About interStella
I’ve been working on a new series of 16 drawings, entitled interStella. It’s kind of a mash up of a number of geometries I’ve been studying, but most obviously an exploration, and complication, of the maths underlying the early works of American legend Frank Stella. I first saw his beautiful, epic, artworks at MOCA in LA in 1991, and was completely blown away.
So it’s been on my mind for a long time to try and unpack some of his thinking, and riff on that beautiful style that came out of NYC in the late sixties.
I hope I’ve bought a little fresh thinking and technique to bear too. I’ll leave you to be the judge of that. The digital toolset, as ever, allows you to add layers of complexity, and fine tuning, that perhaps wasn’t previously possible.
As ever I find it easiest to discern in music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Laurel Canyon stuff, and later seventies Stateside sounds, but however fabulous they may be, in many ways they can’t compete with the cut and shut digital styling of recordings from the past few years.
My youngest son has been play listing a lot of fabulous new music, that I may well not have stumbled across myself, and much of it has the most amazing production. Contemporary musicians seem to be able to cut and shut the raw audio data in ways that work a speaker driver harder and faster than anything an analogue signal could ever achieve, a beautiful progression from where we were even ten years ago.
interStella / EPC / home is the 11th work for my Print Club. The edition combines a variant from this latest series of drawings with macro photography from the garden, specifically the soil under my sweet peas, probably the most tended piece of soil in the garden.
I’ve come around to the idea of combining drawing and photography, if only experimentally for the time being. The subject matter, soil, alludes to ideas including the sense of place and time that a studio represents, the idea of growth both personally and literally, and the earth, or soil, as root. It also begins to unpack some new ideas about permaculture, and how that may sit with my practice in the future.
interStella, in the studio & in situ
Print Club blog, July 9th, 2019
“…My youngest son has been play listing a lot of fabulous new music, that I may well not have stumbled across myself, and much of it has the most amazing production. Chelsea Cutler’s Your Shirt is a particularly good example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt0-h0oa-9A
Fascinated by her post analogue production, I had a look on the boards, and found this brilliant explanation of what’s going on:
‘I hear this sound effect in a few different songs but it's really apparent in "Your Shirt". I'm talking about that synth voice thing that starts in the beginning as a lower part and higher part playing back and forth that pops up throughout the song. Step 1: scream into a mic whilst recording / Step 2: sample audio / Step 3. slap some space designer and maybe eq it if you screamed too loud’
I love the idea of screaming too loud into the mike, and then eq-ing the result. I feel that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for a number of years. Go way over the top, and then dial it back in, to discover a place that’s still further out than you would've been able to reach if you’d come in from the other direction...”
“…The inclusion of garden photography is coming from that idea of combining the drawing’s underlying maths with, and from, nature. A kind of hybrid organic / digital fusion that hopefully speaks to the idea of the digital overlaying the natural world in ways that are both positive and beneficial. I’ve been out on some climate change demos recently, enjoying the positivity of the movement, and am keen to try and think about how a contemporary art studio can sit lightly with the issues surrounding the climate crisis…”
Text from the Print Club blog, July 9th, 2019
About the Print Club
If you’d like to receive three or four exclusive new editions in the post each year, alongside personal news and views from the studio, and invitations to shows and fairs, please do consider becoming a member of my Experimental Print Club. You can join or leave the club at any time, with absolutely no obligation to stay any longer than you want to.
New works are sent out somewhat sporadically throughout the year, often in line with the changing seasons. Each piece is unique, exclusive, and only available on the day it’s editioned, the size of the edition being determined by the number of members on the day.
I hope the club presents a more personal and intriguing way to connect with the studio, by creating a platform for collecting engaging new works for your home. The club is hosted online here, and I send out fairly regular blog posts and emails about the work too. I’d like to think that it’s an interesting proposition!
Membership is currently priced at £36 per month inc. UK delivery, or £42 for an international address.
Associated works
