (you can then decide if you want to jigsaw puzzle sections together to make the whole, or not). It’s worth noting that the size of your ground often dictates the size of your movements, wrist and hand, whole arm, or whole body! Working on a large scale is a physically immersive experience and I really recommend it. Most artists find they have a scale they like to work on and I tend towards the large, I really like to be inside my drawing involving my whole body in the movement of marks across the image.

You can decide what you would like to draw, hand, leaf or something else….perhaps the object form daily use that you drew in the earlier sessions. It’s worth picking something with a fair amount of complexity so you can get engrossed in the detail. If you are working large you might choose to work upright on the wall, so you can face it, or you could choose to make your drawing on the floor.

You can also try to extend your reach by attaching your marking tool to a bamboo or garden stick, so there’s no need to bend over the drawing and it gives a different kind of control - Matisse used this technique, as you may know, in later life when he made his drawings from his sick bed, using crayons on sticks - try out different methods of interacting with your ground - each has its own kind of choreography and discourse between you and the unfolding  image.

You can try using different media – chalk is fun but quite messy! Use an eraser cut to size to carve into the chalky marks, picking out the lighter detail on the leaf. I find that chalks make me want to be more gestural and less precise so I got going with the rhythm of this withered plantain leaf.

When you have finished you will need to fix the chalk to the page using hairspray.

You can also experiment with wax resist where you draw make marks with wax, drawing invisibly on paper and then wash over your drawing with a dye-based medium, like ink or watercolour paint -I used an old candle, a brush and some ink.

To make a rubbing choose a leaf with high relief, and prominent veins, I have picked a strawberry leaf. You can also draw your leaf freehand, experimenting with pressure and line.

You can also use wax crayons for wax resist , combining coloured wax with your wash.

You can build up layers using different techniques and media.

Be inventive! See how you can stretch your resources to the max.

In this series I have used materials I had to hand, this was a little challenging but it gave me some useful parameters to work within. You might find you have different equipment and materials - I invite you to play around with what you’ve got! If you are really desperate for special materials you can order online from Cork Art Supplies another useful site is Jackson’s in the UK.

Have fun and I hope to see you in the real one day soon!

It would be fun to share these findings. As usual if you would like to do this please upload to Instagram and #thurs_day_club or to the CrawfordGallery_ThursdayClub  (private) Group page on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/238947527257822

Or if this is tricky you can send them to me and I can upload them.

SHARING

You can make comments, suggestions or observations directly to the Crawford education here:

Anne Boddeart
Curator / Programme manager, Learn and Explore:
anneboddaert@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+353 (0)21 490 7857

Emma Klemencic
Education:
emmaklemencic@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+ 353 (0) 21 4907862

PROCESS - Odilon Redon Inspires ….

Over the past number of weeks I’ve been setting tasks for the Thursday Club, which I fully intended to follow myself. But I was drawn to other things, I worked from a truncated piece of sawn off ivy after looking at the Canova casts, I guess this is where my attention took me, a little away from the brief, which was to look at something old and worn and be drawn into the patina of its use over time. I realise that I must accept this divergence from instruction when making art work and I fully expect it to happen in others; laws created to help with structure were, after all, made to be broken. Last week’s task to draw an object of everyday complete escaped me, I got sucked into other works that I had on the table.

And so this week I have decided to share with you some thoughts about drawing and making work. One of my favourite artists of all time is Odilon Redon, I love his inspired colour work and I love his strange and moody drawings, particularly his work from trees.

And so I sought out some quotes from the artist, where he discusses his approach and relationship with making work. I have made a little video incorporating his ideas with my own musings while I work on a drawing. I hope you enjoy this and it suggests something as a starting off point for your own work. When setting out you can bear in mind one of the nuggets I have chosen from Odilon Redon, describing process and material.:

“I await joyous surprises while working, an awakening of the materials that I work with and that my spirit develops.”

In the video I discuss my choice of pencil. Recently my choice is for hard pencils and I have a collection of H - 6H. I love the point you can get on a hard pencil, its precision and the way you can build up soft layers and create delicate marks. Hard pencils score into the soft paper to this is something you need to work with when using pressure. I also use a rubber to carve back into the marks. A trick with cumbersome rubbers is to slice off a wedge and you can use this to fine tune back to the ground in a very satisfying way.

