All Around Us

When taking pictures around Glasgow i realised just how much trees and plants there are in amongst the city.  It is quite staggering compared to my origional assumptions.  Whether it be trees growing alongside houses or a single weed sprouting in between slabs, nature still thrives within the city.  Its almost as though there is no stopping it.

Picture time

After being inspired by David Nash's works I previously posted I am just about to go out and search for areas or things around Glasgow that show the connection and harmony but also the contrast between the city and nature.  Although as I'm typing I've just stupidly realised that right outside my flat window there is a small park that is bang in the centre of the city and is actually completely out of place even though it has never come across to me like that. It's interesting how when I take a step back sometimes I realise that we are not so disconnected from nature as much as i had originally thought.

Pyramid, Sphere, Cube

Another work by David Nash that particularly interested me was his very literal "Pyramid, Sphere, Cube" (1997) sculpture.  It consists of a pyramid, sphere and made out of Oak that has been charred on the outside to make it black.  To me I find it particularly fascinating is the way that Nash takes wood which is completely natural and almost the essence of what one thinks of as nature and transforms it into something that when looked at against the backdrop of grass and plants looks completely out of place and unnatural.  I really like this sense of at once being nature and contradicting nature.

The Green Man

The tradition of The Green Man, portraying a human face amongst or a part of leaves or vegitation is very old in Northern Europe. It seems to be linked to when the Romans invaded the Celtic and Germanic lands as the native art was know for complicated twisting and knotting forms of vegitation.  They are often found by church doors or on chancel screens or very hidden in corner carvings so that they are a surprise when seen.  The tradition of the green man was that of a giant who lived in the woods, wearing nothing but a suit of leaves with shaggy hair and a beard.  He was often associated with the change and transformation symbolised by the vegetation and allusions to the seasonal cycles of nature.  There is even a Green Man Festival. 

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian artist who painted surreal portraits of his sitters compiled as fruit, fish, books, flowers and vegetables.  

David Nash's Wooden Boulder

I was recently told about a work by sculptor David Nash simply called "wooden boulder".  It is a 25 year work that featured in a documentary by Welsh film maker Pete Telfer.  It started when Nash was called out to cut down a tree for safety reasons and he had planned on using the boulder he had cut from it in his studio, but instead pushed it into a nearby river where is sat the bottom of a waterfall and he thought it looked like it was in the right place. It then intermittently moved downstream whenever the river swelled and overtime has moved kilometers and is now in the sea although Nash likes to think that it is not lost but rather "it is where it is." He likes the notion that wood that grew out of the ground will finally return to it which i feel sums up the sense of harmony and cycle of nature well.

"Stride"

Who would've thought it?  Around about 400 meters from my house is the perfect example of the combination of people and nature.  It is a sculpture called "Stride" by Andy Scott a Glaswegian who has done many public artworks over the UK and many of them have luckily been in Alloa where i live.




 I think this is a good representation of the connection between humans and nature and how we should be at one with nature and embrace it not destroy and control it.

Although unfortunately it was recently a victim of a hit and run from a motorist... and sadly it is temporarily no more...looks pretty relaxed to me.

http://outdoors.caledonianmercury.com/2011/02/16/when-art-meets-acceleration-andy-scott-sculpture-smashed-by-boy-racer/001552

Double Exposure: At One With Nature

I found these pretty amazing double exposure photographs by Dan Mountford on Fubiz. (they can be seen here: http://www.fubiz.net/2011/04/01/double-exposure-portraits/ .

This series of double exposure photographs particularly interested me in the way he uses the technique to combine portraits of people with images of architecture and nature especialy. So i took this idea of imaging people combined with nature as it portrays this idea of   "at one with nature" and almost "a part of nature" and made my own images using a similar technique on photoshop.

Roach Broach

There is a fashion designer called Jared Gold who has really taken jewelery to extremes with his "Roach Broach".  He has taken cockroaches and attached jewels to them to make them look fashionable when worn...although the real shocker is that the cockroaches are still alive when worn. What he does is attaches a small chain to the cockroach that would fasten to the wearer and the cockroach is free to crawl around the wearer.  Now is this fashion to a higher degree or is this abusing nature?

Decay

After a talk with Gaylie Runciman, she told me about an artist called Chris Jordan who has taken these starling pictures of deceased albatross chicks that have washed up on an island north of the pacific.  As their bodies decay and the shocking realisation that the contents of their stomach have not decayed due to the overwheming amounts of plastic that they have eaten.



