Inspire 52 - Week 15. Arting about with Ludovico Einaudi

Hello everyone! USA, UK, Australia, Russia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brazil, Germany and South Korea ... (these being my top viewing countries so far),  indeed welcome to the Inspire 52 Artist Blog, hope you are enjoying it so far.
So onto and into Week 15. I am really starting to get into the project and am indeed feeling inspired (thus being the very nature of Inspire 52 ... phew!!) Each week is really taking me somewhere, I don't quite know where yet, but the journey is great for me. It is giving me lots of insight into myself as an artist as well as me as a person in this world. It is also providing me with playfulness and the opportunity to continue focusing on my art practice every week, which in turn is making me a much happier person; last year I remember sometimes I would go a few weeks without art-ing and I would think 'ooh, somethings not quite right', and then I would remember that I hadn't done any art in a while! Hurrah for 52 projects!

I hope you enjoyed my rather long blog last week and did not give up half way through, because the end bit of it has carried forward my inspiration for this week. 'Ode to Art' really touched me last week. I read it back several times and there really is a lot going on between the lines for me, so I hope you enjoyed it too.

This week I have taken the poem and used it a source of inspiration to create a new collection of aluminium jewellery art. I have had these sheets of aluminium for a few weeks now and been too afraid to scribe any lines on them, as there is not room for error when drawing on aluminium.

The idea to create illustrations on aluminium first came from Caroline Parrot, an artist who works with aluminium and who did Make 52 last year, we worked together to create illustrations on aluminium for her 52 project in 2011 and incidentally, she launches her Make 52 solo exhibition next week at Walford Mill Crafts, Wimborne Dorset, very exciting. I wanted to see how our practices could fuse for my 52 project and so Caroline gave me some aluminium to work on. Caroline if very busy with the launch of her exhibition at the moment, but I am hoping that we will be able to collaborate for one of my Inspire weeks later this year.

So I finally got the courage and inspiration to use the aluminium this week and this is what happened. These are the two illustrations below. One is with a gloss finish and the other mat.

                          Ode to Art - Illustration 1 Gloss                                     Ode to Art - Illustration 2 Mat

I created these pieces not only with Ode to Art in mind, but also in response to the wonderful contemporary classical sounds of Ludovico Einaudi, who guided my pen gestures and resonated sounds that I transformed into lines. I love working to his music, it is so inspiring to me. Here is one piece below ... 'Fairytale', the perfect piece to accompany me as I illustrate into my monochrome world.

Ludovico Einaudi, simply love him ... well his music anyway! Never met him personally!! Sometimes I put the music on and drift of to sleep, it is truly magical. I didn't fall asleep whilst drawing by the way, instead the music lead me into a fantasy musically illustrated landscape.

Here's a little picture of the work station, pens, rubber gloves to avoid greasy fingers on the metal which will stop the ink from absorbing into the metal, poem, notes and a few pictures for inspiration from some of my previous works ... not to mention Ludovico playing in the background!

The concept of this piece is to create an illustrated jewellery collection. These sheets of aluminium are going to be sliced up and made into bracelets, as the picture is divided up and be available for sale.

I like the idea that different people will each take a piece of one picture and as they wear the piece they will take it on their journey and hopefully the bracelets will also inspire the wearers to journey into their imagination too.

All of the bracelets will have a little signed piece of the poem on the inside too.

Here are some examples of how the designs may look once they are cut into bracelets. Each bracelet will come with a signed copy of the poem and an image of the complete picture from which it came.

The Ode to Art bracelet collection will be available to buy at my next exhibition.

 Adventures Into The Monochronium 26th May - 7th July 2012 at Lighthouse Poole.

I am really looking forward to seeing how these turn out ... I think they will be really special and I am looking forward to wearing a little piece of 'Inspire' on my arm.