Sculpture and Collage

Is it a crime if you steal from yourself?

What if you don't know it?
Or only dimly remember?
Aren't you glad when you realize how smart you were way back then?

 In developing a maquette for another sculpture competition, I realized that I had this same idea THIRTY YEARS ago. In less than 5 minutes I found early color xerox copies of the collage cards I'd made from an Arizona calendar and old surfing magazines. (I'm still amazed at that level of organization.)

The cards are tiny 3 x 3 inch landscape compositions. Torn up images of the desert became coastal islands, complete with white waves (the torn unprinted paper). I'd visited Baja, Mexico and loved its stark beauty. Each card is a composition in itself, but becomes more interesting when placed next to another and another to form little archipelagos.

  It's not a crime. It's a gift!

Sculpture (and Life) Mantra

I have a new mantra. It working great for me. It might work for you too.

My friend John Osswald told me that when he was running his own faux finish business, dealing with very wealthy clients, his job (in addition to the painting) was to generate enthusiasm and manage expectations.

Generate Enthusiasm and Manage Expectations.

Enthusiasm is defined as intense and eager enjoyment, interest or approval. Who doesn't want that?

It comes from the Greek enthousiasmos meaning possessed by a god, or divinely inspired. Generating enthusiasm is so positive. It means let your creativity flow and encourage the creativity of others.

The work comes with managing expectations, but what a great place to begin! I've tried to manage impressions and failed miserably. Repeatedly. Somehow I understand it when it is put this way. It relieves so much stress by putting things on the table. It means you get clear about what your expectations are. What you are willing to do or not do?

Manage expectations invites discussion of those very things you're afraid to talk about. Money. The Parameters of the job: How much do they want to be involved or have done for them. What do your clients expect but aren't saying? Managing expectations allows you to just ask questions and listen for answers. Subjectively and Objectively.

Give this mantra a try and let me know how it works for you.

Sculpture and Mud Architecture in the Arabic World

The previous Masdar posts about the art of architecture with the newest materials were inspired by
some of the oldest settlements in Yemen.  Built with the most basic materials, wet earth. The mud architecture is locally sourced, renewable, provides insulation and is still standing.

Awara Aburawa writes about Mud Architecture and the Arab World.

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Photo by Phil Marion

Photo by Phil Marion

Photo by Phil Marion
Narrow streets provide shade.

The city of Shibam in Yemen.
Awara Aburawa writes about Mud Architecture and the Arab World.
Photos found on the websites Environmental Graffiti and Green Prophet.

Sculpture and Masdar

Dust storms like this can wreck havoc on photovoltaic equipment.

More news of Masdar. A anonymous reader wrote in with much more information than the New York Times article. Rather than let his/her and links disappear in the comments section, here they are for us all to read and learn more.
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Patrick, FYI this reporter is very out of date. Masdar City has effectively been cancelled.

Masdar has announced that despite 3 hard years of trying, they could only find one single client to lease

In a planned development of 6 million m2, that’s a disaster.

Apparently there simply is no demand for this “green city” with zillions of unoccupied office buildings in nearby Dubai.

What now? Obviously it would be very embarrassing to admit failure, so they'll leave the one school building they already built, and wait a few years to see if the property market will recover.

PS. the school’s occupied by some cute and crazy kids (Laura Stupin reports on student housing.)
You can see the empty, desolate empty plot as well.

Other articles which chronicle the fall of Masdar are here:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/masdar-update/

http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/08/masdar-total-system-failure/

http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/09/masdar-city-playground/

One commenter pointed out how every single claim of Masdar City has been discarded (zero carbon, zero waste, no cars, etc). There’s even a photo op picture of German leader Merkel filling her car up with gas at the one gas station there in this so-called car-free, zero-carbon city).

Very funny indeed! Meanwhile, they had no problem building a gas-guzzling Formula 1 track and a huge Ferrari race track in only 2 years, while letting Masdar wither.

I guess their real priorities speak for themselves.

When, I wonder, will the green community stop letting itself be played a fool?
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Discuss?

Sculpture and Masdar

The future is well underway, and it isn't in the expected places. Not in LA, NYC or Tokyo.
It's in Abu Dhabi. 


If sculpture is not just the created object but includes all the relationships of objects, people, and movement through space, the new city of Masdar is sculpture on a very complex scale.

NY Times photo

Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for the New York Times, reviews the new city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi. 

Billed as "the world's first zero-carbon city", the city uses new materials and old technology.

Architect Norman Foster, of Foster & Partners, studied ancient Arabic cities like Aleppo in Syria and the 16th Century mud-brick apartment towers of Shibam in Yemen to understand how they functioned in scorching (120 degrees and up) desert heat.

Duncan Chard for the New York Times.

He discovered that the ancient architects used hollow towers to draft hot air away from public areas and draw in cooler air. They also kept the streets very narrow and oriented at an angle to the sun's east/west trajectory to maximize shade and accelerate airflow.
Quoting from the article:

"With the help of environmental consultants, Mr. Foster’s team estimated that by combining such approaches, they could make Masdar feel as much as 70 degrees cooler. In so doing, they could more than halve the amount of electricity needed to run the city. Of the power that is used, 90 percent is expected to be solar, and the rest generated by incinerating waste (which produces far less carbon than piling it up in dumps). The city itself will be treated as a kind of continuing experiment, with researchers and engineers regularly analyzing its performance, fine-tuning as they go along.

For a slide show of the new city click here.

Sculpture and the Olso Opera House

Dutchbaby blog has a long photo filled post on the beautiful Operahuset or Opera House in Olso, Norway. The $800 million building opened in 2008 and was designed by Norwegian architecture firm, Snoehetta.    

photo from  The Doors of Perception. The lead architect is Kjetil Trædal Thorsen a partner in the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta.

The Operahuset is architecture as landscape. From a distance, across the water it resembles an iceberg and encourages viewer engagement by allowing people to walk all over the structure.

What I love is how well it plays with the different qualities of light on both the intimate micro-scale as well as the big picture. To see up close go to Dutchbaby.

Sculpture and Jason deCaires Taylor

Of his bones are coral made: Those pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change. Into something rich and strange." ... from Shakespear's the Tempest


I just received new photos of Jason deCaires Taylor's environmental sculpture. After 3 years under the sea in Grenadian waters he latest growth of sponges, tunicates, hydroids, soft and hard corals has been beyond all expectations.

all photos Jason deCaires Taylor

Initially, I had strong reservations about the work. Not his wanting to combine sculpture and environmental work, but the aesthetic of seeing figurative concrete sculptures underwater. 

I couldn't get the image of drowned bodies out of my mind. 

Context is everything.

But now that all the sculptures have suffered their sea changes, becoming mermen and mermaids and living reefs they are beautiful, strange and living instead of dead images. I guess " I've grown accustomed to her face...."

To see more of Jason deCaires Taylor's work click Here.