Art

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Art Craft

Lisa Stevens’ Ceramic Sculptures Capture Coral-Inspired Motifs in Vibrant Color

Ridges, florets, and spirals comprise the vibrant terrains of Bristol-based artist Lisa Stevens’ marine-inspired ceramics. On the surface of high-fired porcelain clay, she builds vivid hues using underglazes and stoneware glazes along with melted glass to achieve jewel-like details. During the past few years, she has expanded her coral-inspired designs, incorporating a wide range of shapes and emphasizing a spectrum of bright hues. “My work has become more extreme with more fans, spikes, and branches, and now many pieces can be displayed on the wall,” she tells Colossal.

Stevens enjoys working in series, including participating in The 100 Day Project, first with a series of skull-shaped tiles sprouting coral tentacles and currently making progress on a group of teardrop-shaped pieces. Using a range of tools, she spends a lot of time experimenting and learning new ways to employ them, so no two are the same. “I stick to one basic shape but make each one completely different,” she says. “I will never find an end to the possibilities and won’t get bored of looking for something new.”

If you’re in the U.K., you can see Stevens’ pieces on display at Independent Design Collective in Bristol and Katherine Richards Art Gallery in Brighton and Hove. Find more on the artist’s website, and follow updates on Instagram.

 

  

Art

Rachel Spelling Meticulously Fills Vintage Paint Swatch Booklets with Vibrant Miniature Paintings

“A paint chart is ostensibly about planning colours for your home, but if you break it down, there are so many aspects to that: dreams, frustrations, happiness, sadness, loss, family, hope, despair, fashion, identity… When you look at my work, you see a lot of ideas all at once,” says Rachel Spelling. Prior to 2020, the London-based artist focused on home interiors and painting elaborate murals, including a six-month project to recreate the original Chinese wallpaper pattern of Pitzhanger Manor, the former country house of English architect Sir John Soane, which is now open to the public. Vivid flora and fauna stretch from corner to corner, carefully responding to the surface area—an approach that also happens to work well on a minuscule scale.

Fascinated by the possibilities of painting and drawing since childhood, Spelling has a knack for expressing vibrant detail at on a variety of surface sizes. During the pandemic when everything came to a stand-still, she was eager for a new project, sharing that “one long lockdown day, I was at home with a really strong desire to paint some walls but no walls left to paint. There was a Farrow and Ball paint chart on my kitchen table, and I suddenly realised that each paint chip was like a tiny, perfectly prepped wall, just waiting to be painted.” Commercial swatches designed to help homeowners and decorators choose colors transformed into a canvas ripe for interpretation.

 

“Stone Blue” was the name of the tile Spelling tested first, meticulously rendering a tiny fish onto the rectangle. “It looked really strange and interesting, and the paint sat really well on the surface, so I painted another one and then another,” she says. By the end of lockdown, she had rendered tiny works in all 132 squares in the chart, and she was intrigued by the relationship between the bewildering blast of hues and subject matter balanced by the orderly grid layout. “I really enjoy the clash of the mundane, everyday stuff alongside the big ideas, because that’s such a key feature of lived experience and one that I found hard to put my finger on until I found this way of working.”

Spelling works on a combination of new swatch booklets and old ones, searching for vintage charts at car boot sales, charity shops, and other places where she might find examples that remain in tact and have surfaces that are matte enough to paint on. There aren’t too many out there, since it’s the sort of item that people throw away when they’re no longer needed. Finding an older one is always a thrill, and so is the experience of working on the delicate, one-of-a-kind surface. “There is much jeopardy when I’m painting directly onto a fragile vintage chart. It’s nerve-wracking, but I think the drama of that keeps me on my toes,” she says. “There’s a fine line between damaging something old and creating something new, and I enjoy trying to figure out where that line lies!”

Spelling sells prints in her shop and makes originals available for sale a few times per year. You can see more on her website and on Instagram.

 

Art

In ‘Ocean Sentinels,’ Jason deCaires Taylor Installs Eight Hybrid Sculptures as Coral Guards

A new cast of hybrid characters continues Jason deCaires Taylor’s effort to revitalize the Great Barrier Reef. Recently installed off the coast of Townsville, Australia, as part of the Museum of Underwater Art, Ocean Sentinels is comprised of eight figurative sculptures that meld the textures of marine life with the likeness of influential conservationists.

Similar to “The Coral Greenhouse,” which was embedded in the aquatic landscape in 2020, these works are made of pH-neutral, low-carbon concrete and stainless steel and are created with the intention that sea creatures use them as homes. “It is hoped that in years to come a variety of endemic species such as corals, sponges, and hydroids will change the sculptures’ appearance in vibrant and unpredictable ways. Like the Great Barrier Reef itself, they will become a living and evolving part of the ecosystem, emphasising both its fragility and its endurance,” Taylor says.

Due to warming waters caused by the climate crisis, much of the reef is experiencing coral bleaching, a stress-induced reaction that causes the sea creatures to expel algae in their tissues and drain themselves of their characteristically vibrant colors. Taylor’s works are designed to help spur new growth, offer a sanctuary for the endangered lifeforms, and lure away curious divers from more vulnerable areas.

Ocean Sentinels include stylized renditions of Indigenous leader Jayme Marshall, marine scientist and “godfather of coral” John Veron, and nine-year-old Molly Steer, who led an initiative to stop the proliferation of single-use straws, among others. See more of Taylor’s underwater sculptures before and after sea-creature colonization on his site and Instagram.

 

Art

Guadalupe Maravilla Transforms a School Bus into an Immersive Installation for Sound-Based Healing

Chrome plating, fringe made of humble kitchen cutlery, illuminated chandeliers, and symbolic sculptures of flora and fauna adorn a school bus parked at the ICA Watershed in the Boston Harbor Shipyard. The elaborately retrofitted vehicle is the largest project to-date by Guadalupe Maravilla and the latest addition to his Disease Thrower series.

Born out of the artist’s traumatic experience immigrating as an unaccompanied minor and suffering from colon cancer as an adult, the ongoing body of work evinces the healing power of sound and vibration. Titled “Mariposa Relámpago,” or lightning butterfly, the new work has had several lives before making its way to Boston: the bus was first used for transporting students in the U.S., then sent to the artist’s native El Salvador, and finally ended up in his studio where it underwent its current transformation.

 

Fastened to the vehicle’s body are several objects Maravilla found while retracing the 3,000-mile route he traveled as an eight-year-old to reunite with his parents, who had fled the country’s civil war. Included are references to Mayan cosmology and indigenous practices, spiritual emblems, and more contemporary imagery of disease and medicine, including a model of human anatomy resting atop the hood. Gongs and other tonal objects suspend from the sides, which Maravilla rings during his ritualistic sound baths. These sessions, which he’s hosted specifically for undocumented immigrants and those dealing with cancer, are known to reduce stress, anxiety, and tension that can worsen the pain of illness and injury.

Also in the exhibition at the Watershed are smaller paintings, scale models, and Disease Thrower sculptures made of mixed natural and synthetic materials that similarly reflect the artist’s exploration of displacement and recovery. Immersive and totemic, the works are part of the artist’s effort “to confront trauma in order to heal.”

Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago is on view through September 4, with two sound baths scheduled for June 10 and August 13.

 

Art Craft

Gio Swaby Embarks on an Exploration of Self-Love and Acceptance in Her Vibrant Textile Portraits

From minimal outlines in black thread, empowering portraits of Black women emerge in new large-scale textile pieces by Toronto-based artist Gio Swaby (previously). Vivid fabrics with an emphasis on florals dominate her new body of work titled I Will Blossom Anyway, on view now at Claire Oliver Gallery, emphasizing brightness, joy, and self-love. Centering on a number of self-portraits, her recent artworks reflect on personal identity, embarking on an introspective journey toward acceptance and compassion.

Swaby’s interest in textiles ties her to a childhood surrounded by the materials her mother often used in her work as a seamstress. She was born and raised in The Bahamas before moving to Canada, where she has spent most of her adult life, and she draws on conflicted feelings about a sense of belonging and navigating what she poetically describes as her “many selves.” She says, “I reflected a lot on my own path and started to recognize how many parts of myself exist in the in-between spaces.”

In her nearly-life-size self-portraits, the artist looks directly at the viewer yet always appears relaxed, embracing tranquil moments of rest. Loose threads occasionally abandon their outlines, dangling or wandering around the canvas as if they have a mind of their own, highlighting the never-finished process of growth, evolution, and self-understanding.

I Will Blossom Anyway runs through July 29 in Harlem and coincides with her solo exhibition Fresh Up at the Art Institute of Chicago, which continues through July 3. Find more on the artist’s website and on Instagram.

 

Art

Bursting Blooms Link Modernity and History in Gordon Cheung’s Decadent Still-Life Paintings

In 1634, during the Dutch Golden Age, an unprecedented financial phenomenon began in the form of skyrocketing prices for rare and fashionable tulip bulbs. By 1637, the speculative bubble collapsed, and while the plummeting price of tulips may have bankrupted a few investors, it didn’t take a steep toll on the overall economy, unlike the U.S. housing bubble that spurred a global crisis and led to severe recession in 2008.

“Tulip mania” is a term still used today to describe when the prices of assets—such as mortgages or technology—rise exponentially from their intrinsic or general market values and present a threat to economic stability. For London-based artist Gordon Cheung, Dutch still-life paintings provide a lens through which to explore ties between historical socio-economic systems, modern capitalism, and China’s new power on the global stage. “In part, they are about the rise and fall of civilisations, as well as the romantic language of still-life painting: futile materialism and fragile mortality reflected by the transient beauty of flowers,” he says. 

Like much 16th and 17th-century Dutch painting, the artist’s still-lifes brim with symbolism and references to historical events. The linen surface is collaged with pages from the Financial Times, literally grounding the work in data and news about the global markets. The painting above, for example, references the Old Summer Palace of Beijing, also known as Yuanmingyuan, which translates to “Gardens of Summer Brightness.”

 

The residence of Qianlong Emperor and his successors, the Summer Palace was home to celebrated gardens and an enormous collection of historic treasures and antiques dating back thousands of years. French and British troops captured the palace in October 1860 during the Second Opium War, which led to mass vandalism, looting, and eventually, total destruction.

In “Gardens of Summer Brightness,” the two holy mountains of Sinai and Song flank the vase in the background, suggesting a collision that may have led to the fractured pillar. A map of the park punctuated by an architectural ruin tops the pedestal, and the mille-fleurs or “thousand flowers” style, a popular motif in the Qianlong period, decorates the vase. The vessel also contains botanicals by the emperor’s court painter Giuseppe Castiglione and sunflowers to symbolize the face of the sun as a deity and energy source.

Combining inkjet printing methods, acrylic paint, and sand to create a variety of textures and three-dimensional features, Cheung’s flowers appear to delicately float across ethereal surfaces. He assembles each bloom by applying thick paint onto plastic that can be peeled off when dry and collaged onto the canvas. He is interested in what he calls the “Ozymandian eventuality” of grandeur and power to physically and metaphorically crumble over time, using sand to represent impermanence and the constantly shifting nature of the human condition.

Cheung’s solo exhibition The Garden of Perfect Brightness opens at The Atkinson in Southport, England, on June 3. You can find more on his website, and follow Instagram for updates.