I just let the drawing flow as I was recording, so there is a bit of interference in the way I would normally work, I made the video over two days, following perhaps from an observation of Redon’s:

“I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.”

I love this quote in the way that it combines the observation with imagination. I am not quite so clear in the way I work, I tend to hop back and forth between observation and imagination, I like to keep the objects on hand for reference, seeing how the light falls across the surface or the particular structure. Sometimes I go with trying to understand the structure and others I allow the form to be more lyrical a suggestion of a movement, a rhythm  or expression, in the same way music does. Odilon Redon sums it up:

“My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.”

This makes perfect sense to me, drawing is at once a discovery and a forming of a particular space with its own rhythms, tones and logic, not necessarily of this world. The objects I choose perform within the drawing interacting with one another and hopefully with the viewer too, they have a suggestiveness which is indetermined and ambiguous.

TASK
So this is the task for this week. For a staring point find something you can look at in detail, something or things that have a degree of complexity which will capture your full focus, taking you out of your head,  into the object and onto the page!

Put on some music, as I say in the video I like the radio for its surprises and I listen to Lyric FM, and I can recommend this for your flow.

Choose your materials I recommend:

• Pencils - ( I recommend any or all of the Hs you have to hand)
• A craft knife
• A hard eraser.
• Pencil sharpener
• Some nice paper

It’s useful too to have a piece of sandpaper to hand for fine tuning your point, I know sharpeners these days just tend to chew the pencil, so a combination of knife and sandpaper is good.

Go with the flow, and here is another tip from Odilon Redon:

“Nothing in Art is achieved by will alone. It is achieved by docilely submitting to the subconscious.”

Watch Julie create her drawing here

It would be fun to share these findings. As usual if you would like to do this please upload to Instagram and #thurs_day_club or to the CrawfordGallery_ThursdayClub  (private) Group page on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/238947527257822

Or if this is tricky you can send them to me and I can upload them.

SHARING

You can make comments, suggestions or observations directly to the Crawford education here:

Anne Boddeart
Curator / Programme manager, Learn and Explore:
anneboddaert@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+353 (0)21 490 7857

Emma Klemencic
Education:
emmaklemencic@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+ 353 (0) 21 4907862

In this week’s Virtual Thursday Club, artist-facilitator Julie Forrester ponders Eilís O’Connell’s sculptural work Each Day (2003), which can be found in the grounds of Crawford Art Gallery, and invites us to consider the meaning within the everyday in the task outlined below.

Eilís O’Connell’s Each Day (2003) is one of my favourite pieces in the Crawford Art Gallery Collection. It has grown on me over time. Over time I have seen its surroundings change and noticed the changing dialogue it has with its environment, what a change when the bamboo grew a strip around it and then was cut back low, how different it is when the outdoor Café surrounds it in the summer months.

I love its quiet shape which holds an intimate space on one side - the side that opens to the Big Tree and the narrow gate to the entrance. I love its soft ridged back, deliberately patinated with lichen like patterns - smooth though on the silky bronze surface, I love that it looks at first like a boat, and then this thought surprises as it has upturned and erected itself oddly into the earth. I love the human scale of it, a whole hood for anybody who chooses to brush up to it, and so a shelter and a protector. I love that I can imagine the making of it in a gesture, from plasticine folded and squeezed gently once at one end to enable it to stand, I love imagining it in the hand, on a desk and imagined by the artist enlarged and finding itself in a foundry re-birthed in heat and fire. I love that its corrugated form suggests also a farmyard roof and rural life, the history of the maker and a marker for many of us, I love that it is an outdoor sculpture and is part of the natural and built environment - I love that it takes on the weather, I love its resilience. I love that it is called Each Day, an enigma that expands it more - there is a question worth asking. Here are some of the answers I remember hearing: “each day is the same but different” - “it has a front and a back like a day and night” - “it is open and closed – “like a day opening in the morning and closing into night” - “it is ordinary, no big deal” - “it’s cumulative, each day following another” “it’s enduring, getting older with time but more or less still looking the same” “it’s boring” “it’s just part of the woodwork” - “it’s like a promise”.

