A daily dose of culture, Andrea Dezsö; artistic wonder woman!

Andrea Dezsö is nothing short of a wonder woman! I came across her work while researching artist sketchbooks, what a lucky find! The special thing about Andrea is that she can turn her hand to any form of artistic expression and come up with something original, beautiful and awe inspiring.

 

Andrea Dezsö is a Romanian born artist (Transylvania if you want the exact location) of Hungarian extraction. Her Eastern European heritage undoubtedly feeds her richly narrative work and gives her the wonderful stories that act as a framework for her creative interpretation. Her grown up job is Assistant Professor of media Design at Parsons. But there is so much more to this creative dynamo. She works in ceramics, installation, animation, paper-cutting, embroidery and a lot more besides.

In this post I will focus on a series of embroideries that depict some of her mother’s sayings that will ring a bell with most people! They are beautifully executed, very funny and I love them all. There is plenty of information out there about Andrea and if you need inspiration I have no doubt her work will provide it. She has exhibited widely, has had books published but I still think she deserves to be more celebrated and her work more exposed. Andrea I salute you!

A New Moleskone Jan 16th update (new pages)

I used a new little rubber stamp to decorate the wall, I hate having to repeat a pattern, stamps are much easier.

As I was drawing this, I pulled a thread in a crochet blanket fred bought from a charity shop, It made me think about unknown and unforseen consequences.

We found we had a family of rats living under the decking and that the ratcatcher had placed blocks of poison for them to feast on. On the one hand I felt awful for the poor creatures and the other I was worried about disease and our electric wires they nibble on.

I was watching Criminal Minds and thinking about human nature. How do you become a twisted, heartless killer?

I've always had a love-hate relationship with angels. As a child i would see angels scuttling along my bed-room ceiling, they were watching me and reporting my actions back to God. Mum never seemed to notice them but I was silently terrified all the time.

I am posting a few more pages from my current Moleskine sketchbook.

A daily dose of culture. Ray Materson, outsider artist.

Today's outsider artist is Ray Materson. Ray was serving a 15 year sentence for a robbery related to his drug offences. One day, out of a clear blue sky, he was inspired to embroider his teams colours on a scrap of material ripped from his prison bed-sheets. He bought a pair of nylon socks from a cellmate for a packet of cigarettes as they were made up of his team colours.

The House On York Road. 1995

The boot story 1995

the Taming of the shrew 1995

He unpicked the threads and changed his life. The success of his first piece led inmates to commision their own embroideries of their sports emblems. Ray began to receive cast off socks in every imaginable colour. Ray's subject matter evolved to include portraits, landscapes and narrative images.

Conscientious Objectors 1995

The Arrest 1993

The Cup of his blood (Hate me) 1992

Gossio 2009

Ogre's All Stars 1994

Vermont River - Montpelier 2009

Gino- Life Times six 1999

An afternoon At Ogre House 2002

Anywhere Next Exit 1992

Twin Towers 2005

Ray's pieces are tiny jewel coloured little treasures about half the size of a post card. Each piece takes 40-60 hours of work and up to 1200 stiches per square inch. I love the honesty and passion that shines from Ray's work. Ray now travels all over the United States lecturing on his works and encouraging art programs in the prison service.

A daily dose of culture, the work of Kyoko Okubo

I have always had a strange relationship with dolls. I am at once beguiled and repelled by them. Dolls are such loaded little things. Everyone relates to them , positively or negatively. My grandmother made exquisite rag dolls, I'd be mesmerised by their metamorphosis from a flat piece of fabric into a three dimensional, magical living doll.
Of course, fabric isn't the only medium. Man has made dolls for as long as he has existed, from every imaginable material, as fetish object or a simple toy. We identify with them on such a deep level, it is hard to untangle our own existence from theirs. I still remember my earliest of dolls, they all ended up with smashed in eyes (now there is a subject for a psychiatrist!.)
 Today's artist is Kyoko Okubo, a self taught Japanese artist. She sculpts her small figures, that tend to include a female figure interacting with an animal, using 'Washi', a traditional Japanese paper made from tree bark. Her tableau give us snatches of narrative but never disclose the full story. Some may find them a little 'twee' or sentimental, but I think they are beautiful and enchanting.

The Rumour Of bees, by Kyoko Okubo

Pug cups, Kyoko Okubo

A daily dose of culture, Adelaide V. hall

Today's work, is one that moves me more than any other artwork ancient or modern. The creator isn't even an 'artist' in the regular sense of the word. All that is known about her is that her name was Adelaide V. Hall and that she was an inmate at The Saint Elizabeth Psychiatric hospital, Washington. in 1918.

Various figures can be identified within this work, the minor figures are flatly woven into the piece in various sizes.

