Rob Ryan Exhibition in Stafford

So here he is again...Rob Ryan, a hugely influential man for me! I happened to be in the area at the time visiting my boyfriend over Christmas, when I found out he had an exhibition on in Stafford, which I was thrilled about. The work was incredible with a variety of mediums from paper cutting, tapestry and silk screen printing. The photos aren't great quality I'm afraid, I didn't have my camera with me so these are from a mobile.

Here's the website if you would like more information on the exhibition and Rob Ryan:

http://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/leisure/museumandgalleries/shirehallgalleries/robryan/

Karen M O'Leary

Every paper cutter will have heard of this amazing woman and her incredible work. She hand cuts intricate maps of major cities which look absolutely stunning...

Lori Danelle on Etsy

I have recently been introduced to etsy, which I LOVE. You can find beautiful vintage or handmade items on there from all round the world. When I should have been doing my dissertation I came across this little gem that is Lori Danelle. She custom makes cut outs of your fingerprints; amazing personal and stunning work.

Christmas Cards

I realise it's been nearly a month since that festive day but seeing as I've been soo slow at this blogging business I thought I'd still post it anyway! Being an art student I couldn't really justify buying my Christmas cards this year so thought I'd get my creative brain working and make my own, we also have a London Show this year at Free Range which we're fundraising for so one of my Christmas cards went into the raffle. I couldn't decided whether I liked the design with the orange behind the house, or without the orange...so I just made both!

In The Making

Here are some pictures of my work while it was in progress, sorry about the quality of the photographs, they were just a quick thing on my phone...

Bird Shadows

In the last few days, Bath has been lucky enough to have had glorious sunshine and fellow student Tris West very kindly took a few photographs of my work as a small window of light passed over it. Thanks Tris!! I've been desperately trying to get photographs with intense shadows, however I don't like artificial light on it, so this is perfect.

Andersen M

So I live in a house with 4 Graphics students and my boyfriend graduated Graphics in 2010 so I'm surrounding by them. However they do have their uses! In their 1st year they had a visiting lecture by Andersen M, brother and sister who produce work with paper, turning into stop motion animation. It's amazing!! Here's a few stills from some of the animations and 'A Map Comes to Life'

Birds

For my crit just before Christmas I decided to go bigger with the birds. The plan was to go really big but it took a lot longer than I thought to cut them all out by hand (definitely need to talk to laser cutting!). They are all smaller than A5 again so are very intricate, the birds are split to that they emerge from the wall in 3D and glued to the ends of different length pins. The group was inspired by the Victorian Hummingbird cabinets at The Natural History Museum in London, however these have more of an innocence about them...

The Beginning of the Birds

So I loved how the white paper on a white wall looked soo innocent and subtle which made me think about creating something that reflected this. While at Walcot Market in Bath I came across some beautiful illustrations of birds from an old book which I quickly grabbed and adapted so that I could cut them out. I had to draw them, trace them and then modify it so that the paper cut would work. Here I was experimenting with splitting the bird and making it 3D. These birds are tiny, smaller than A5.

Rob Ryan at Pick Me Up

So here he is...Rob Ryan himself. He moved his studio to Somerset House for the exhibition which really was amazing, you could walk round them as they work and appreciate how much time it must take to produce it. It really does make a difference seeing the paper cuts in real life than looking at images of them on the internet...so go and see him in an exhibition!

If anyone is interested, here's a link to his website which has a blog on there as well:

http://www.misterrob.co.uk/

And there's a couple of video's here...one is of Rob Ryan talking about the whole experience of being at Pick Me Up, and the other is of some of his team working on a cut out:

Pick Me Up

As I have only recently gotten to grips with blogging, this is very late! I went to the Pick Me Up exhibition last April in 2010 at Somerset House. It's a chance to see some contemporary graphics, mainly illustration and design, and you can join in with the silkscreen workshops and even buy some of the amazing designer's prints for affordable prices. Rob Ryan had an open studio there, but I'll make another post about him because he's soo special! Here are the other pictures from the exhibition...

You'll have to excuse my awful layout and editing, I haven't quite got the hang of this yet!