Stan Krzyzanowski

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Some of my Wood Work for Christian

Dowel Sphere (1978?)

My friend and former student, Christian Lo, asked to see some of my woodwork, and realizing my online stuff has a lot of video these days, I quickly assembled this page of links to wood-related work that is currently up, but I think Christian wants to see some of the earlier work, which has not been posted yet. Perhaps I'll find some time to dig that stuff up and bring it here - today I was able to fine four things on my hard drive to put up here, but the photos aren't the best. I'll write more about these when I get that time I was talking about...

Baltic Birch Icosahedron-Sphere (1995?)

Wine Rack (1980?)

Hollow Spiral (1979?)

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Weaving with Post Cards

I made this set of cards in 1977 and today I managed to take this video of it and how it works. Here I am applying some weaving theory to lines drawn on two opposing edges of a stack of post cards. The post cards in this case were from Gallery 76, OCA's art gallery at that time.

I was working with the idea that I could translate processes through different media with the idea that only those aspects of the process that really interested me would survive the transition, and by doing so a number of times, and with various and preferred processes and materials, I would come to see a direction in my work, and see it with better clarity and confidence.

I compared this transition activity to a filtering process. With the weaving post card transition (and others like it) I discovered that although I loved the process of weaving very much, what I didn't have was very much attraction to the fabric itself. By passing weaving theory through a transition filter, what passed through the filter were the parts of weaving I was engaged with and loved most, and what got caught in the filter and left behind was the fabric itself, which I didn't have much use for.

I also tried applying the same to a Transition of Weaving to Wood, and more recently with a Fabric Grid Video.

This was harder to do that it might look.I ended-up writing myself a little script to follow. Here it is:

Plain
Summersault
Summersault - Twist
Twist
Plain
Twist
Summersault - Twist
Summersault
Plain

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Transitions from Weaving to Wood

Today I took some new video documentation of work I did from my students days, back in '76. I was then investigating making transitions in work going from one media to another, which was the focus of my 4th-year independent study work at OCA. It started with weaving on the typewriter, and at one point I tried weaving with wood - making among other objects the blocks shown in the videos below. I also tried Weaving with Post Cards. I'm looking at this again now because I just tried making a video with an extension of the same process. The first attempt with video can be seen in National Gallery - Fabric Grid Video.

I think the videos show what's going on pretty well. The video below shows me undoing a pattern...

and this next one shows me creating a pattern....

National Gallery - Fabric Grid Video

I tried out an idea that I first developed many years ago in which I had been applying weaving theory and pattern to other materials and processes through a form of transition. At times in these early investigations, I tried Transitions from Weaving to Wood and Weaving with Post Cards. Today I am trying this transition idea with video for the first time.

To make this I selected two small square portions of a video, in this case a walk through the National Gallery, and then arranged the squares as a weaving pattern, laying out the squares in Flash. The seed video is the same as the one seen on the left in National Gallery Kaleidoscopes - 4 generations.

National Gallery Kaleidoscopes - 4 generations

Took this video while visiting the National Gallery, using camera rotation, with the idea of doing something like this in mind. Original on the left, reduced and divided three times, moving to the right. I used this video also in National Gallery - Fabric Grid Video.

Plucked Digitalis Time lapse

I felt badly after accidentally plucking this leaf from my Digitalis plant. I wondered if it would continue to open and respond to light after being plucked so I took a time lapse of it starting one night at bedtime going through the night and the following day. It does move, but in a very sad way. I like the way the light changes colour. This posting is rather sad too.... I predict deletion soon.