Art, crafts and do-it-yourself

Applied graphics

Designs & drawings applied to other objects.

• Le Bar sur Loup isometric printed mugs, 2018
• Entrée de Clowns binding, 2012
• Aïda sets (assisting Michael WOODS), 1975
• MAXIMALIST screen-printed T-shirts, 1974

Collage & inlay

If Henri MATISSE took to collage toward the end of his life due to growing blindness, I learnt from Aldo ROSSI & Gianni BRAGHIERI their application of the technique in the development of architectural projects.

A cut sheet of coloured or printed paper allows for the rapid composition of figures without having to wait for surfaces to dry. Beyond purely decorative use on walls, it is also an exceptionally economic medium which doesn’t let on.

Drawings & paintings

Often it is the very place, or a precise moment, which prompts the grab of a drawing instrument to pen/cil what words are of limited use to describe. Thus, seeing the drawing again, one is reminded of the emotion endured, which a photographic snap can never reproduce. Simply because memory deposits itself in our nerves and flesh, not just the brain.

Fashion accessories

I must hardly have been 13, perhaps even younger, when I began to stove-enamel copper discs with coloured sticks & powders, to drum-polish for weeks on end stones collected or acquired for the purpose. Epoxy-glued to clips or rings, these I would give as presents to numerous ladies, relations or friends of the family, who were happy to receive them. (VGS collection, Grasse)

Models

If I have included in these pages (rather than elsewhere) the models made by yours truly, it is because they are objects which I wanted to make for myself, crystallizing a project’s  central idea.

Sometimes this occurs in a second moment, after project hand-in. It is a means of preserving the value of one’s own work, which often escapes the attention of the commissioning party.

Considered objects to be enjoyed — in the making to start with, but also through their sculptural mediation — they abide by their own aesthetic. No model is so ugly as the one which strives in excess to faithfully imitate the work of architecture represented.

Sometimes I have preferred to represent the project idea through a model, especially where drawn deliverables based on insufficiently accurate data might lead to confusion & undue liabilities.

Particular projects

The principle “2 birds with 1 stone” and the notion of economy of means are such that every object of study, elaboration or accomplishment offers opportunities to imagine how they might serve at least two purposes, for similar cost. It is indeed the enigma of a solution that the architect & tutor Pavle TVRTKOVIC used to encourage us to achieve, in elaborating designs. The inertia of habit and mental laziness of the greater number rarify however such optimal initiatives. In these pages I show the odd accomplishment which has enriched my own experience of DIY.

Photography

The way our generation learnt it, the technical art of photography was never just about shooting & retouching pictures, but also the fastidious task in the total obscurity of the darkroom, of developing reels, enlarging frames and carefully manipulating chemical solutions. As first grandson & great-grandson of the émigré photographers Edrei & Jack FRANCES, settled in Buenos Aires, I owed it to myself to learn their trade correctly. Family businesses GRATISPOOL & FREE FILM SERVICE were a constant reminder of filial duties.

Portraits

Seriously encouraged by artist teacher Michael WOODS, to whom I owe a huge debt of recognition, from age 15 I began to sketch the portraits of relations or friends. Latest foray to date : 2020, a friends’ in Berlin, of their daughter Sol.

N.B. I should be grateful to trace copy of the portrait of Ed BROWNE which I did at C’house.

PotteryCeramics

Clay, material of exceptionally plasticity when modeled by hand, does also a lot of good to the skin of those who handle it. The discovery of the effects of natural oxide pigmentation during the second firing (even, for that matter, in the first) proves a veritable odos oniron. From the maritime claybeds of Loch Fyne, I somehow managed to produce a special glaze, which covers certain vessels.

Readymades

Obtenir un résultat maximal par un effort minimal aura toujours fasciné l’ humanité. Au fond les readymade de Marcel DUCHAMP relèvent anche du mythe du Roi MIDAS, de la volonté alchimiste de transformer la matière basse en matière noble. Il s’ agit enfin d’ oeuvres de l’ esprit.

Retrieval, repair & re-use of goods

In architecture the problematic of retrieval, repair & re-use is frequent : why not apply the same design logic to everyday objects ‘fallen out of use’ either due to changes in taste, materials unavailable to repair them, or absence of resources and expertise to do so ? Setting aside expectancies of perfection, the exercise proves stimulating, makes for healthy employment of goods & free time, reducing the impact of waste, which has become, amongst others, an imperative urgency.

Sculpture

At school, in the fine art studio, there was a library of art & architecture where I used to pass untold hours, discovering inspiration & forging my preferences. Amongst these Kurt SCHWITTERS’ Merzbau seemed a marvelous but ill-fated thing, destroyed through war. But the idea of spontaneously composing with whatever (indeed, whoever!) is to hand, seemed a direction rather more worthy of mens sana, and hardly entartete Kunst.

Technical assemblages

Poetic of mechanics. It was my maternal grandmother, Mary ALLISON, who explained to me, as a young boy, how electricity functions, how to distinguish the contacts, to correctly wire a plug. Always magical when it works. The same for plumbing and all assemblages devised for the greater pleasure of the mechanically minded. Such student fun fitting Bairbre & Robin’s kitchen of a New Year’s Eve ! Never looked back…. The screwdriver is decidedly the creative pro’s very best friend.

Woodwork & internal installations

From my very first installations (aged 17) I realised that to achieve a certain result would often mean resorting to executing or finishing certain detail tasks myself, which make all the difference : bespoke joinery, its non-standard treatment….