Faces at the window

click photo to enlarge
My wife said the other day that if "The Hub" (Britain's National Centre for Craft and Design) wasn't at Sleaford we'd visit the town less frequently than we do. She was right. What I like about this building, and what makes me return regularly, is that it introduces me to aspects of art, craft and design that I might otherwise not see - some of it very good, some of it less so.

Our most recent visit was to see the exhibition of winning designs from the annual international competition initiated by the Design Museum and sponsored by Brit Insurance*. The selection on display, some in actual form, others in video, included work as wide ranging as the new Oslo Opera House, the MYTO chair, and the Magno wooden radio from Indonesia. It was an exhibition well worth seeing. We also took in the exhibition entitled, "Home Sweet Home: an exploration into the subversive elements of the domestic by UK graduates in craft & design", a collection described as "innovative, inspiring and daring", which I found immature, facile and depressing. What made this exhibition worse was that every piece was accompanied by a written commentary by the artist, each of which would easily qualify for entry in the Pseuds Corner column of Private Eye.

Connecting the two main display spaces is a tall stairwell with landings. These were showing jewellery by Clare Knox. I was initially ambivalent about this, liking its originality, the fluid forms, and the tactile qualities, but I wondered whether it would work when worn. However, I warmed to it on repeated viewings, and felt that with the right clothes it could be successful. The jewellery is described as being made from "EVA, rubber", and looks like it has been poured or dripped to make the required, quite original designs. She had also created a series of big drawings that hung in front of the windows, using the same technique as she uses for the jewellery. One of these, in my judgement, stood head and shoulders above the others and appealed to me so much I took this photograph of it.

* Brit Insurance. Now there's a company I'd reject solely on the grounds of its name. I hate this recently coined contraction of the word "British".

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 8mm (37mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation:-0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Architecture and nature

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I have a particular fondness for architectural drawings, and my shelves hold a number of books showing wonderful examples. The original purpose of these drawings (and I'm not talking about technical plans and blueprints here) was to help the architect to visualise his building, and to show it to the client before it was built. All this can be done through computers today, but the art that they produce rarely has the qualities of pen, pencil, crayon or paint on paper.

When you look at architectural drawings from across the centuries you realise that the architectural skills of architects like Wren, Boulee, Adam, Street, Mackintosh, Voysey were complemented by stunning draughtsmanship. In the twentieth century the range of architectural drawings widened. The visionary Italian architect, Antonio Sant'Elia (1888-1916) drew his modernistic fantasies in stabbing black ink and pencil, showing acute angles and strong symmetry. Tony Garnier (1869-1948) represented his blocky suburban houses in pen and soft pencil set among stylized trees and relaxed people. Soft pencil was also used by Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950) for the wonderfully detailed aerial perspective of a school he designed in Michigan. And Rudolph Schindler's (1887-1953) Californian beach house, drawn in coloured crayon, sets its blocky shapes among outlined trees and planting. In fact, as you move through the twentieth century, looking at architects like Venturi, Lloyd-Wright and many others, you find the sharp shapes of modernism softened and broken in their drawings by the irregular outlines of trees and shrubs. It's as though they recognised that people don't want to live in an angular, urban environment without the softness of plants also being present. Either that, or they knew they couldn't sell their architectural visions if they were presented in the raw! Or perhaps they simply liked the art that comes from presenting hard geometric lines against soft, wilful nature.

I was reflecting on this as I prepared the photograph above. The irregular stems and flowers of these dried plants look like the pen-drawn trees of some architects' drawings. They have a slightly Art Nouveau-cum-Japanese quality that the conversion to high contrast black and white only serves to strengthen. There's maybe a bit Charles Rennie Mackintosh about them. Whatever it is, I liked their linear quaility, and placed them in front of paper against a window to achieve this effect.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off