Saturday 13 December 2014

The fascinating work of Amy Shelton

A while ago I came across the work of Amy Shelton and wrote a blog spot about her project Honeyscribe. I then completely forgot to publish it… So, here it is:

Work by Amy Sheldon
In her artwork, Amy Shelton, who read History of Art at Manchester University and later Fine Art at the University of Plymouth, constantly reflects on the plight of the honeybee. Back in 2011, in response to her research, Amy began The Honeyscribe Project – something that lead her to produce a fascinating body of work that explored the relationship between bee health, human health and the environment. Her aim was to create a body of work that would encourage a dialogue about bees between scientists, artists, writers, beekeepers and the public. Apparently, the name of the project comes from an original name used in Ancient Egypt. Apparently, a ‘Honey Scribe’ was a person who was given the task of recording every drop of honey produced by the local bees.  Amy borrowed this title as a contemporary Honey Scribe who charters current threats to the health of the honey bee whilst reflecting upon their behaviour.
Amy Shelton preparing her Florilegium


Work by Amy Shelton
Work by Amy Shelton
 This year, back in the Spring (sorry guys – I missed it too as I was in California) Amy curated an exhibition in one of the galleries I once exhibited at – Peninsula Arts in the city of Plymouth – it’s a fantastic space and I recommend it. Shelton’s exhibition was a collaborative one featuring many artists, but also, and more importantly for me, one of her own pieces called: ‘Florilegium: Honey Flow’ - a light box installation that documented the plant sources of the pollen and nectar collected by bees to sustain their colonies. This fascinating body of hand sourced material was, in my opinion, arranged by Shelton in such a beautiful, well thought out way. Hundreds of preserved melliferous plants were collected and pressed over an entire year by Amy. Such a collection on its own acts as an absorbing calendar into the life of both the bee and the plant, but when arranged against a lit backdrop in the way these were, they become beautiful pieces of art in their own right. Through this arrangement, Sheldon reveals the inner beauty of every flower whilst also highlighting their importance. Fantastic!

Work by Amy Shelton

Mona Caron’s Murals of Weeds

Mona Caron, a San Francisco-based artist, does most of her art work in the streets. Recently, 'This is Colossal' did a feature on her work which you can see here: Murals of Weeds. I absolutely love her work. I love the way that she empowers plants and gives them a place in the metropolis. Through her paintings, the most overlooked of plants are brought closer to us and in turn we are forced to consider the fact that the city is just as much as place for them as it is for us.




Dandelion by Mona Caron
Mona Caron, a San Francisco-based artist, does most of her art work in the streets. Recently, 'This is Colossal' did a feature on her work which you can see here: Murals of Weeds. I absolutely love her work. I love the way that she empowers plants and gives them a place in the metropolis. Through her paintings, the most overlooked of plants are brought closer to us and in turn we are forced to consider the fact that the city is just as much as place for them as it is for us.

Mona Caron painting her Dandelion

Taking Root by Mona Caron
really love Taking Root. I love the way it glows as the sun rises (or sets - can't quite work it out). I think it's pretty cleverly thought out. This 7 story tall mural apparently features the first tiny wildflower that made it back to a barren piece of land in Union City, California, after its rehabilitation from industrial pollution. Mona worked with the new inhabitants of this specific area and they added welcoming phrases in their many native languages to the roots of the painting, so it is very much a community piece. You can see more about Taking Root on this video:



Thursday 4 December 2014

Charles Jones

Here’s another artist I had never heard about until recently… On their return from England, my Mum and stepdad Andrew splashed out on a magazine at Gatwick Airport. It’s a beautiful magazine – possibly one of the most elegant publications I have ever laid my hands on. It's almost more bookish in appearance, or maybe a periodical, and is called ‘The Art Book Magazine’. You can see a digital version of the journal here: http://theartbookmagazine.com/the_art_book-media_pack-v02.pdf, but I recommend actually splashing out on a real copy if you can find one as embracing the pages is such a delight. The idea behind The Art Book Magazine was conjured up by the genius Oscar Humphries, who wanted to create a publication that celebrated the beauty of art unlike most contemporary sources. In his words ‘what we need is a magazine that presents, in a contemporary way, the best art ever made: those masterpieces that engage, at once, the heart and the head’.  


Broad Beans by Charles Jones

So yes, I was just flicking through and getting a feel when Charles Harry Jones (1866-1959) popped up. Well, his images did. There they were, in all their glory; beautifully plump, velvety broad beans lined in metallic, militant rows. The work reminded me of Karl Blossfeldt (1865 –1932), but I knew straight away that it wasn't Blossfeldt’s work. This work was more organic and natural. In fact, I have thought about these two photographers all week since seeing Jones’ work for the first time and it’s taken me this long to write this post because of it. It irritated me that I couldn’t really put into words how the work from these two photographers differed, but it does. I wanted to say that Jones’ work was more sensual, but then some of Blossfeldt’s work is very sensual. I wanted to say Jones’ work has a tranquil quality to it, but so does Blossfeldt’s. After much thought I have concluded that the difference between the two comes to the level of processing when orchestrating their compositions. One can see that Charles was quite clearly showing how beautiful the fruits of his labour really were and maybe that's all there is.