These days of lockdown have their own rhythm where time seems to be more elastic and more expansive. Without an imposed routine I am responding more to the sun, its ups and downs, I am noticing my daily rituals more, and finding the space to enjoy and appreciate the small things in the everyday. There are actions and objects that go together in rituals; in bathing it’s the familiar soap, edges worn off it, resting on its flannel at the side of the bath, the east facing window with its pink curtains where I great the sun, and sitting on the edge of the bed and the order I put on just the minimum of comfortable clothes, fewer these days as the warmth of the summer arrives, same order every day, building the rhythms of my own clock, the sweeping of the floor, even the emptying of the bins, the tying of the bag, the lifting of the lid and all around me the changing of the seasons, the light, the trees and the birds.

TASK: The Everyday

This week I would like to propose a mundane drawing routine. Something ordinary, repeated and intimate, a ritual that might accompany one of the breaks in the day.

Pick something ordinary, an object or an activity from your ordinary home life, you can draw from observation or from imagination, or both, it’s up to you. Choose a time frame that suits you and stick to it – 10 minutes, half an hour, an hour – it’s up to you. Make a drawing of it every day for a week. See how it changes, how it stays the same. Notice if you develop an urge to break the rules… what happens? Be curious. Make at least one drawing every day. Label and date your drawings with the day of the week they were made  Monday...Tuesday… Wednesday... etc. What will you have on the seventh day?

It would be fun to share these findings. As usual if you would like to do this please upload to Instagram and #thurs_day_club or to the CrawfordGallery_ThursdayClub  (private) Group page on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/238947527257822

Or if this is tricky you can send them to me and I can upload them.

SHARING

You can make comments, suggestions or observations directly to the Crawford education here:

Anne Boddeart
Curator / Programme manager, Learn and Explore:
anneboddaert@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+353 (0)21 490 7857

Emma Klemencic
Education:
emmaklemencic@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+ 353 (0) 21 4907862

Perfection made more sublime…

Last week we looked at reinterpretation and claiming of an existing image, this week we will be considering the wear and tear of an object and how time and damage creates a certain human empathy.

The Crawford Art Gallery is known for its collection of Classical and Neo-Classical sculptures - cast in plaster by Antonio Canova from ancient Greek and Roman originals in marble that were held at the Vatican up until the nineteenth century. The sculptures were originally created with veneration for the perfect human form, and represented Greek or Roman gods - Aphrodite (Venus), Artemis (Diana), Apollo, Hercules and Zeus (Jupiter) or Adonis a mortal of god-like beauty.

Image: CAG.3052 Janet Mullarney, Rishabadeva Again, 2010. Collection Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. © the artist's estate.

It is interesting that many classical sculptures that, like the armless and headless Venus de Milo,are now best loved for their imperfections, reflecting a very human story of mutilation and loss across time and history.

The Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet Michelangelo was an early champion of the limbless torso of the Belvedere Hercules that forms a central part of the Crawford Art Gallery’s cast collection.

We can see the influence of the truncated torso of Hercules in nineteenth-century works by the French sculptor, Rodin, and more recently in other works in the Crawford Art Gallery Collection such as Rishabadeva Again (2010) by Janet Mullarney and in Daphne Wright’s exhibition held earlier this year (A Quiet Mutiny).

In 2019, the Canova Castswere restored and are now on display in the beautifully refurbished, bright turquoise galleries. Contemporary trends in restoration have been leaning towards conserving the patina of a relic's history rather than attempting to restore it to its original state, and the Crawford Art Gallery casts preserve some of their patina from their years as models for generations of early Cork art Students.

There are deliberations around which parts of an object’s history to conserve and how. The sculptures arrived to Cork naked; fig leaves were added to preserve the modesty of the sculptures for their nineteenth-century audiences.  In 2019, after years of work by conservator Eoghan Daltun, the sculptures were unveiled, restored to new version of nakedness. The removed fig leaves now have a museum case of their own, where they are named and laid out as objects in their own right - complete with a ha’penny, which may have been inserted by a student sometime during the 1970s. Stories build around the sculptures over time and deepen our imaginings, adding a patina of their own.

This week and next we will consider the beauty of imperfection and a life held in objects.