 This is the only piece of work that is on record, maybe through it Adelaide said all she had to say. This tiny piece of croche'd wool had all her miserable life woven into it, and having externalised her troubles she was content not to say anymore.
 If art means, as I believe it does, the honest expression of the artist's essence, then this tiny piece is art of the highest order.
Adelaide and her eight siblings were raised by their violent alcoholic father after the death of their mother. Poor Adelaide shared a bed with several of her brothers and with her father. Adelaide's claims of wretched and continuous sexual abuse was dismissed by her doctors as incest fantasies. Psychiatry was in it's infancy at the time and modern doctors have no hesitation in accepting Adelaide's accounts of the abuse. It would explain why Adelaide was hospitalised at least twice due to depression, 'melancholia, and so called delusions'.  When Adelaide was 13 years old, she went to live with her sister. She fell in love with her older brother and further complicated her life. The love affair was not allowed to continue and they were swiftly separated. She went on to lead a promiscuous adult life and had several affairs with married men where she eventually contracted syphilis. Although she never made anymore pieces like the one I'm showing today, she did make a lot of baby clothes for the children she never had.
 The croched piece is less than 10 inches square, it contains all the major players in her life and she depicts them according to their importance. Her father is the largest with prominent genitalia, with washers and beads woven in. Various siblings and her mother are featured, identified by a complex system of numbers and letters. This tiny work tells a story of her 'miserable, sordid life' as it was summed up by her so called carers. Adelaide was a victim of her circumstance and of her time. Her 'stories' were never believed, and she was never able to receive the help she so badly needed. Without this little scrap of wool, Adelaide would have remained an anonymous patient existing only in the dusty records of St Elizabeth's hospital. I dare anyone to not be moved by this beautiful eloquent work and by Adelaide's story.

A daily dose of culture, Brighton Pierrots, Walter Sickert 1915

 In one of my posts I listed five artists whom I revere, respect and enjoy. As of result of having to narrow my list and prune it down to just five names, I was forced to leave out hundreds of artists and many individual works that make my spirit sing, (that cheesy sentence, although intrinsically honest, was put in to make Lucy snigger, so if you are not Lucy just ignore it.) So to rectify this terrible injustice I have decided to begin a regular post. Hopefully a daily one, where I shall introduce either an artist or piece of work that moves me. I might even include one that makes me sick every once in a while!
 Today's item is a beautiful painting by Walter Sickert, A German born English painter and a member of The Camden Town Group. You can find out more about him very easily so I shan't bore you with too much information here.

Brighton Pierrots by Walter Sickert, 1915

 Brighton Pierrots ia a sublime painting that depicts a joyful subject in a melancholy light. A troupe of performers stand onstage in the setting sun. Sickert painted it in 1915, and the empty rows of deckchairs maybe a nod to the absent men fighting across the sea. The light is what makes this picture,both the natural and artificial. There is the natural twilight that throws everything into sharp focus and sends a shiver of  strange sadness at such transitory, fleeting beauty down your spine,  the reddish horizon that suggests the colours of war (It was said that the sound of guns from the western front could be heard all along the south coast)..Then we have the artificial stage light that gives us the garish colours of the Pierrots outfits, acid pink and icy blue that appear so incongruous and unseemly in the face of  impending peril and looming disaster. The performers know that 'the show must go on', so it goes on more ridiculous and pathetic than artistic. I love this painting, and for anyone who say art doesn't move them, I say where the hell is your heart?

Illuminated Manuscripts.

Images from The macclesfield Psalter

 By any normal standards, I can't deny that I am quite prolific!  My mind is full of  snippets of conversation, images that have stuck with me, and all manner of assorted crap . For that I feel blessed. But I am  keenly aware that quantity has nothing to do with quality, I do however maintain that the more work an artist produces the more his ideas become focused and his execution is honed and refined. So far so good. But like every creative human being that ever existed there are days where I draw a blank. My thoughts get stuck in the bottleneck of my mind. I just can't seem to pull the right image out. I have a few techniques I save for these awkward times just to get functioning again. A mental syrup of figs if you will. These include going over my sketchbooks. looking on the Internet at what other artists are doing. Reading my favourite poets like Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell. Lines of beautiful text are a very effective way to trigger images , and bring forth memories and dreams that lead me to new pastures.

Carnal Sinners, 15th century manuscript by Yates Thompson

 For the days when I feel particularly low and unmotivated I save the most potent medicine; Illuminated Manuscripts! Sadly I don't own any but that isn't a problem, I own the next best thing, a couple of big fat, beautiful anthologies of collected manuscripts. Yum!

The Lamb, By William Blake

 Strictly speaking, Illuminated Manuscripts are texts decorated with silver or gold but has evolved to include any decorated text. The earliest of these survives from 400 to 600 AD, but more usually come from the middle ages. Every rich member of society aspired to flash their wealth around by commissioning a small volume of decorated liturgical texts. There are many examples of these collected from all over Europe. The colours and subject matter are breathtakingly rich. The bored scribe entertaining himself by taking flights of fancy so original and weird, they appear as fresh and delicious as the day they were painted.

Petrarch's Vigil, c.1336 Bibliotica Ambrosiana, Milan

 This is a very large subject and I shan't bore you all by giving a lecture on the origins, collection and maintenance of these treasures. I just wanted to offer you a taste of what dazzles and inspires me. If you want to see further examples, there is the Macclesfield Psalter which is beautifully reproduced on it's own website. The 'Splendor solis', which is a stunning collection of medieval art. and many others just waiting to beguile you.

Saint Nicholas Rescues a ship, C 1410. Belles Heures Of Jean De france

 The Illuminated Manuscripts come from every continent, religion and culture. Islamic manuscripts come mainly from Persia where the Shia' sect, unlike the Sunnis who are not permitted to create images of anything living as it is seen to usurp Allah's powers, had no issue with the artistic reproduction of a living entity. You will even find images of Mohammed lovingly depicted. Japanese woodcuts and prints are in the same vein, with the flat 2 dimensional look that doesn't deal with perspective.
 I hope you enjoy these images as much as I do. Contemporary art isn't where it all starts and ends.

Splendor Solis, 1532-1535. The Prussian State Museum, Berlin

Splendor Solis

Splendor Solis

Splendor Solis

Splendor Solis

Splendor Solis

Splendor Solis

St Margaret Of Antioch. C. 1440