With Fire, Comes Smoke

I recently came across this drawing programme on the internet called "Flame Painter" and i found that it makes really very interesting marks and has some very good adjustments and settings that can lead to interesting effects.  Being inspired by the wwf campaign posters i used this programme to create images of flowers and trees that looked like they were made from smoke.

WWF Campaign Posters

I just found pretty amazing 'World Wildlife Fund' (WWF) campaign posters when i was researching global warming etc.  They are really powerful visuals that instantly made me feel guilty about all the littering and slacking on recycling iv ever done. Job done then! They portray a real sense of the impact that us humans have had on nature and the development of the earth. These are a few of the campaigns that inspired me:

These last two especially jumped out to me because it portrays the way that we are and should be at one with nature and because we're cutting its life short we are ultimately ensuring ourselves with the same fate. The rest can be seen here.

The caption reads:"The Tsunami killed 100 times more people than
9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100008456/wwf-appalled-at-massive-publicity-generated-by-poster-campaign-with-which-of-course-it-had-absolutely-nothing-to-do/

This campaign poster for global warming created controversy due to its content of 9/11...obviously.  Although being rather offensive it is such a bold point to make, that i think hits home.  Us humans like to think we have so much control over nature and in many ways we do.  Almost too much.  Although ultimately...we have no control at all and nature is a force  so strong and dangerous that we should try to preserve it. Not anger it. 

This has given me thoughts to; are we at one with nature? and can we ever be at one or control nature? 

Brain Dettmer's Amazing Process of Recycling Books

I'm sitting in the GSA library getting the low down on  Blogger's  extra tips and tricks by Gaylie and I found a site thats dedicated to really amazing art and design projects and other stuff thats basically awesome! Its called Fubiz and it lives up to its slogan "daily dose of inspiration" as i have already found amazingly intricate sculptures by Brian Dettmer made from old books that has got me thinking about recycling.         

http://www.fubiz.net/2011/02/28/sculpture-books/

Its truly a great way to recycle and if we all recycled with this much creativity the world would probably be a more beautiful place!  Everything from nature almost recycles itself in a way yet we create man made products etc. that are non recyclable and damage the earth as a result.  We break the natural cycle. It is an obviously major problem that everyone knows about, but are we natures rival?  What would have happened if we hadn't done the damage we've done? and what does that say about us?

The Cycle of Life and Death

Whilst exploring my general subject i began thinking about the various "cycles" in life and started with the obvious - 

Life and Death

Death is generaly feared and thought of very negatively.  Although with death comes life because we kill to eat, survive and ,in death, something fuels life.  The same applies to dying vegitation which then decomposes and aids the soil.  So with all these ideas of life and death floating around my head I remembered watching a documentary on channel 4, (you can also watch it here http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-elephant-life-after-death) about how the corpse of an elephant provides food etc. for so many animals. The programme was called
                       "The Elephant: Life after Death"
                          
It's a really interesting documentary that started out just like any ordinary informative show with the usual plain facts about elephants like that a five-ton elephant amounts to “six million calories of meat, fat and guts.  I certainly didnt know that, so it had already done its job to be fair.  Although as it delved deeper and longer into the time the elaphant had been dead things started to get truely bizarre such as a hyena feasting on the elephants anus. Its amazing to see just exactly happened to the corpse because it's something, well i personaly, wouldn't think twice of yet theres a whole world of life that feeds off one elephant that has lost it's life.

The Spark.

I find it funny how, when given a task you can persistantly try and think of how to start it and you're constantly looking for something that will nudge you over that edge to give you a great starting point that you want to take on and explore, and when u finally give up and admit to yourself it's just not going to come it's then that-
boom -

your in your back garden and you spot a plastic pot that has obviously been there for some amount of time in the corner sticking out like a sore thumb.

 I thought of it as being an insult to the earth in a way that almost everything naturaly created is given back to the earth in some way yet this was the only man made thing in the garden and it does damage to the earth. That instantly got me thinking about how the earth's cycle and other cycles that come with it such as life and death and recycling etc.

I'm particularly intersted in the way we as humans work and with previous projects i have explored various subjects to do with human nature so exploring the questions around polution, the natural cycle of nature and our relationship with nature should be interesting.