The Art of Knitting!

I was watching Graham Norton on TV the other week and one of his guests (Alison Murray) was in the process of knitting an entire house and its contents for charity. Everything in the house was made from wool and stuffing.

About 500 women from across the UK, USA, Canada and Spain sent knitted contributions to the house which goes on show on Friday until 20 September. It just shows that people can pull together to create something wonderful.

So, in my inquest to find out more about the process of making a house from wool, I came across a few other people who have been creating similar things.



This house is made by Tasmanian knitters.

This community art project grew out of nursing homes in and around Hobart, Tasmania. Residents of the homes have some terrific skills and memories, and their carers were looking for some useful projects for them to be involved in that would have both physical, mental and social benefits.




"The knitting site" is a device for remembering, say the ladies who made this house in London.

They had met weekly to prepare, and continued on the day of the event, as the house unfolded before the crowd’s eyes. As they said: “Some people think that the act of building should be hidden behind screens, we like building site stuff - nets and ropes and scaffolding. We knit with them. And while some people think knitting is to remain behind walls, we build walls that are knitted. The knitting site is about bringing the backstage to the fore."

Minnie Weisz : I am a camera

Minnie has turned to some of the oldest, most rudimentary optical technology. Her latest show features photographs of rooms in the now empty 1854 Great Northern Hotel in London, and in most of the images she has turned the spaces into giant pinhole cameras.

The technique is simple. "You just black out the windows with paper or whatever, and make a pinhole. And then you're inside a camera, with the image of the outside projected in it. You can see people walking over the ceiling. It's quite eerie."

One of the photographs, "Room 418", is particularly disconcerting: you don't immediately notice that it is upside-down because, in this state, the projected image appears the right way up. The flat roofs of what look like railway sheds hover over the floor like a daylight hologram, and a wire coathanger rises, from a hook, like a cheap aerial.



Minnie Weisz approaches her subjects, her site-specific works as an artist, as one might approach an archeological dig. She unearths historical references to the buildings she chooses to inhabit, cataloguing these spaces in the context of history, myth and local lore. Weisz uses photography, projections and found material to explore the unseen narratives of the building, engaging with the present, past, real and imagined. Weisz’s application of pinhole technique, allows the building to become an eye, viewing an everchanging outside world which is captured and recorded by the interior and in turn awakening memories and stimulating dreams. A dialogue unfolds between Weisz’s response to the subject and the subject’s response to its surroundings. These processes of reflection and projection, in Weisz's images raise questions about the identity of space, and of real and imagined interior worlds.

Weisz’s work engages the organic haphazardness of London’s architecture, re-mapping memory within the cityscape, offering its secrets to us as we navigate through dreamscapes layered with history and fantasy. Time, memory and place in flux: luminous artefacts, gestures to past and present. Weisz’s rooms and buildings watch each other , in silent witness and look back at us.

(above information taken from other websites)

I like this art because as the weather and time of day changes outside, so does the art. It's such a simple traditional method with eerie results! Seeing this makes me want to have a go... so watch this space!!!

Peter Callesen

I came across this guy from somebody else's post. It's really taken me back to when I was younger and cut out snowflakes from paper. I loved opening the paper up after cutting it to find out what sort of pattern you have made!

It strikes me that such awesome shapes and figures can be made from a simple sheet of paper.



Some of the works e.g. the birds escaping, remind me of M.C. Escher's work where you are faced with something which isnt real but it's coming to life. The art is jumping out from the paper, it's trying to escape or is about to. There is a sense of reality.




His practise is precise and there is a lot of attention to detail, e.g. 'the other side' (door) where on one side the foot prints have been cut out and placed on the other side.



I am also posting what looks like a sheet of paper. I didn't quite get this one at first ; it almost looks like a cop out in comparison to the others but actually very clever, in my opinion. The piece cut out is a sandcastle on the beach and the curl in the paper is a wave! So simple but brilliant at the same time!

A-Style Logo

I came across an article about this photo and one comment was "I love Logo's that make me smile".

