Monday 29 April 2013

More art - an Istanbul Album and a drawing on goatskin

On my way to meet Ekmel of AmberPlatform a few weeks ago, I stopped in a small shop selling second-hand books, curios, old B&W photographs, and came across an empty photo album. Like the one I did in Budapest, I decided to fill this with works on paper.  The red cord secures the 21 double-sided leaves between the covers:
Pigment, water colour and albumen on Japanese rice paper scroll:
Ecoline rubbed butcher paper and a portion of a huge flake of Hammerite I found on the Camondo Steps:
Pigment rubbed butcher paper and a fragment of an old newspaper found in the street:
I plan on including a piece of the goatskin used for the drumhead once I have flattened it properly. The first one I used which ended up being too small became a delicate surface for drawing and has a fantasy map-like quality:
I love the translucent character of the skin (must find out if it really is goat - too thin to be camel, something used quite regularly here). You can just see the curve where the skin was stretched over the top edge of the PVC pipe. This will look great hanging on a wall with its frilly edges facing you:
For some reason Istanbul seems to me to be all warm tones of terracotta's, ocher's and sienna's. Despite the huge sky (when it is clear and blue) and the water, I do not as of yet have a sense of the sea.

Friday 26 April 2013

Some food and some art

About two weeks or so ago was Mahmet's birthday. A painter and neighbourhood friend of Julie's, he included us in an invitation to a dinner of traditional Turkish dishes. These images are after we'd all helped ourselves more than once. A mashed bean dish, white beans from his mother's mountain village, and rice stuffed vine leaves:
Roasted aubergine, some sauteed vegetables, and a fabulous salad of mesclun or lamb's ear greens in yoghurt or aryan:
The vegetables were endless, and then he brought out a sizzling prawn dish, quite spicy and followed by two massive fish, beautifully grilled. You'll have to use your imagination as there was nothing left by the time I'd remembered to picked up my camera.
That evening I met Reinier and Carolina,
a Dutch artist/designer couple who have been working on an exhibition during a one month period.They were in Istanbul last year for a similar project and this year are part of a larger program celebrating  Dutch/Turkish relations over the centuries. One month of incredibly intensive work with Turkish craftsmen of all types. Their show opened tonight at GaleriBu, right across the street from my favourite butcher. A wonderful 3-story space:
and some interesting works. Reinier and Caroline did many pieces of cast bronze, including flows inspired by Richard Serra's lead throws:
Another series based on the phases of the moon started last year with SL forms cast in porcelain:
 then explored in hand-beaten and raised copper:
and finally silver plated:
Beautiful! Reinier in front of one of his lighting pieces:
and his homage to Lichtenstein:
My favourite work was a take on the traditional Dutch still life:
and then there are Carolina's amazing shoes!
www.carolinawilcke.nl
www.reinierbosch.com

Thursday 25 April 2013

A Different Neighbourhood

One of my regular walks traverses the garment district: men off-loading quantities of fashion items;
shops selling textiles wholesale;
highly decorative findings - reels of rhinestones
 and lace.
Then there are the garments themselves. Turkish fashion is quite particular. The dramatic juxtaposition of shops selling both traditional garb;
right next to red carpet Hollywood glamour with see-through net panels edged with extravagant beading;
 swirls of fabric blossoms on multi-length gowns enhanced with gold lace;
 elaborate embroidery;
and this, my favourite, a delicious mermaid style lime green overlaid with gold netting and a Poiret-style wig-like headdress of gold beads;
is all a bit unnerving. The fashion shown in the shop windows is endlessly inventive, available in extra-large
 as seen on plus-sized mannequins;
And the shop names are simply astonishing combinations of Italian, French or English sounding words -this being the most recognizable name:
The Turkish flag is being flown for a holiday known as Children's Day.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Spring 2.0

The spring maker is also a friend of Julie's and Anika's. The workspace is full of tools and materials and his pet cat, who'd recently had kittens:
These cats understand Turkish!

Monday 22 April 2013

Drum 2.0 and Spring 1.0

The difficult part of this work is done. Sertaç has been absolutely brilliant, with the kind of mind, knowledge and skills to make this piece do what I wanted in a way I could never have conceived. A great collaborator.
But first I had to re-skin the drum. The Jubilee clip slipped on the first trial, above, and the skin lost tension. I popped up to the music shop and bought a larger skin (goatskin, perhaps? must check), made a template off the PVC pipe and cut out the circle:
 After soaking overnight in water, with a shampoo bottle to weight it down,
I re-stretched the skin over the top of the pipe, locating the clamp beneath the larger diameter flange to prevent it from slipping off again:
While this was drying, Sertaç and I went to visit the spring man in the old caravansari. What a great little workshop! (see next post for shop profile)
We found the perfect spring - right wire diameter, right spring tension, right overall diameter so it would be flexible enough to droop over the drum and easy to insert small things between the coils to gently drop onto the skin:
Sertaç likes to bend wire and rapidly and cleverly devised a simple piece that not only added interest to the movement of the spring but also became the manual crank handle:
The loop at the end of the spring engages with the 90 deg bend on the crank arm to prevent the spring from simply spinning on the handle.

The last bit of genius is how the whole thing works together. Here, Sertaç conceived of a spring sleeve, with one end extended to become the method of securing the device to the pipe.
He added two circular loops through which I will thread a nut+bolt after drilling small holes in the PVC.
Amusingly, by cranking the handle clockwise when it's on the right side of the drum, the spring coil of the sleeve tends to act like a worm-gear and the spring travels outwards until it reaches the curve. The sleeve then sits there skipping over the long spring, like the needle on a scratched record.

Once this apparatus is secured to the pipe I will start the really fun bit of trialing things to make small sounds. The current skin is still drying but already it sounds much more resonant.