ART FOR A PRICE THAT ANYONE CAN AFFORD! WOWLOOKWHATIGOT IS NOW LIVE!

Hooray, our new artistic enterprise is now LIVE!!! Please watch the promo video above, it's a great and amusing little video Martin has created, with the possible exception of my silly face in it! It will tell you all about what we're trying to do, and how we hope to fund this venture so we can get started. If all goes well, you and anyone else out there in the world will be able to subscribe to our art for very little money... there's also more information on the crowd-funding website where we've just launched the campaign. It's a fun page which also tells you all about the perks you get if you donate us a bit of money... I know I'm biased but I do think Martin's done a great job at all of this and deserves to be noticed - on top of everything, it's a lot of fun! We have a strong ethos, which is that art should be available for all, and at prices people can normally afford... and we are also committed to fair play and no BS!!

Here's a link direct to the indiegogo.com crowd-funding site for our new project, along with a personal plea to our friends, family, acquaintances colleagues and EVERYONE OUT THERE who loves art - we HAVE to raise our first funds within 2 days to even appear on the indiegogo website campaign browser so people can actually find us, so to all our supporters, please visit the campaign page and make a contribution - the minimum is just $1, (about 70p), so it's not going to break the bank! Also the more visits we get, AND the more comments, the higher the campaign's rating is, and the more it is likely to be featured on the site. 

Thanks!

http://indiegogo.com/wowlookwhatigot

You can now browse our website, and have a look at what you could get if we manage to raise the money we need to start up this business! Here's some more information too...

From our newsletter:

Do you love art ?
Think it's too costly ?
 
We can fix that
... and you can help

What are we doing ?

Martin Herbert & Vivi-Mari Carpelan are today launching their new creative enterprise. We're setting up a new way of buying art at a price which everyone can afford - less than the cost of a newspaper, magazine or satellite TV subscription.  To find out more, watch the video by clicking here or below.

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How are we doing it ?

We´re starting our venture to create a new way of appreciating art using crowd-funding. Crowd-funding is an exciting and innovative new system where instead of us begging banks and business backers for big loans and grants to get started, we ask thousands of people for just a few pounds each. (The minimum contribution is just $1 (70p) !). Our campaign is on the crowd-funding website indiegogo.com, where you can read all about the project  in full, what we are asking you to do, what you get from us in return, and so on.

How can you help ?

In two ways, but ... first a heartfelt plea - we HAVE to raise our first funds within 2 days to even appear on the indiegogo website campaign browser so people can actually find us, so to all our supporters, please visit the campaign page and make a contribution - the minimum is just $1, (about 70p), so it's not going to break the bank!  Also the more visits we get, and the more comments, the higher the campaign's rating is, and the more it is likely to be featured on the site.  Now read on ... and thanks!

1. Contribute
   Obviously we'd love you to go and read about it & watch the video by clicking here, and contribute a small amount to the project. In return you can get trial issues of our artwork, with extra pieces FREE!  The sooner you contribute the more choice of perks there will be.  The first 50 contributors will be put in a prize draw to win an original dragon drawingby Martin worth £150.
   (Note: By contributing to the project you are not committing yourself to any subscription or membership. You will not be re-billed. Later on we'll ask nicely whether you'd like to take out a regular subscription.)
    
2. Share
   Crowd-funding will only work if thousands of people go to view the project page onindiegogo,com. That will only happen if people like you tell others about it. Please click here to open a form in your web-browser which you can use to forward this bulletin.Please send it to your friends, colleagues and professional networks and ask them to forward it in turn.
   
   If you have a mailing list to send to, you could copy and paste this link into an email (all on one line, with no spaces!). It will link to our campaign archive:
   http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=cd2b83a32e776fafe45e4b226&id=957e9c1a97&e=5af28db335
   
   There are lots of other buttons for sharing just below here - please use them to share onevery social media site where you have an account:

                  

Publish!

If you´re a journalist, broadcaster or blogger, please consider featuring our project - a new and exciting way of presenting art.  You can contact us at the address below and via phone or email (see the website for contact details) for further information or interviews!
 

Find out more!

Click on the links below to take a look at:

indiegogo.com/wowlookwhatigot - the crowd-funding page where you can contribute to the project.

wowlookwhatigot.com - the main website where you can find out much more about the project, including more about us, about the idea, and a gallery of sample artwork.

wowlookwhatigot.blogspot.co.uk - the project blog, with loads of information about the whole idea, crowd funding, video making, blogging and much more - how we set up this whole thing!

