The year 2020 is going to be the year that everyone will remember for all the wrong reason.
This has been a occurrence that we really haven't had in a 100 years and taken everyone by the shoulders and given them a good shake. We have all been confined to quarters other than key workers, which have included outside of the NHS ,food suppliers and supermarkets, dustbin men, delivery drivers . It has hit people young and old rich and poor this has been the invisible enemy which you can't see, feel or taste and until it lays you low. So many people have died in hospital, at home, in the street in some countries and in nursing and homes. Some countries have fared better than others, making sure than anyone who entered the country self isolated for 14 days and didn't mix, with other people. There is a suggestion going around that the virus could have been on the loose as early as last September and in the Sunday papers 10th May they are saying that China asked the WHO not to say anything about it spreading from person to person, this at the end of January .
The damage that China has inflicted on the world from, not dealing with this quickly and stopping any movement in and out of the country as soon as this emerged has done incalculable damage worldwide. Countries are going to be put into recession, people will loose their jobs, students and school children their education as it has taken time for online teaching to be put in place and not every child has access to technology and internet.
Duncan Hamilton established Hamilton Ice Sculptors as the first professional ice sculpting company in the UK over 40 years ago. (We are currently celebrating our 40th anniversary! Click here to read more.) In the early years of the business he single-handedly revived a tradition of ice sculpting which had long died out in Western Europe.
Now, with his son Jamie and a small team of expert sculptors, he is proud to have developed his original ideas into a unique and contemporary artistic style which is recognised all over the world.
From PR and advertising projects to major public installations and film effects, the studio’s work encompasses every aspect of ice and snow creativity. The Hamilton's have presented sculptures all over the globe, taking in North America, China, India and Australia, as well as extensive commissions across Europe.
The team have also worked with public figures such as Justin Timberlake, Elton John, Beyoncé and the Royal Family, with corporations ranging from Microsoft to Shell and Jaguar to Coca-Cola. Public work has been produced with the English National Opera, National Theatre, RSC, Cape Farewell and the Ice Bear Project. Duncan and his team appear regularly in the media.
Hamilton Ice Sculptures
I have taken the above text directly from Hamilton's website as it best describe who they are and some of the work they have completed for people.
I don't know whether I should be looking further for inspiration than this company who have been established for over 40 years. Although they are definitely making Ice Sculpture for the commercial market, the standard of their work is very high and they have tackled some very interesting subjects . I believe they run classes and it would certainly be interesting to see how they work.
Its very interesting to see how they start to tackle work with chainsaws. To get the effects it is necessary to be working in a cold atmosphere so that the ice doesn't melt but it was interesting to see that he polishes the ice on water to add perhaps clarity or to remove imperfections . Very much upscaled from my own efforts using a small deep freeze .
They have produced Ice Sculptures for the Royal Family and all the big commercial names around the world. Quite an achievement . I admire that the son (above in the video ) decided to go to University and follow his own path before he came back to work with his parents in the family business . It gives you something to fall back on if the business went wrong. By the looks of it however they have a very strong base there.
A fascinating business I think a feel for art and be able to produce art in this form would be very essential requirement and also happy to work in the cold but I imagine this has taken them to many interesting place.
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist known for his site-specific installations involving natural materials and the passage of time. Working as both sculptor and photographer, Goldsworthy crafts his installations out of rocks, ice, leaves, or branches, cognizant that the landscape will change, then carefully documents the ephemeral collaborations with nature through photography. “It's not about art,” he has explained. “It's just about life and the need to understand that a lot of things in life do not last.” Born on July 29, 1956 in Cheshire, United Kingdom, the artist spent his teenage years working as a farm laborer in rural England before going on to study art at Bradford College of Art and later Preston Polytechnic. In 1985, the artist moved to Scotland where he began producing work inspired by Robert Smithson and other Land Art practitioners from the 1960s and 1970s. Over the following decades, he became associated with the Environmental Art movement alongside Richard Long and Chris Drury. In 2001, Thomas Riedelsheimer’s documentary film Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time was released, showing the artist at work in nature and his process beforehand. A follow-up documentary, Leaning Into the Wind, was released in 2018. Goldworthy’s works are held in the collections of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others. The artist currently lives and works in Dumfriesshire, United Kingdom.
This is taken from the Art Net site http://www.artnet.com/artists/andy-goldsworthy/
Goldsworthy's art is very transient, he builds it and photographs it, its not a something you can take home, only the image of what, once, was in the cases below a snow/ ice circle and the very delicate ice design which sat around a stone.
