I’ve just discovered the sculpture and steel jewellery of artist, Megan Auman. I don’t know how I’ve missed seeing it before because she’s been mentioned by Cally, whose blog I read regularly.

Long Leaf Necklace’ by Megan Auman

Isn’t this fab. Despite studying and making silver jewellery, I’m not much of a jewellery wearer but I’d make an exception for this. I particularly love that it’s made from steel instead of a precious metal, that really adds to the aesthetic for me - the stark black against the white makes me sigh with visual lust. I’ve been playing around with lots of colour in my new art journal lately but apparently I’m not over my monochrome thing and honestly, I don’t want to be - colour fills a certain place in my soul but black and white will always own my heart.

I had already noted the resemblance of Megan’s work to my own drawings but I was amused to discover that she also did a smaller series of daily drawings in 2007. Megan also has an interesting blog that’s worth a look - apparently she’s going to be making a life size sofa out of metal, I look forward to seeing it.

Sorry about the lack of posts over the weekend, we had visitors and I just didn’t get a spare minute to update.

I’m a big fan of Tara Donovan’s art. I love the way she uses vast accumulations of objects like polystyrene cups, pins, sheets of glass and drinking straws to make dense, layered sculptures. She stacks the objects but then lets them find their own pattern and form.

Tara Donovan: Haze, 2003

I find the way her work refracts colour very interesting, she often uses translucent materials that become subtly coloured when layered in such large quantities. It seems to me that there’s something about the importance of revealing the hidden in her work.

Tara Donovan: Haze, detail, 2003

I must admit that I was envious when I saw her huge block of pins - although I just don’t work on that sort of scale, I love that she does. The pins aren’t held together with anything other than gravity and their own interlocking chaotic mass.

Tara Donovan: Untitled, 2001

If you want to read more about her work, there’s a good review here by Paul Brewer and an artnet interview with Donovan here.

Sorry about the odd formatting on a couple of the images in this post, I can’t work out why it’s doing that or how to fix it.

Danish artist, Peter Callesen makes amazing sculptures from cut paper.

Peter Callesen: Impenetrable Castle (detail), 2005

I love the simple whiteness and complex, intricacy of his work. Of course, the more complicated papercut sculptures will tend to impress most viewers because of the high level of skill and craft needed to make them - I’m sure they’re his ‘crowd pleasers’. However, in many ways, I’m more impressed by the very simple ones because I think it takes more courage as an artist to exhibit very minimal work. The less you have, the more focus there is on it and the more exact it needs to be.

Peter Callesen: Snowballs (detail), 2005

I’m also rather charmed by the contrast between his incredibly precise papercut work and his loose, exuberant drawings.

Peter Callesen: Drawing from The Dying Swan series

In fact, if you look at the different sections of his site, it’s apparent that he takes very different approaches depending on the medium. However, because he’s working with a central theme of fairytales, it all seems to come together. It’s clear looking at the rest of his practice, particularly his performance work, that ideas of absurdity, futility and even tragedy also play a large part in his thinking.

Unsurprisingly, given the prevalence of small objects in my own work, the idea of the miniature has always fascinated me. It’s easy to fall into kitsch with it though, something that Thomas Doyle manages to avoid. Instead, his tiny worlds capture and reveal intense moments of strangeness in which we’re the ultimate voyeur.

Sometimes it’s pretty clear what’s going on, as in this piece:

Thomas Doyle: The reprisal, 2006

But in others, the narrative is far less obvious, leading to an art that speaks of fracture and dislocation.

Thomas Doyle: They draw you out, 2006

His work makes me think about that moment in a dream when the unnerving quality of an almost normal situation suddenly overwhelms you and you start to slip inexorably into a nightmare.