There will be regular updates on our progress throughout the campaign - we hope you enjoy hearing all about it! You never know, maybe it will inspire you to set up your own project!

Until next time,
Martin & Vivi-Mari

"ANCIENT AND MODERN"; MARTIN HERBERT'S EXHIBITION "SYNTHESIS"

Exhibition poster

I am biased of course - I married a very talented artist and obviously have every intention of supporting his endeavours in finding and developing his unique artistic expression. We're both middle aged and so don't have the advantages of youth, however we hope (and believe) that this is compensated by maturity of vision. 

Martin Herbert, my husband, has been working on a drawing project with the help of an Arts Council grant for the past six months, and is now showing what he's created to date at the Radnorshire Museum and Gallery in Llandrindod Wells until January the 12th. You can follow his progress here on his blog Artedstates. After a short and well deserved break he will continue to work on the project and will present the sum total of his work at MOMA Wales (Machynlleth) in April - May 2013.

Project Synthesis is an exploration of the relationship between digital 'new media' and traditional painting and drawing. Martin has taken organic and mechanical constructions made with 3D fractal modelling software and made them into large-scale drawings done with the most traditional of materials, sepia ink and clay pencils, indistinguishable from those used by Renaissance artists like Leonardo Da Vinci. He also takes public domain texts from the internet and uses them as the basis for new illustrated books done with the same attention to traditional craftsmanship. Lastly, there is a video installation with a computer-generated soundtrack showing some of the digital work which inspired the drawings – making a true mix of the oldest and newest media available to the artist.

As the multi-talented "Renaissance" man Martin is, he also created a video with older digital work called "Unlikely realms" to go with the drawings. These digital explorations was the starting point for his application to the Arts Council.

The grant was meant to help further Martin's career and so he's been experimenting in order to perfect his technique and visual expression. Some of the work in the current exhibition are images he wanted to do independently but most of them are illustrations for the lovely symbolic book The Crock of Gold by James Stephens. Incidentally, I was the one who introduced him to it, quite an odd thing really since it's an Irish tale - a fairy tale for adults. I read it when I was 18 and loved the spiritual message. This year also happens to be the centenary of the book. 

"The Heart is the Fountain of Wisdom" : 90 cm x 70 cm:
Ink, pencil, gouache & transfer print on handmade Khadi paper.
Copyright © 2012 by Martin Herbert

Martin says: This project has two distinct strands with one theme in common – they both concern the reconciliation between digital 'new media' and traditional drawing and painting techniques.  My goal is to explore ways in which computers and the internet can be used to source material which inspires illustrations and innovative new work to be carried out using traditional materials and techniques.

The first strand concerns the production of new organisms, machines and organic constructs using 3D computer modelling technology, which I then use as inspiration for new drawings done using the earthiest and most organic of materials – sepia ink, clay pencils, earth pigments etc.

The second strand involves sourcing written material from the internet - I am using these texts as the basis for new illustrated editions of neglected or beloved books which have now passed into the public domain through expiry of copyright and are now available to anyone who cares to download them from web archives.  The illustrated editions will then be uploaded back to the internet, completing the cycle.  The first book to receive this treatment is Irish author James Stephen's 'fairy tale for grown ups', The Crock of Gold. The illustrations are a work in progress, leading up to publication of a new illustrated edition in 2013.

Find Martin on Facebook!

Photographs from the private view:

Last minute preparations.
Will Adams is the director of Radnorshire Museum and Gallery.

Most of these drawings are illustrations for The Crock of Gold.
Martin made the wonderful frames himself.

Martin is talking to artist Sue Purcell 

The hungry artist strikes again... myself gobbling some nibbles.
I was in the middle of a terrible cold which paused itself for the private view
and then restarted as soon as we were back home.
If all goes well, I might be able to have an exhibition here myself, in 2014.
"Design for a Flying Machine to Escape the Bank Manager": 70 x 50 cm :
Ink, chalk, gouache & transfer printing on handmade paper : Copyright © 2012 by Martin Herbert

View from the window at Radnorshire Museum; Llandrindod Wells is a historic spa town
with a lot of beautiful Victorian hotels.

MACHINE AESTHETICS, AUTOMATONS, TIME LAPSE...

