Genetic slippage

SNPs - single neuclotide polymorphisms, pronounced "snips" - are the most common genetic variation. They are very small - replacing a single "letter" in DNA - and quite common, occuring about once every 300 neuclotides, which means there are about 10 million in the human genome. If written language had so many letters out of place, would we be able to understand it?

Most SNPs have no effect on health or development. Many typos in printed language have no effect on comprehension. A SNP in or close to a gene can affect its function; a slip in a word ... well, see for yourself - here are Jane Lackey's examples, printed on the book cover:

(Seen at the Wellcome Collection, November 2012.)

Other works in the series (via)

The joy of grids

Going on from the simple structural drawings from one of the early galleries in the sketchbook walk

Charcoal mirrored on the opposite page, simply through closing the book

incorporating the "cages" that were part of Susan Hefuna's "Cairotraces" show -

I started cutting through the layers in various ways. Joining printouts of various magnifications of my drawings, for instance; cutting through sections, putting coloured paper behind the cutouts, looking through the holes -

Blowing up photographs, cutting out the various layers separately (with plain sheets under the top copy)

 which leads to grids that can interact with each other -

 and with other drawn grids -which can be photographed and printed out and cut through ... on and on (perhaps) -

Plan A is to use them as monoprinting, as for the cut-out maps in the Monoprint and Handstitch course last summer. It might be sensible to "seal" the flimsy papers with a coat of acrylic paint (=plastic) before finding the hard way that they tear all to readily when lifted off the almost-dry plate. 

Plan B is to enlarge the grids and translate them into textile layers ... not sure how (or if) this will happen.

Yet another plan is to keep drawing and try to get some real depth happening. The holes in the centre of each side really help with this. It's those holes that caught my interest in the first place. As though something could wind in and out and around and back in again, an endless ribbon tying itself up in knots. A path that crosses and recrosses [a badly-walked maze?]. Something to think about during insomnia.

A lot of these units, joined, could make a nightmare labyrinth - small holes high up to crawl through, the meshwork-layers making the path totally unclear. Something NOT to think about during insomnia.

Art I like - Susan Jane Dunford

These two postcards have been floating around in my visual resources file (or rather, pile) for about four years now. The one on the left was a source for some work during the foundation course, and I love the way the various boundaries of the house - or castle? - make mysterious spaces.

The works are small, 12 cm and 15 cm high; their maker, Susan Jane Dunford, is a jeweller, making sculptural boxes and jewellery inspired by old architecture - dreaming spires, chapels, birdhouses, porches, terraces, manors, beach huts.

This turret earring stand is on her website - very fairy tale!

Stairway to nowhere

One thing leads to another, and my travels round the art-internet this morning (via the work of Kristina Jansson) brought me to the story of the Winchester House in San Jose, California.
It was built by the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune ("the gun that won the West") on the advice of a spiritualist. Because the "architects" were the spirits that she consulted, the house is full of strange rooms, staircases and doors that lead nowhere, etc. The spiderweb motif and the number 13 are everywhere. Read more about it here (and how it has become metaphor here) and see pix here.

Stairs

When the idea of the fabric stairs as the focus of my display space took root, I started looking more closely at stairs - and at spaces under stairs.Mention "a room under the stairs" and people always - always! - say "oh yes Harry Potter". Which upset me at first (you mean it's been done to death already? it's derivative, old hat?) but the other side of the coin is that if this is what people think of ("small and dusty, and lots of spiders"), how do you use that expectation - either to build on it, or to subvert it (preferably the latter, of course).

"Under the stairs" also often conveys the "glory hole" jumble of unwanted items. Or perhaps, carefully organised storage. Use of unused, perhaps unusable, space. Call it "dead space" if you will...
Perhaps it intrigues me because I spent my formative years in a house with no basement and no attic. After which, it took only a short while of living in basement rooms (the haunt of poor students) to make "upstairs" very desirable. Now I live in the top two floors of a house converted into flats, and what would be my understair cupboard is in the downstairs flat (surely there's a metaphor in that...).

Another thing that makes the understair area so fascinating is my lifelong love of "cupboard beds" - the idea of having a cosy room-within-a-room, with favourite books to hand, completely private. This goes back to some story read in childhood, no doubt. A cosy and safe place in which to read scary stories. It's the "tiny house" thing ... the "child cave" phenomenon.

Yet another cupboard-under-the-stairs story is of my winter in Menorca, living in an old stone farmhouse with no water or electricity or heating, and very little money. We would keep warm of an evening by taking our chairs and gas lamp and books into the cupboard under the stairs, which got reasonably cosy - and then it was time to jump into the icy bed. (Ah, we were young...)

