Vanitas

In the arts, Vanitas, is a stpe of symbolic still life painting commonly done by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the sizteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The term, Vanitas itself refers to the arts, learning and time. The word is latin, meaning "emptiness"

Paintings executed in the Vanitas style are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the cartainty of death, encouraging a sombre world view. Common Vanitas symbols include skulls, reminder of death; rotten fruit, representing decay like ageing; bubbles, which symbolise the brevity of life and the suddeness of death; smoke, watches and hourglasses; and musical instruments, symbolizing the ephemeral mature of life.

My Serendipity Piece

This is my final Serendipity piece...

This unit, i thin has been about the concept of finding self, and life, and working with the cards you've been dealt. Our art piece for this unit was an ink work which we worked over in pencil creating rhizomes and mandalas, and becoming our very own Andy Goldsworthy. This piece really made me contemplate and reflect upon the ideas that had been presented to us during the unit, as in our final piece we were to create a symbol of self - and that is what the mandalas and rhizomes are all about.

Before we created the final, we originally practised the inks on smaller paper so that we could get somewhat of a handle on the inks. There were multiple ways in which we could apply the inks. For one of them, we immersed the paper in water in a tray, then pulled it out and let the water drain off it. We then dropped the ink onto the wet paper and then let it spread. From there we could just leave it, or we could manipulate the paper to make the ink run in certain directions. We could also add multiple colours of ink. Another technique that we practised was spraying the paper with water and then dropping the ink. We could also spread the ink by blowing it with a straw, instead of moving the paper.

For my final piece, I used a combination of the techniques. I mostly sprayed the paper with water and then added the inks. To move the ink I manipulated the paper, and i used a straw. The one and only thing that i found frustrating about the concept of Serendipity, was the lack of control you had over the outcome.


These are some close up images of my final piece, courtesy of Mrs Vincent.

Mandalas & Rhizomes

For our final Serendipity piece we have to draw in Mandalas & Rhizomes, working with what the ink has created.

Mandalas...

The word "Mandala" is loosely translated to mean "circle". A mandala is far more than a simple shape. Mandalas represent wholeness, and can be seen as a model for the organizational structure of life itself - a cosmic diagram that reminds us of our relation to the infinite, the world that extends both beyond and within our bodies and minds.

Mandalas appear in all aspects of life: the celestial circles we call earth, the sun, and moon, as well as conceptual circles of friends, family and community.

"The integrated view of the world represented by the Mandala, while long embraced by some Eastern religions, has now begun to emerge in Western religious and secular cultures. Awareness of the Mandala may have the potential of changing how we see ourselves, our planet, and perhaps even life."

Rhizomes...

In philosphy, the term Rhizome has been used as both a metaphor and a concept, and refers to the botanical Rhizome. The botanical Rhizome is the roots of plants that grow underlground in long strands.

Carl Jung used the word "rhizome", also calling i a "myzel", to emphasize the invisible and underground nature of life:

"Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away - an ephemeral apparation. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilisations, we cannot escape the impressions of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost the sense of something that lives and endures beneath the eternal flux. What we see is blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains."

Serendipity

"Chance"

Definitions: The art of finding something by looking for something else, or making a desirable discovery by chance/accident - "a happy accident"

hWe used the philosophy of Serendipity through using inks.

Although you can manipulate ink, to some extent it is still uncontrollable, therefore you don't have full control over the outcome and have to work with what you have.

Here are some of my practice ink manipulations:

This was my first ink manipulation practice. I found the inks incredibly hard to control. They would run where ever they please, with me having very little say in the outcome. I do like this piece alot though. I like how all of the colours blend well. Up in the top left-hand corner it a blue dark spot that smudes out. This is an aspect I particularly like. I also like the sort-of-rhizomes that have been created in blue at the bottom of the page.

This was my second practice with the inks. The technique I used involved immersing the paper in water, letting it drain off, and then dropping the different colours of ink at the bottom of the page. I then picked the paper up and let the inks run, creating the rhizomes. I like this ink piece as all of the colours blend, and I also like the fact that the rhizomes connect.

This is my third ink practice. For this piece i sprayed the paper with water using a spray bottle and then dropped the ink into the applied water. I then spread the ink using a straw. I did this first with the blue and found it hard and not very effective, only creating short rhizomes. I then tried again with the pink and yellow and found it more successful, creating long, continuous rhizomes.

This was my fourth ink practice. To create the look of the inks in the piece I sprayed the paper with water using a spray bottle. I then, slightly tilted the paper, letting the inks run that little bit. I like this piece because the inks didn't run all of the way of the page, and I like the look it created. I also gained further knowledge on how to control the inks, shown by the short rhizomes.

This is my fifth ink practice. This is probably one of my favourite piece's. I love the effect that the technique I used created. To achieve this I sprayed the paper with water using a spray bottle and then dropped the inks into the water. I then spread the ink in the splattered effect by further spraying the inks with water from the spray bottle. I aslo liked the way that this technique blended the colours together well. I also felt that this technique gave me a tiny bit more control over the outcome.

Baraka

Baraka is a purely cinematic film directed by cinematographer Ron Fricke.
Baraka depicts footage of various landscapes, chruches, ruins,religious ceremonies, and cities thrumming with life. Baraka was filmed using time-lapse photography inorder to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarmsn in daily activity.
Baraka searches for a universal cultural perspective: for instance, following a shot of an elaborate tatto on a bathing Japanese mobster with on of Native Australian tribal paint.
The movie was filmed at 152 locations of 24 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Chine, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Nepal, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States of America.

Here are some scenes from the movie...

Andy Goldsworthy

"Seeing something that was always there that you never saw before - like seeing through fresh eyes."

Andy Goldsworthy was born Jul 26, 1956. He is a british sculptor, photography, and environmentalist living in Scotland. His art involves the use of natural & found objects to create both temporary and permenamt scultures which draw out the character of their environment. This means that his work is ephemeral: meaning that it doesn't last


These are some images of a permenant piece of Goldworthy's, the Neuberger Cairn.