Pea pods by Charles Jones

You see, Charles was actually an English gardener. From the 1890s, Charles Harry Jones began to work on a number of private estates in England as a gardener, including Great Ote Hall, near Burgess Hill in Sussex. In this profession he was renowned enough to have been featured in a glowing 1905 article in The Gardener's Chronicle about his place of employment.  It stated in part, "The present gardener, Charles Jones, has had a large share in the modelling of the gardens as they now appear for on all sides can be seen evidences of his work in the making of flowerbeds and borders and in the planting of fruit trees, etc..."  Sadly though, what no one realized then, or for another seventy-five years, was that this same gardener was also this brilliant photographer of uncommon sensitivity who chose as his subject matter the very produce and plants which he grew. It is in his treatment of vegetables and fruits that Jones really did transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Charles Jones

The strength of Jones's photographs is in the subtlety of his arrangement, lighting and focus.  They do not have the over the top decorative qualities typical of the Edwardian age in which they were created.  Instead, his works anticipate the modernism of photographers  such as Edward Weston and Karl Blossfeldt without the attendant formalism of twentieth century aesthetics.  The photographs of Charles Jones certainly have a simplicity to them, that is spare and direct.

Blossfelt
Karl Blossfeldt

Cabbage Leaf by Edward Weston

Pepper by Edward Weston

Jones's work was sadly never exhibited in his lifetime, and his talent as a photographer went largely unknown, even to his family. He died in Lincolnshire on 15 November 1959, aged ninety-two. After his death, Charles’ exquisite photographs of fruits, vegetables and flowers remained hidden for a further 22 years, until they were finally discovered by accident in a trunk, along with hundreds of other Edwardian era photographs by Sean Sexton at Bermondsey antiques market. Apparently, two-thirds of the collection mainly comprised of vegetables and the remaining third was evenly divided between between fruits and flowers.  The photographs were fastidiously annotated with the name of each plant followed by the initials ‘C.J.’, although a few had the full name of the photographer.  Meticulously printed gold-toned silver prints from glass plate negatives, the majority of the photographs were unique with very few duplicates. Since Sexton's discovery, the collection has slowly been dispersed by him through auction houses and by other means. According to Charles Jones's granddaughter, Shirley Sadler, Charles was a private and uncommunicative individual, and she confirmed that his activities as a photographer were virtually unknown to his family. However, she did recount her aged grandfather using some discarded glass plates as cloches in his garden...

Cauliflowers by Charles Jones


Luckily for us, Charles Jones has been the subject of a book by Robert Flynn Johnson and Sean Sexton with a preface by Alice Waters called Plant Kingdoms: The Photographs of Charles Jones (Smithmark Publishers, New York, 1998). So, if you want to read more on the subject I suggest that might be a good place to start.  If you want to see his work in the flesh, his vintage photographs can be found in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, San Francisco, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Further reading:




Charles Jones

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Miron Schmückle

Oh my God, where have I been...?! I have just discovered this artist's work and I adore it. I can't stop looking at it, in fact it might even replace my current desk top background.  Check out the work of Romanian artist Miron Schmückle if you have a minute. It's pretty unusual and far out, but I am completely captivated by it. I like how his work really plays on the senses; it is very cleverly done. The pieces are almost musical. 

Untitled, 2011, tempera on canvas on wood, 55x75cm, by Miron Schmückle

Botanical Archives (out of my brain) by Miron Schmückle 
A bit about Miron: 

He was Born in Sibu, Romania in 1966. He studied experimental painting at Muthesius Art School in Kiel and Performance art in Art Academy Hamburg. He was also a teaching assistant at the Theatre Academy Saint Petersburg in Russia. In 1997 he moved to Hamburg where he had his studio until 2008. He then moved to Berlin for a bit and later returned to the Muthesius Art Academy in Kiel for the Doctoral Program.

There is a fabulous little interview with him here


Botanical Archives (out of my brain) by Miron Schmückle 

Untitled, 2011, pencil, Indian ink, watercolor on paper, 140x87cm, by Miron Schmückle 



Botanical Archives (out of my brain) by Miron Schmückle 


Botanical Archives (out of my brain) by Miron Schmückle 


“As You Desire Me”. Installation view at MANZONI SCHÄPER, Berlin 2011, by Miron Schmückle

Monday 1 December 2014

Egon Schiele's Botanical Drawings

So whilst scanning the internet for images, I also came across some of Egon Schiele's work (1890 –  1918)A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is mostly noted for its intensity. His exquisite use of a simple, singular, expressive line marks the artist as an early exponent of Expressionists. It his depictions of twisted body shapes and raw sexuality that he is most known for, but I feel less is said about his botanical works. I for one didn't know that he ever made studies of plants. I am not sure how that skipped me by, but nevertheless it did. Maybe I was just so captivated by his portraits that I didn't bother looking for anything else?


Field of Flowers by Egon Schiele

Regardless of this though, I have at last come across his studies and I have to say I really rather like them. It's his use of line that fascinates me more than anything; the slightly emaciated look of his subjects and the way he places the object on the canvas. The compositions don't appear to be very structured possibly conveying the very chaotic nature of the wild. The plants seem to 'dance' on the page - they all look very theatrical and slightly animated. I particularly like his sunflower at the end of this post and his piece titled 'Autumn', the latter of which reminds me of the fields behind my studio at the moment. 

Autumn Sun and Trees by Egon Schiele

Field of Flowers by Egon Schiele


Young Trees with Support by Egon Schiele, 1912

Blumenstudie by Egon Schiele, 1918

Foxglove by Egon Schiele

Weiße Chrysantheme by Egon Schiele, 1910


Sunflower II by Egon Schiele

Autumn by Egon Schiele

Sonnenbaum (Sunlit tree) by Egon Schiele, 1910

Sunflower by Egon Schiele