Sunday, September 23, 2007

tears


torn paper & collaged drawing (pen & acrylic) on papier mache, 12.5 x 12.5 cm

Remember this little guy from this post?



I finally wrapped it up last weekend with torn paper and bits of a collaged drawing that i did awhile ago. Not sure if more should be done to it...

9 comments

  1. I love love this!!
    Is it ballpoint pen that kind of bleeds through in some places?
    You've ripped up the drawing but really it's like you've maybe brought out the drawing, allowed it to show itself, with more integrity than on a simple flat square piece of paper? (sometimes I feel like drawings should be on anything but a flat rectangle of white paper, like they need to belong to something more, but then on the other hand I can't not start making marks on any white paper that happens to be nearby when I have a pen in my hands)

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  2. The addition of the collage element to this sculpture really works for me. The subtle colour and line gives a lot of interest, but still the form of the piece is very important.

    Definitely a risk that has paid off.

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  3. Wow! I think this piece is beautiful as is. There is such a natural, organic quality to both the original shape and the collaged papers. A perfect match.

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  4. Way cool. THe name is so intriguing. Is there a story that goes with it?
    I like the simple elegance of it.

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  5. I like the introduction of drawing and other paper very much. The blue lines that shine through are almost like veins and the more I look at the picture the more I think of a pregnant belly. Paper can seem so close to skin, and the way it can be layered and built up contributes. But there is also a sense of something breaking open, tears in a surface (ah, and now I understand your title differently, not tears/crying, but tears/splitting open (which may well produce tears of pain)). The tension is between overlaying and laying open, concealing and revealing. And then this strange open mouth-shape, the darkness behind it, I’m not sure if it’s about to spit something out or suck something in… (Did my imagination go a bit wild here?)

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  6. yes, yes, Marjojo, so good for your wild imagination as that is what i want this to be about...the actual tearing and then the tears of pain, and also the revealing and withholding of it all in the shape with the hole. but was feeling unsure if this small piece could convey even a hint of it. the inside has also been worked on but i am still tentative about it as there is more that needs to be done with it (i realized that for sure now).
    so good that you also mentioned the pregnant belly, because that is something i've always been fascinated with. have made a sculpture and etchings of it years ago, and the form is still frequently on my mind.

    so Paula, i guess that is kind of the story behind it without getting into technical details.

    Anne-Laure, it is just regular ballpoint pen (medium point), my favorite kind to use. what looks like "bleeding" is the white acrylic paint over on top of the pen drawing, creating like a transparent layer. i was concerned about the lightfastness of the ink of these pens since you could expect it to fade rather quickly when exposed to constant daylight. but it occurred to me that having a coat of paint on top may help to seal it? if anyone know more about this, please correct me if i'm wrong.
    anyways, it is definitely hard to resist a flat rectangle paper to work on. other formats have their limits, or maybe the mind is just not quite used to them yet.

    hi Claire, thanks for the nice pat on the back. :). hopefully, it'll still turn out okay when i work more on it later.

    hi thealteredpage (could not find your name on your blog...?), always nice to find a new visitor here. :). thank you for such positive feedback. i am looking forward to going through your blog and see more of your work!

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  7. Mien, I wrote this this morning and then didn't dare post it as it seems you've disallowed comments to today's post. Well, this is not really a comment on your dream, so maybe that's o.k.?:
    Mien, how strange, I just got up and went to the computer right away to send you a message about ‘Tears’, which I dreamed about last night, I think just when I was on the border between being awake and being asleep, or maybe I was asleep, but in any case I saw your object and it became completely clear to me that when you called it ‘Tears’ you meant crying tears as I saw tears coming out from its opening, one clear perfectly formed tear after another, and I couldn’t understand how I ever got it so wrong and wanted to jump out of bed and get to the computer and let you now that I now understood but was too tired and couldn’t move my limbs.
    This morning when I woke up I thought of my dad who died several years ago, today would have been his birthday, and then I thought of my friends Beatriz and Frances who are both dead and found I couldn’t remember Frances’ surname. It’s on the tip of my tongue now, but remains elusive. And then I open your blog and find you writing about your dream about K. And somehow your last sentence, ‘all around is the colour of ham’ hits me most deeply, that raw pain that is both physical and mental seems to find expression in that strange image.

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  8. I like how it looks on the wall. It blends in, but pops out like texture.

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  9. I love it the way it is. I want to make something similar in porcelain or clay (maybe white maybe black)

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