Please find links to works and articles here:

Crawford Gallery and the Canova Casts

https://www.facebook.com/CrawfordArtGalleryCork/videos/1321693511314098

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/turning-over-an-old-leaf--crawford-art-gallery-statues-to-make-fig-reveal-in-cork-927307.html

https://www.yaycork.ie/yikes-heres-what-lies-beneath-the-fig-leaf-of-the-belvedere-torso/

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/why-the-ancient-greeks-didn-t-make-a-big-deal-of-penis-size-1.3953929

On Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/apr/29/rodin-and-the-art-of-ancient-greece-review-british-museum

Janet Mullarney

https://www.janetmullarney.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/things_made.pdf

Daphne Wright

https://crawfordartgallery.ie/daphne-wright-a-quiet-mutiny/

TASK  Ancient Contemporary

Choose the oldest thing you can find in your home, or something you have the longest or strongest connection with. See how it has worn. How has the colour, texture, form changed over time? What was the cause of the wear? Has it been repaired? Imagine all of the interactions that caused it to become the way it is now. There may be very personal family stories that are carried in the object you have chosen, or it may carry a mystery which invites some myth-making of its own suggestion…

Make some drawings answering each of these questions.

Choose your media carefully and try out different approaches, experiment what works best for you and how it carries the sense of the wear and tear you are exploring.

Possible media and equipment:

• Pen and ink using homemade tools
• Charcoal and eraser
• Pencil and eraser
• Permanent marker
• Watercolour paints
• Chalks
• Wax crayons
• Mixed media using any or all of the above.

As usual you will find my attempts at this exercise on Instagram tagged with #thurs_day_club where you can also upload your own using the same hashtag!

Have fun!

SHARING

You can make comments, suggestions or observations directly to the Crawford education here:

Anne Boddeart
Curator / Programme manager, Learn and Explore:
anneboddaert@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+353 (0)21 490 7857

Emma Klemencic
Education:
emmaklemencic@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+ 353 (0) 21 4907862

Julie Forrester shares a walking meditation as part of our Thursday Club - online.

The Thursday Club is an art programme for older adults, that usually meets on a weekly basis, in the Crawford Art Gallery. Whether you prefer to look and enjoy, listen or create we invite you to join Thursday Club online.

Develop your existing skills or dip into something completely new.

#crawfordartgalleryhomelife_thursdays

Virtual Extended Thursday Club

Walking Meditation - saluting things

Taking a walk south towards the furthest point of the 2 km curfew. Docklands. On the way saluting everything that came into view, addressing each vision as it arrived, naming it  with an additional acknowledgement using …that …with ….who or ….ing:

Hello chestnut tree who I see everyday
Hello rubbish bin that is blocking my way
Hello ivy reaching through the railings
Hello wall with peeling paint
Hello ash tree with your buds coming out
etc.

You can do this as a meditation on acknowledging ordinary things in the everyday. It doesn’t matter what you say, just say the first thing that comes to mind, allow the words to be mundane (as mine are above), and also to surprise! Keep going as long as you like, you can respond to sound and smell as well.

When you have named many things take out your phone and capture a photo of something - any thing that appeals to you - today I crossed over the railway and noticed the beautiful and ornate repeated pattern of the blue railings, it suggested a dance to me. I said “hello blue railings who are dancing for me”

Then I turned to look back the river and saw a tree, just about to come into bud, forming a delicate screen of veins over some building work on the docks, I thought soon it would be in leaf and will block that view. I said “hello tree, veins of the city” and I thought about how we see trees as lungs and rivers as arteries, and I thought about veins bring the blood back to the heart, this was a soothing thought.

So here I have made a small story. Now I can draw it.
I have my photos and my salutation to guide me in the context.
You can do this too.
You could also do the saluting meditation around the house/garden - even inside - wherever you chose to move, so long as the intention is set.

I have taken baby steps, allowing the drawings to shape themselves, which in turn shape what I am attracted to looking at.
See my photos “Blue railings” and Veins of the City”  below.
You can also find the drawings I have been making on Instagram here:
#crawfordartgalleryhomelife_thursdays

SHARING

You can share your salutations, photos and ongoing artworks here.
You are invited to upload your photos and drawings to Instagram using the same hashtag:
#crawfordartgalleryhomelife_thursdays

You can make comments, suggestions or observations directly to the Crawford education here:

Anne Boddeart
Curator / Programme manager, Learn and Explore:
anneboddaert@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+353 (0)21 490 7857

Emma Klemencic
Education:
emmaklemencic@crawfordartgallery.ie 
+ 353 (0) 21 4907862

Download a handy PDF file here

Here is Elisabeth Magill’s Blue Constrictor, which is in the Crawford Art Gallery Collection

What is going on in this image?
Magill uses photography as well as oil paint in building the layers can you see evidence of this in the image below?
How does the title influence the way you see this image?