Archives for the month of: April, 2012
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Tradition

April 4, 2012 //
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sorbische Ostereier These are my mother’s ornamented Easter eggs. They have tradition in the part of Germany where she grew up. An area close to the Polish border in the Eastern part of the country… therefore very inaccessible before the Wall came down, and now very inaccessible for me, as I live on the other side of the world.

I have never seen Easter eggs as beautiful as these. Last year I finally had the chance to photograph them. For me they are laden with stories and emotions about a quiescent, but scary country.

Some people are still keeping up the tradition. I found this page about the craft of the Easter Eggs.

 

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Categories Art, Photography

Memory lane

April 4, 2012 //
2

bottle prop A good friend of mine gave me this minature bottle as a prop for the puppet show at the book launch. Pig likes it’s tipple – now that sounds like an old lady, I should say it like it  is – Pig likes to booze!

It is quite funny, my friend is a New Zealander, but she bought this bottle a good thirty, fourty years ago on her OE. And it says on the side of the bottle Produce of Germany. She bought it at a time when I didn’t even know New Zealand existed. The alcohol has long evaporated out of the bottle through the unbroken seal. When we talked about the puppet show she immediately thought of the bottle as the right prop for Pig and digged it out. I wonder what kind of memories she has, when she looks at the bottle.

It is amazing what people keep as mementos. I have a box full “useless” stuff. I started to photograph the items, as each of them conjures up lost friends and time past. I am not lamenting the loss by any means, I just know that every person along my tracks has added to who I am now.

That is what I really wanted to say yesterday about the hammer: we look at the same thing, but we interpret it differently depending on our previous experiences. For me that is the reason why people can never see things quite the same way.

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Categories Art, Book Launch, Hand Puppets, Self-publishing

It’s a hammer

April 3, 2012 //
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Art contemplation is a little bit like a hammer. We know what it is, but what we make of it depends on how we use it. Destroy or create!

Two people look at the same image and can have a totally different experience.

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Categories Art, Photography

Exciting encounter

April 3, 2012 //
2

I just bumped into Amanda, who I only met recently, when I picked up my book launch invites from the printers. Turns out she is a fellow blogger. Her blog is about things made from paper called  Love Notes. She told me she has written about the puppets and the Hermit’s Web book. Of course I had to check it out immediately and gosh it sounds really exciting!

This morning I’ve got round to photographing Devil’s Advocate. He looks very mellow and relaxed.

Like all my other work, the puppets are multi-layered, but what I particularly like about them is their interactivity. I love to watch people engage with the puppets. Let somebody get their hands on a puppet and they start acting with them. The least they do is wave… and this is a very friendly gesture, isn’t it? You don’t really need many words, but I can observe their reaction to my artwork, rather than just assuming their perception of it. I love that.

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Categories Art, Book Launch, Books, Hand Puppets, Self-publishing

Spring there : Autumn here

April 2, 2012 //
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Looking back through my posts, it appears I have a rather limited and dull colour palette. Yes, I admit, I like earthy and subdued colours. But there are also times when I enjoy the bright and cheerful. It is not a contradiction.

More often than not I visit Germany in Winter. I usually arrive around Christmas and stay throughout January. This is the time when we in New Zealand have our long summer holidays. Everybody is on the move then.  However, it means that I am always in Europe, when it is cold and drab and miserable….

Last year I did a trip at Easter. I was there for the first balmy days of spring. The difference really hit me. These two tulip pics I took will always bring back the mood.

When I arrived back here, the wet and stormy autum had set in.

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Categories Art, Digital art, Photography

Modern Man

April 2, 2012 //
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Modern Man

This is one of my favourites. For me, there is so much symbolism in it and of course I know the person depicted. Therefore I don’t think this work can ever have the same meaning for anybody else. I believe the viewer will find their own meaning in it, hence I don’t like to explain…

However, with this image I will describe how I technically put things together.

The original title of the work is: “Kaiser, König, Bettelmann” (engl. “Emperor, King, Pauper”). Broadly speaking, my intention is to show that any person can be (or should be allowed to be) any of these characters at times. Hopefully they will be well balanced. For a wider audience I would call it “Modern Man”. Now I really mean MAN, not mankind.

In all three parts of the triptych I used the same four photographs to create the background. Those four images are symbolic on their own

1) a close-up of stone wall and wooden door with flaky paint
2) a window looking from the inside out
3) a frayed lace curtain
4) an iron observation tower in the woods of on an Eastern German island.

The four images were combined to support the person’s poses (strong, balanced and weak).

It all developed from the balanced person’s photograph, which was a simple holiday snapshot and the other two people shots were taken to match what I had started.

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Categories Art, Digital art, Photography
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