You might recognise these stairs - even if you've never seen them before -
Yes, the piece is by Rachel Whiteread. Another variation on the "back stairs" design?

Reliquaries

This is perhaps the ultimate in "little houses" - it's the reliquary of St Louis of Toulouse, and you can read about the phenomenon of reliquaries here. In among my old photos (real film) are many pix of reliquaries, especially from the wonderful Schnuetgen museum in Cologne.
Often reliquaries are in human form - an arm or a foot holding a relevant bone.

Ghost village

Tyneham in Dorset is now a ghost village. Six days before Christmas in 1943 the villagers were given a month to pack up and leave their homes (106 properties in a 12-square-mile area) so that the army could practise for D-Day. They were never allowed back, and the army kept the land; it's now part of a firing range. Clara, who took these photos, reports that when you enter the village your GPS and mobile phone signal suddenly stop working.

The land is now a firing range - and photogenic location. My own interest is the strange spaces that are left in the walls of the roofless, stripped-down buildings - fireplaces and other nooks.





Read more about Tyneham here and here.

Building construction (Do-Ho Suh)

This photo is shamelessly pinched from Jeanne Williamson's worthwhile and interesting blog, which I recommend you visit.

On seeing the photo I was struck by the thought, that this is what I had in mind for the imagined interiors theme, why did I forget in the meantime?

It revives a whole lot of other thoughts, which I'll try to draw on in class next week. They might fit into the "new direction" of doors, or they might spark off something else, that's the exciting, risky uncertainty (and no animals will be harmed in the process). But I will remember to try to stay focused on the doors for the next 11 weeks.

Also it reminds me of the stitched, life-size replicas of living spaces made by a Korean-born artist, shown in the Serpentine Gallery a few years ago ... thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can quickly reveal that the artist is Do-Ho Suh and the show was in 2002; here's a review.

And he's moved on to staircases - another of my recent interests - how good is that!
"3D pojagi", you might well think! He uses traditional seamstresses in Korea to put together the works.

A review of the 2003 is here, and there's an interview and videos here. He talks about his traditional training in Korea and the challenge of studying in the US - it wasn't just the language problem. His perception of personal space has changed; obviously that feeds into his work. Transporting space from one place to another is a way of dealing with cultural displacement - you can take "home" with you. He chose fabric to be light and transportable - the first "room" came to the US in two suitcases. The rooms subvert a prevalent art idea, the notion of site specificity.

Another interview and more pix here - don't miss the floor piece, and the paratrooper.

Thoughts on fences (and Robert Grosvenor)

When you have a "theme" in your head, it's a filter catching thoughts and images that otherwise would have slid right past you. This piece by Robert Grosvenor is in the Whitney Biennial, the 2010 "state of American contemporary art" survey (more info here). I don't instantly know what it's about, or "like" it even, but it does make me think about fences, security gates, shops' metal shutters - zoos, even. "Inside, outside, in between" - fences, and what's beyond them. I'm surprised that the idea of fences hasn't come up before...

As for the piece in the picture: "Grosvenor has increasingly concerned himself with a theatrical elaboration of place, and his range of materials has broadened from wooden beams to include all manner of structural materials, such as corrugated metal, cinder blocks, fiberglass, plastic, and industrial paints. His recent large-scale sculptural tableaux take this more inclusive approach still further: they seem imbued with a degree of cartoonish self-consciousness, as though dimly aware of their being in the world" it says in this 1996 article.

His roots are in Minimalism, and he "has evolved into an artist governed by sensibility rather than theory".

Inside, outside, in between

Art classes resume in a few days and I haven't forgotten the need to develop my project next term. This sequence of photos started with noticing this statue on the way to the V&A on New Year's Day. (We were on our way to see the new medieval galleries, and they're super!) We crossed the street and turned right at the postbox -Then I noticed the reflection in the bay windows as we walked down the road -
which led to taking a series of photos of reflections. It's quite a long street with a variety of buildings -
some with windowboxes -
not to mention security measures -
Further along, we walked past Imperial College, with its newer, more functional buildings -
But even there some windows had "homely" touches -
Only some, though -
Walking through Imperial College's ground, it really started getting confusing, as reflection, glass pattern, and interior started to mingle -

Until eventually the reflection won -

Doorways

Research for ongoing work on doorways, thresholds, liminality ... first, a compilation from the internet (click on the picture to see it much larger) -One seen nearer home, at the train station on Crouch Hill -
Can this door (on an "ark" at Orford, Suffolk) actually function? -
This "door in flux" is in a community centre in Kensal Rise that is being converted to a mosque -
An enigmatic painting by Rosalind Richards -