Asa Butterfield in Hugo

Since the industrial revolution, artists have been fascinated with machines. This is especially true for the modernists, who seem to have enjoyed a sense of progress in the real world after the symbolist movement and their desire for the otherworldly had died away with the first world war. I think that what drives artists to resort to machine aesthetics today are different ideals altogether.

We saw Martin Scorceses' recent movie Hugo the other day but found it appallingly poor. It's wooden, slow and tedious, not to mention smacked with cliches. The only positive was to find out that it was about a real film maker Melies. I have an open mind when it comes to films that are mainly directed to the young (but was it?) however I'm getting increasingly frustrated with these films that are badly acted and so slow I doubt whether any kid would have the attention span to watch them. Another similar example is Airbender by Shyamalan who created a few fairly enticing movies in his time. 

Hugo features the rather typical steampunk romanticism that is still alive and well, with an automaton (a self-operating robot) as one of its main protagonists. In other words, intriguing machinery and an oldy worldy set (in this case a 1930s railway station)  is crucial to this kind of film.

I thought it thus rather interesting that the posh and often disliked Oriel Davies (gallery) in our neighbouring town Newtown featured short films with references to the dawn of movie making and oldy worldly machinery. Pia Borg won the competition in the previous open exhibition and was therefore offered a slot in the gallery. We had just checked in to see if something was on and didn't expect to sit down and watch films, so we both found it quite hard to stretch our attention span. I liked the oldy worldy, scratchy atmosphere of these approximately ten minute long videos, and they certainly confirm my suspicion that a big part of the population nourishes a nostalgia for times gone past that I also express in my collages. The new film The Artist, which I haven't seen, is a silent movie in the "old style". Yet I'm quite surprised that this vintage feel in Borg's work as well as the rather trite references to the passing of time and memory would go down that well with the director of this particular gallery. I suppose it's because the artist already has a nice track record from big galleries all over the world and comes out of The Royal College of Art... You can watch the winning film Palimpsest or excerpts from several films in the showreel here on Vimeo. 

Pia Borg: Stills from "The Crystal World", 2012
I don't know if hair floating in water is that original...

Palimpsest portrays a building and its occupants over a few centuries. The Automaton is a living person acting like an automaton, with a lot of imagery of old machines. The piece The Crystal World was created specifically for the exhibition and its main feature is part of a film from 1955 in which a woman gets murdered and chucked in a lake. The sequences were slowed down to create a dreamlike ambience. The bits from the original film are quite long and I found that a little bit odd from a point of view of copy right and originality. Other sequences that seemed original had been added to it like a moving collage. The persons in the two latter films are caught in weird and uncomfortable situations. I found it all quite likeable and technically very well executed, and it's obviously a treat to see art that has "made it" on the international art scene. Albeit I found the work somewhat lacking in originality and deeper message. Perhaps as a symbolist, I am particularly critical when it comes to a real message and just "time passing", "memory" and "uncomfortable situations" don't quite cut it for me. And I wonder how exactly you are supposed to enjoy this form of art - I always thought video installations in gallery rather difficult to deal with. In this case I was quite interested to see how the films were done since I am pondering whether I could venture to do a short autobiographical video based on a short symbolic story myself (well, nothing very fancy of course...).

On Oriel Davies' website you can read
"Through combining contrasting time periods, together with disparate cultural references and symbolism, Borg plays with aspects of recall and memory, creating ambiguity between the actual and the virtual." I wouldn't call this symbolism but surrealism, i.e. a mishmash of imagery such as hair floating in water, machine wheels rolling and meat coming out of a meat grinder without any obvious coherent interrelationship. I also feel that it's all been seen before - references to Le Chien Andalou come to mind. I'm sure you could think of the sequence as symbolizing a lack of vivaciousness as well as fluidity of thought and creativity that ails a lot of people of today but I think it's a bit of a long shot, especially as the machinery is old looking rather than new and sterile. Why all this imagery of machines? Well, I think it's easy. It looks good. It has the charm of loved and old, nicely worn out, pieces of antiques. I think generally speaking all this pretended symbolism is actually nice looking imagery taking precedence over deeper meaning. I do truly enjoy the atmosphere conjured up by this intriguing vintage looking imagery but that's as far as it goes.

