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Black n white bath time

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pinehole digital slr attempt two

Having acted on my last thoughts of using a mental strip, I ask a friend to help create the tiny hole, as it seems I am incapable of producing such delicate work. unfortunately I only managed to take a few images inside a dimmly lite room before I ruined the metal. more attempts will be undergone soon.

Pinhole digital slr Attempt one

These are my first very crude attempts at making my Nikon D70s into a pinhole camera, as you can see the results aren't a clear image, but I do think that they have a certain charm about them. The process I went though to produce these was incredible simple, firstly taking a body cap and putting a hole through it, I used a soldering iron as this created a nice smooth finish to the hole. Then simply gave it a quick rub with some sand paper to try n take the shine off the inside of the cap, to reduce light reflecting around. 

Below is a self portrait I left the shutter open for only a few second but positioned myself beside a well light window, bathed in sunlight. I very much like that it is clearly a human in the shot but that you cant see that it is me or indeed any of the defining features.

These two images are of Keighley bus station, which at the time was full of blue and green buses all lined up.

Part of the town hall roof.

Car park clock above Reids bookshop.

These last four are the bar lights at the Cricketers Arms

The s problem with focusing is a very simple one, its the fact that the hole is so large. The next step for me to take is to use thin metal and a pin to create a very small, strong and crisp hole, which can then be mounted in the back of the body cap using black insulating tape. obviously lined up with the hole previously created by the soldering iron.

Been a long time coming...I give you isabella and ioni

Vanished breath

I started thinking about how I used to use nail varnish when I was younger to paint anything I could get my hands on, due to its incredible thickness and covering power it was just what I wanted to be able to transform anything I owned, and how I could use this now I have returned to living in my mother attic once again. So I started to paint a cig box, using the classic Gothic black nail varnish that proved so popular with me in my teens.

Having developed somewhat artistically, and no longer being bound by the idea that painting should involve some form of obvious imagery, I began to play with how I used to dry my nails, this was all very nostalgic for me. Having re-familiarised myself with the medium, and due to my fondness of personal research I began to pontificate about how I could make a record of this breath that I used to waste on silly things like nails.

So treating the box as one very large nail I attempted to impress upon it the motion of my breath, thus, due to its size in comparison to my amount of breath I have in me (which is greatly diminished by the departed occupants of the box) created ripples in the varnish. There you have it, a personal record of my breath left on either side of a metal cig box, but this was not clear enough. 

So sacrificing the concept of the breath and the cig box, beautiful as it is, I decided to used the box as if it were a stamp, this onto a sheet of assertate (poor spelling sorry) creating an image that could be scrutinised at a  greater level. Holding the stamped breath up to light as the image shows gives it a rich and detailed beauty. I feel there are legs on this idea, and more experimenting should occur. 

keighley Arts (karts) n a bit of a rant

I have recently moved home, as I have no money or job as such, and have decided that it seems very silly for all these creative people to be living in the valley with no sort of really user driven on-line presence, hence Keighley arts.

I attempted to look at using basically any other platform than facebook but on reflection and after having searched around for some thing that would provide for all it became very apparent that unless it was Facebook, something that everyone uses already, then well no one would use it at all. So as it stands I have been to be totally honest the only one posting on the groups wall regularly and to no real avail (but this is probably just my impatient side shining through). So a new tact has to be undertaken, a project that might just possibly pull some people into working together, be it as some form of higgledy piggledy arts collective: enter stage from left, Yarn Bombing, a well rehearsed practice for artist, craft people, and general miscs.


Yarn Bombing " Improving the urban landscape one stitch at a time" http://yarnbombing.com/ :


Keighley is, in my humble opinion a perfect candidate for yarn bombing, it has been described as a hard town, and can seem very depressing if not looked at with curious eyes. Hopefully drawing some attention to Keighleys good point can be only a positive thing, creating a town centre wide yarn bombing installation will obviously not change anything really, but if it just takes a bit of interest away from the fact that all the shops are shutting down and we have more super markets than any town I know of then maybe maybe it will be a good thing too do.

I'm now going to take this opportunity to list what I love about Keighley:

• The people, pure and simple, there are a lot of lovely people. (I admit there are some nasty ones too, but they are inconsequential)   
• We have beautiful Victorian buildings the façades of which should be much more greatly appreciated than they are, all you have to do is look up.
• the most amazing Moore lands
• dramatic weather (we all wine about it, but sometimes when you see the weather falling off the hill tops its simply magnificent)
• rich literary heritage
• cliff castle, what an odd thing it is
• and finally amazing cities less than an hour away so we can easily leave every now and then.

Rant over....

here is the group on facebook .... http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_167063799998177&ap=1

if yarn bombing fails me im moving on to land art... ill probably move onto that anyhow....

Antidepressant Prayer Flags

I have been tinkering with the concept of using Buddhist Prayer Flags with an application towards a modern issue, and having taken antidepressants myself for years and the topic being something I feel strongly about, this seemed to be the perfect subject to base my work around, and get people involved with.

So after attempting to talk to people face to face about the topic its’ seemed that a degree of anonymity was needed to get some open truths on the subject. I started to approach medical help sites, forums, and social networking sites to contact people worldwide about their experiences with antidepressants. I intentionally put no boundaries on who I communicated with the main point being that it could involve absolutely anyone, regardless of whether you have taken any related medications or not. This was to create a piece which reflected all aspects the whole spectrum of thoughts and feelings on the subject.

Having collected the responses together the next hurdle was the issue of which method would be best put the text onto the fabric itself. The fabric still needed to be able to move freely as pray flags do, this is what releases the pray as it were, it also needed to be durable, and for the text to be very clear to read. Having tried using embroidery and t-shirt transfers to no avail I came across digital fabric printers which with the amount of small text I wanted to put onto the flags as perfect. The ink was resistant to water and would last the weathering it would be subjected too.

I then started to think in greater depth about how Buddhist prayer flags are produced, and how the process of weathering is a very important aspect to the success of this piece. The images below are my attempts at manufacturing some basic home-made natural dyes, using vegetables and teas. Beetroot being the most successful but still not really producing a strong enough dye to be practical.

The realisation that I could not dye the material without help from an expert prompted me to get in touch with a lady named Polly Lyster, who works from a studio at the end of her garden dying antique fabrics with natural colourings, for example dried indigo plant. She enjoyed the concept of the piece and invited me to do my art placement with her. The images below are of her studio.

Some shots of the completed flags experiencing the weathers.

 

A few flags scanned so help show the weathering process: