Sunday, July 29, 2012

29th July 2012: Who's made a mark this week?

Today's post starts with an item from the Olympic's Opening Ceremony. The man behind one of the best-kept secrets of the OIympic opening ceremony - the Olympic Cauldron is designer Thomas Heatherwick

This article Gallery: Thomas Heatherwick's showstopping Olympic 2012 cauldron in The Architect's Journal has a number of photographs of how the installation works.

Untitled
Photograph by CarlosVanVegas
Creative Commons - some rights reserved

In this video Thomas Heatherwick discusses his design. I personally love the idea that each copper petal came with a competing nation and will go back to that nation.

Plus this is a little bit about the man himself from his company website - which has images of his work - it's very impressive!
Thomas is an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA and a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from four British universities – Sheffield Hallam, Brighton, Dundee and Manchester Metropolitan. He has won the Prince Philip Designers Prize and in 2006, was the youngest practitioner to be appointed a Royal Designer for Industry.
You can also see an exhibition of the work of Heatherwick Studio at the Victoria & Albert Museum until 30th September.  It now includes a model of the cauldron and how it works.

Moving on - today's post contains items from the last two weeks. I'm trying to ease up on posting over the next month or so in order to (1) have a bit of a break which helps me keep my enthusiasm for blogging and (2) to accommodate a pinched radial nerve in my arm which is hovering between rather painful and excruciating!

Plus a big thank you to all those who pushed my subscribers above 4,000 this last week

Artists and Art Bloggers

Artists
  • You can see Olympic Posters by various Leading Artists in various places around London at the moment.  David Lee has something to say about them in his latest Leader Article for The Jackdaw - Olympic posters: our native genius
Olympic Posters for London 2012 in the Olympic Games Shop in John Lewis Westfield
- which overlooks the Olympic Park and the Stadium
Creativity
Drawing and Sketching
Coloured Pencils
  • Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) compares working on Colourfix and HotPressed Paper when developing an artwork with a watercolour underpainting topped with coloured pencils - see Maine Coon Cat on Colourfix
  • I've been limbering up for the Olympics by Sketching the Olympic Park - in a new sketchbook by Seawhite.  It's OK but it's not love at first sight.
The Olympic Park from the Third floor Gallery in John Lewis Westfield Stratford
(left to right: The Entrance to the Park; The Aquatics Centre, the Orbit and the Olympic Stadium
pen and ink and coloured pencils in NPG Seawhite Sketchbook
Painting
Art Business and Marketing
Almost a third of visual and applied artists earn less than £5,000 a year from their creative work, according to a survey conducted last year by Artists' Interaction and Representation (AIR); 57% of the 1,457 respondents said that less than a quarter of their total income was generated by their art practices and only 16% of them paid into a private pension fund, raising questions about how professional artists will support themselves once they reach retirement age.
Art Books
For example, in the age of the Internet, where most books are selling online, the cover needs to be very simple so that it works as a small image on Amazon. It’s hard to imagine going through months of design iterations for a cover that is going to be seen by most potential buyers as a photo on Amazon.
Art Exhibitions

Major Art Exhibitions
As ever, this year is as popular with the public as any art exhibition, with large numbers jostling and genuinely engaging with the work eagerly discussing merits and demerits of more conspicuous pieces.
To this thrilling event 341,500 visitors flocked last year. Thrilling? Never quite that, there have indeed been years when the quality has been dire enough for me to suggest that the award should be put out of its misery
Art Societies
  • I should have been to see a special exhibition by The Royal Watercolour Society which opened at the Bankside Gallery (next to Tate Modern) last week. Picturing Britain 2012 is on display for the duration of the Olympic Games.  I'm hoping to get to see it this week.
Artists and Art Bloggers
Art History and Art Museums and Galleries
Their resignations, they said, could be read as a protest at the commercial, pop-culture direction of the museum at the expense of education and scholarship.
Art Education

Workshops
  • Last Sunday I went to a workship for The Next Generation (blog post to follow soon).  This post The Next Generation - Portraiture for Teenagers summarises how the educational side of the National portrait Gallery promotes and supports learning about portraiture.
Tips and techniques
Art Materials
Techies
and finally

We have another type of Olympic Sculpture - this one is a Giant Olympic Stadium - in the toy department at John Lewis at Westfield Stratford.  It's completely built of Lego!

The Lego Olympic Stadium
The Lego Olympic Stadium

1 comment:

  1. Hi Katherine, thank you for all your wonderful posts! I loved the copper petals and reading about them.
    Enjoy a well-earned break, and I hope your arm soon feels better! Best wishes, Katy

    ReplyDelete

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