Inspire 52 - Week 40. In The Frame

As autumn settles in and a new routine (ish) is also on the verge of settling in, I see myself content that I am (just about managing to keep) up to date with my Inspire 52s and also feeling a bit more space in the week to think about new creations.

This summer has been a blast of happenings, activities, projects, performances and new places and faces - which has been fantastic. Still not been on holiday, but having been knocked off my feet with injuries was in itself a gift to change the flow of things and give new perspective and insight, which I guess a holiday also does sometimes too - though I would have obviously preferred a holiday rather than getting injured!!

This week has brought a little bit of space for continuing inspiration to my Monochronium world. I have been developing characters, scenes and plots as, yes thats right, the story did not end at the end of the exhibition in July, indeed there are plans for the next phase!

Here is a new illustration for this week, this is part of the exploration for the next stages of 'Adventures Into The Monochronium'. Of course I am not going to be giving too much away, but futher to the great audience response from my work this summer with the exhibition, show and spoken word performances, the project naturally requires me to take it to the next stages now ... which is very exciting.

Here's some lines dots and marks for ya!

In The Frame
by Hazel Evans

Riding the the frame can be a tricky game
When someone you don't know, calls your name
'Have I been here before? Am I coming here again?
As I step right out of this tall walling game,
The hands on the walls are of my own but simply have their own mind,
Drawing the marks of past moment laughs as bubbles tick tocking chime.
This cart takes me far on a travelling star and over the night sea,
As I look through the glass, someones's looking at this way - is it really me?

 

Inspire 52 - Week 37. Cutting It All Up And Down

And so the summer is coming to an end... what a ride - seriously!

As the autumn begins to show it's face and very gratefully indeed I welcome it in with our 'Indian Summer' it also marks a time for change. Two things I have done recently spell this out to me and they have both involved cutting things up, not to disolve them completely, but to make them into something different, like a metamorphosis to take us to the next stage of life.

1. The cutting up the Explosive Illustration collaboration with Hayley Potter.
2. The cutting down of The Paper Forest.

These two events co-incided with each other and indeed began to trace a new pathway forward for each body of work. I won't go into the deatils of wheat the plans are, as with every art project they need to be kept top secret for a while, however, here is a photo documentation of what happened... there are more pictures to come but we will be releasing a full documentation at a later date, this includes a full documentation of the collaboration with Hayley Potter and the making of the book we will are creating together. Click on images to enlarge

1. Cutting up

 

Inking it up

 



 

 

 Planning the disection

 

 

 

The 3m x 4m illustration has now been cut into 52 individual A3 pictures that will form the next stage of the collaboration ... I'm very excitied about the next bit ... to be revealed at a later date. It's been really great working with Hayley this year. As we were cutting up we were talikng about what we have gained from each other in this collaboration, it has been a very insightful and growing experience.

2. Cutting Down

Cutting my way through the Paper Forest ... having lived with it for 2 months in my exhibition, it was now time to cut it down. But in honour of the art work and everything it has bought me as a new installation, story, song and journey of discovery, I had to do it correctly. I began cutting each piece of paper with my big shear like scizzors, cutting my way though the 'thin tall trees speaking tales in time'. I kept the words, poems and comments that the public had contributed and began carving a new path through the forest.

Wonder away, wonder away,

As the trees lead the way

 



Shadows emerged smiling bright

 

The act of cutting through the forest felt quite overwhelming yet exciting at the same time, it was releasing hidden spaces and creating new places - something new was happening and emerging.

 

 

It felt like I was performing inside a piece of poetry.

 

Illuminating shapes and scribing sounds

Murmuring roots from the undergrounds

 

 

The Paper Forest spoke softly to me

And asked me to write my story

 

Conclusion

Cutting up and down the art has been a learning experience, a journey of freedom, an expression letting go and finding new paths forward. 

 

 

 To see the Paper Forest installation in it's original form click here

 

Beautiful edited pictures by Danika Westwood

(Plus some snapshots from my phone)



Inspire 52 - Week 30. Battle For The Winds

You may remember in week 27 I prepared 20 butterflies for The Portaland Blue Butterfly Project which is part of Battle for The Winds and The Cultural Olympiad. I really should have made 27 as I like playing with numbers in that way ... anyway ... Week 30 is actually 27 in as much as it has the 27th July in it and that means the launch of the Butterfly Project ... watch them fly out of the page!

So I was invited to be part of the perfomance for Battle for the Winds Part 2. Duldum's Lair which involved over 3000 butterflies in the end would you believe!

"Portland's High Angle Battery becomes the setting for an evocative performance created by Portland Islanders working with Lorna Rees, Activate Performing Arts. Dancers will perform within the battery itself to a soundtrack created using the voices of local people.

This historic and derelict landmark will also form the backdrop to an installation of 2692 blue butterflies - the rare Cretaceous Silver Studded Blue which is unique to Portland - each butterfly represents a young person who lives on the island. Visit the site and hear tales from islanders, explore the atmospheric 'ghost tunnels', encounter the dancers and try and discover just where Doldrum lurks..."

From Battle for The Winds Website
http://battleforthewinds.com/the-battle/friday/


THE BUTTERFLY ILLUSTRATIONS

Here are the illustrations created during the event.

The first one was during the dress rehearsal where I had more time to start to get a feel of the landscape. As the performances began I had to re-set the butterflies that flew out from my sketch book and create a new piece. The flow was very beautiful to work on in fact, as it was very fluid and changed with the flow of new audiences coming to watch for each performance.

I was inspired by not only the butterflies that came and fluttered around me, but also the silence in which they fluttered carried by the warm summer breeze.

Towards the end, the performances got closer together and this has reflected in the landscapes of the images - I like very much that at the beginning there is lots of ink on the page and then towards the end, one butterlfy fluttering off into the sky - This whole sequence in itself represents the feeling of development of the performance art with a beautiful end to a beautiful day.

These are the sequence of illustrations below - Click on the images to enlarge

 

Portland Blue Butterfly

Fly oh fly through the winds of the blue seas,

Across waters emerging waves sprinkling sweet life

To the door of the earth connecting with winged keys,

As the mists flutter softly into the sky.

Hazel Evans July 2012

 

PURCHASE A BUTTERFLY ILLUSTRATION

If you would like to have a one off souvenir of the Portland Blue Butterfly Project and of the Cultural Olympiad 2012, I have decided to sell all the art works and donate 20% to the Butterfly Conservation Charity - http://www.dorsetbutterflies.com/

Exclusive Offer:

Original Hazel Evans ink on watercolour paper.

Signed and numerically ordered.

The Portland Blue Butterlfy Poem hand inked on the reverse of each illustration.

There are only 7 originals to document this event and no prints will be made.

 

Special unframed prices:

Dress Rehearsal  - £75 - SOLD

Performance 1    - £55 - SOLD

Performance 2    - £55

Performance 3    - £55

Performance 4    - £55

Performance 5    - £55

The End              - £35

Please email info@hazelevans.co.uk to reserve and pay for your picture, or any other enquiries.

For more information on my work please visit www.hazelevans.co.uk

And before I go ... here's just a lttle montage I put together ... 

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.