Browsing on Pinterest with the search subject “networks” brought up some images I hadn’t seen before, including a wonderful one which took me down a rabbit hole into a Royal Academy paper on the artist Gergtrude Goldschmidt, known as Gego, 1912-1994. I was taken by the author’s comment that Gego herself never thought of herself as a sculptor, but an artist whose proccupation was line. She worked in both 2D and 3D, and her “Her intricate ‘Drawings without Paper’ series are small sculptures whose shadows create secondary ‘drawings’ on the wall on which they are hung. The larger suspended works not only seduce with their form but leave unanswered questions about whether one should look at the lines that create the work or the empty spaces they define.” (Adrian Locke, R.A., 2014) I have sometimes wondered about which is the more important part of lace – the matrix or the holes? A few years ago I concluded it’s the pattern of holes, regardless of the material those holes are in https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=6976
Another favourite artist on my mind at the moment is Vera Molnar, a Hungarian artist (pioneer of generative computer and kinetic art) who apparently frequently declared her life to be about squares, triangles, lines, and that she was mad about lines. I blogged about her a couple of years ago. I’ve been very influenced by her computer generated squares surrounded by slightly off-kilter lines because of a small bug she put into her computer algorithm. Intrigued, I developed a stitch motif that I’ve used in my work a number of times –
With the upcoming SAQA Global Call AI Artistic Interpretations coming up soon, I’m thinking about all of this, and today’s search brought up the term ‘neural network architectures’ in a video clip presented by a bright young man using big words and terms that I’m only just keeping up with! Lots to think about and some sources of inspiration there, definitely.
This research is all food for thought as I finish the binding on the current work … but it doesn’t mean it’s nearly finished! For various reasons, I decided that this current work, c.110cm x 84cm would be better made in reverse order. So first, the front, low loft batting and the back, were layered, basted and machine stitched (ie quilted) with a metallic polyester irregular grid. The edges are currently being faced (one more side to go) and then the cutout blob shapes will be placed at many of the grid line intersections and stitched into place before finally adding the hanging sleeve and signature.