Being blonde... I didn't get it at first, which is why I think that this is fantastic! I looked and I looked, and then it clicked!

As the other person said.. It made me smile! It's great when companies aren't so stuck up and can have a laugh with design and bring a few smiles to people's faces!


http://www.astyle.it/ - The website is pretty cool as well. Different to anything I have seen before. It's interactive and a juxtaposition of illustration and photography. Don't quite understand it but the story is... interesting!!!

Rouzbeh

Rouzbeh is uniquely poised to elevate the merging of photography and graphics to new levels of artistry.His background is as an artist & designer who studied Visual Arts, Design, Illustration & Photography at the prestigious fashion school “Modeschule Hetzendorf” & University of Applied Arts “Hochschule fur Angewandte Kunst” in Vienna, Austria enhanced by his journeys across many countries.



He is an emerging artist whose photography and graphics inspire a new genre called “PhotoGraphix”.




His artistic style is an attempt at harmonizing various dimensions of perception, blending apparent opposites through the kaleidoscope of colors and a myriad of expressions that interconnects the outer and the inner, the physical and the metaphysical, reflecting the diversity and multiplicity of existence as an essential part of one reality.



These pieces are inspiring because they convey so much emotion, yet they are so simple. I think many designers strive for the same reaction but try to hard and complicat things. For me, the eyes say it all in these pieces. This idea of 'PhotoGraphix' is the same sort of idea as Vault49. It's fantastic! The way that the two interact with each other it vital for a piece to work.

I also think that the design and impact of Rouzbeh's work is iconic and they form an identity.

Vault49

Vault49 was founded in May 2002. Vault49 quickly emerged as one of the UK's leading and most innovative design companies, with a broad and professional portfolio which spans typography, illustration, and art direction.



They have quickly developed a reputation for creating consistently innovative work for an international client list, and are achieving sustained coverage in the best of the UK and worldwide design press.



The spirit of collaboration is at the heart of all work produced by Vault49, and they firmly believe that the most exciting designs are not produced in isolation, but in the middle of a buzz created by many creative minds working together.

Vault49's clients include: Dazed & Confused; EMI; MTV; VH1; Greenpeace; Express; Orange; FUBU.



I like their work because of the collaboration between photo (reality) and illustration (imagination). The illustration interacts with the emotions of the photo and Vault49 really emphasis what it going on in the picture through use of colour and layout.

Part of the pieces remind me of Si Scott's work of whom I really admire.

I think that this is what contemporary art is about in the early 21st century.

Sean Henry

I came across Sean Henry's work purely incidently. At first, from a distance they look like real people but closer up you can see the detailing of the bronze. The sculptures took me by suprise because you usually see bronze, plastic, glass, stone etc sculptures but the fact that these are bronze and Henry has painted over them is really weird. If he is hiding the bronze, it makes me wonder why he could make them out of this material.

The location of these sculptures, for me, is vital. They mean so much more when they are placed. 'Standing Man (italia)' provokes more questions about who he is and what he is doing when he was relocated to Burton Place in London.




Henry revealed that it doesn't enter his head what people might think or take from the sculptures when he is making them. For him, it is all about what it does for him. There is something lifeless about the sculptures because they are slightly larger than the average human being. This makes casting rather more difficult for Henry. From a distance they look the same as a human being but as you get closer, it heightens the sense of reality when you realise how tall they are.



Some of the sculptures, such as 'Catafalque' have been moved around to various locations. The one from London doesn't work for me. It detracts from the meaning of the sculptures. I think that they work best in locations where you might find them, then you can ask why are they there, what are the doing. For this sculpture to be on a platform - it is quite obvious it is just there for show, to to intrigue peoples emotions. When it is in the grass, this is where it comes to life.




I think that it is a shame that this figures face doesn't have more emotion. If I was to change this sculpture, I would have more emphasis on how the eyes would squint in reaction to the brightness of the sun. Currently, this figure looks quite morbid.