Touching North 1989
Andy Goldsworthy
River Ice Wrapped Around a River Stone , 1992
Examples of how and what I did to produce my images
My frozen images were produced by me, I looked for suitable moulds and part filled them with water. Letting them partially freeze , once they were firm I would add the little people add more water to cover, refreeze and when solid add the next miniature person more water and refreeze. The red hearts I made using red food colouring and also allowed for some clear ones too. The watch faces I wrapped in clingfilm prior to placing them in water . I froze the starting block of ice, and when ready, placed a heart on top added more water and returned to the freezer as quickly as possible. I found that the red dye leached out very quickly and the hearts started to melt almost as soon as they were removed for the moulds, I should have added some glycerine to the water mix which might have made them more stable. That aside I actually think with the red leaching out it made it very real, in a strange way and didn't detract at all.
Once all my frozen pieces were ready it was then necessary to photograph them this I mostly did at night as I wanted to keep the surroundings dark yet have a light around or above to give the pieces a glow. I put a black background up as shown in the above slide. tucked the fabric I over the under cupboards lamp and placed couple of pegs to stop I falling down. This sometimes didn't give the effect that I required, so I used some battery led lights and also used tealight candles, as candles do give a warm glow to things. Most of the this photography was done in my kitchen and was very a makeshift set up, but in its own way I think it has worked. I have a black glossy tile I use to get reflection but trying to keep the ice still on this proved to be a nightmare as it slipped all over the place and I some cases if the ice wasn't level made it even more difficult to stand upright. I resorted to some small black squares of material under the ice and had to work very quickly to stop the ice melting before I had taken my photographs .It proved to be quite a long drawn out process in comparison to just taking an image and processing in PS
Art Pandemic Diary
I have found that uploading to the art Pandemic Web site hasn't been as straight forward as I had hoped. I watched the video on YouTube prior to going to the site to see how we were meant to upload watched it a couple of times but come to do the real thing and did not seem to work the same . I opened my site, went to upload images and nothing appears on the screen, so as nothing had happened I thought I would try submit, when I did that, the screen changed so that you could see that your image was being uploaded and then processed and then you get a message Your submission is under review. It is not until you hit dashboard that you can see your submissions and then add a statement. I don't think this was clear in the video .
My next problem was I up loaded 3 of my images and then found they were coming out in reverse, so in other words my 1st picture to be uploaded would be my last in the series as the web site I was told was working on a grid of right to left . So my last upload would be the 1st image in the set.
So once that was sorted I went back to the Art Site deleted the shots I had already put up and started again. I put 1 shot up in the order they came off my website starting with the last one in the group 1st. Left them to be reviewed and on my return the order had been altered on the web site and also the order in which I had uploaded.
So if you look at the 1st bit here where I have uploaded the photo's under review they are all in the wrong order, not as I uploaded them and on the lower ones from the website this is how they have appeared on the web site. So totally different .
Even when I went to look on the art web site for the Film and photography, our page had been joined by others and we weren't on it and then we appeared if like magic
Snip from the web page below. As I went looking for our page for FDA F&P and we weren't on it . the next time I looked our group had appeared. This happened x 2 I thought I was losing it !! The gaps on the page are obviously where our profiles should be . So just another glitch as they say.
To build a website this big must have been an absolute nightmare in the time that has been available and perhaps is churlish to try and pick holes in someone else's work when they are doing us a favour by having spent the time constructing it. Things rarely go straightforward the 1st time with technology .
Even this Wix website has had its moments today as I write this .
The 1st page of Slack once you have confirmed your email and logged in.
Not quite sure where to go next with this.
I hit the people button on the LHS bar and saw that Brian; s name came up so I sent a message and asked if he would take a look at my site on the Art pandemic webpage and perhaps let me have some feed back in due course. I have also messaged Tony for feed back too.
The site is a bit bewildering as what you put where and how, I have just messaged 2 people so far and asked for feedback on my images when they are up loaded to the AP site.
I managed to get all of the images finally uploaded to the AP website and when I looked on the 11th all of the images that had been under review were all showing green and had been accepted. So I pulled the website up so I could gauge what had gone where as there is no order, even though I had tried, the website has put them where it felt. I then found although all had been accepted on the review only 50 of the 54 images I had have gone up and the website has decided which ones to accept or possibly human intervention . Most likely the computer either I have hit the limit of what it will accept in numbers or perhaps there is a limit on how much digital space you have for example 5GBs. I have no idea. So now I will have to cull 3 other images to put the ones I really want on the site, two of which are ice sculptures so must definitely go on the site .
On Slack I have had an online conversation with one of the guest artists who lives in Australia in Melbourne. She had put up some surfing videos which I liked . So far I haven't commentated on anyone else's work .
Our last Monday 15th June, we had a joint online chat about how to finish our work for the 18th making sure that we have Zoom on our computers and that we will be ready and up and running on Friday the 19th preview and that after the 22nd June the due date for the Evaluation , then we are finished and just waiting for the results to come through . Very strange feeling especially as we aren't in college to finish this.