Helena Blomqvist: Warm June, 2011

A similar approach can be found in the work of Helena Blomqvist, a Swedish photographer who creates dreamlike images using paintings and various props along with digital manipulation. Many of her images are fairytale-like, like stuff I've seen a lot of on Flickr (Fairytales and Fantasy are overall popular right now, be it low or high brow art). She's successful, but is it more about the craft than the contents? Is it about being clever regarding the set up? Some of her work is reasonably enticing. But again I'm missing some originality... rooftops, handmade houses and forests with various stiff figures can get a bit predictable. I prefer the older work that carries a hint of symbolism.

Helena Blomqvist: "The Silent Stream", 2011 (digitally manipulated photograph)

Sculptures of old bits of machines is also often seen in an age of "recycling aesthetics", for instance here in Jeremy Mayer's case.

Wayne Martin Belger creates fantastic pin hole cameras where each camera contains something that symbolizes the subject matter it was created for... check it out here!

Time lapse is all the rage, and was also part of the films at the Oriel Davies and especially one by Sean Vicary. Martin is very keen on getting a camera for this particular purpose, which to be fair doesn't cost much, and do some stuff with it for his projects. He's getting on with his work for the two upcoming exhibitions, some of which will be illustrations for a symbolic book that I read as a young girl and recommended to him.

Here is Martin's recent drawing, a jesting reference to Leonardo Da Vinci's flying machine! The design is all his own, created with the help of some software that renders one's visual ideas into a three dimensional form.

"Design for a Flying Machine to Escape the Bank Manager" : 72 x 52 cm :
Sepia ink, sanguine pencil, gouache & transfer print on tempera-washed
handmade Khadi paper : Copyright © 2012 by Martin Herbert

I HAVE INADVERTEDLY STIRRED THINGS UP A BIT...

"Contemplating the Nature of Triumph", copyright Vivi-Mari Carpelan 2011
Art work featured in the Pallant House Magazine, March 2012

After a bad dip during which I seriously considered the validity of my artistic career, a number of things have happened. First, my better half Martin has received a small grant from the very elusive and mythic Arts Council! He worked very hard on the application. Apparently, the number of applications they receive these days are record high due to hard times, so they decided to distribute the money among a larger portion of applicants. Though Martin hasn't gotten what he initially hoped for in order to do research and produce an exhibition with supportive material, it's still a start. I sense that this will allow him to get going and that things will follow in a natural way so that he will get the recognition he deserves. 

As for myself, I seem to have stirred up a lot of feelings/reactions/caused an outcry due to being rejected by the Arts Council (The Creative Steps Programme), and am getting massive support from the disability arts community. People who work for our rights here in Wales have complained about the selection process, as it isn't seen as being fair and have "pointed out the absurdity of the situation" as Rachel Stelmach put it. Although no one has told me exactly what they are upset about, I venture to guess that it starts with the fact that I was considered too articulate and have too great a body of work to fit their scheme, i.e. I'm "too good". I did read through the programme (which was easy to read) and didn't see anything that should have immediately disqualified me. It certainly didn't suggest that you shouldn't be too intelligent, or that you must be an emerging artist. Of course I'm by no means suggesting that anyone would equate disability with "learning difficulties"... They did state that they wanted to be challenged, to be taken on a ride for a different point of view on life. Allegedly, only the quality of the applicant's work should matter, whether this applies within this programme I don't know... You could argue that the government wishes to support those who never get a chance otherwise, this makes them look benevolent and I'm sure the general public thinks it's great. This, however, leads to people like me who are not well enough to be accepted by the general art establishment (we don't have enough fancy stuff to show for) nor ill enough to be considered sufficiently marginalized, to be cut off from any sources of funding whatsoever. There is very little funding for individual artists to begin with.

I have found myself in the surreal situation of basically being punished for having tried so hard to make it as an artist. I am on disability, still I try and work to the best of my ability. The fact that I didn't get any financial support basically means that I cannot at the moment develop my ideas and message much further. I'm stuck trying to make do with the means I have at hand, and it's not great. One of my biggest problems is that I don't have an ink jet printer so I have to make do with small laser prints of much lesser quality to be used in my collages - until I run out of ink that I can't afford. I can obviously not set up a photo exhibition anywhere. I cannot involve other disabled people in my art project either, since I don't have the means to go around visiting these people. This means whatever art I may continue to produce will only be about myself. There is also the issue of mentoring and help with creating gallery contacts. From the official at the AC that I was dealing with, I was given the name of one gallery, and I did contact them via mail but of course I haven't heard from them. It's extremely difficult to approach galleries and I wouldn't even know where to start. When I do contact them, they are more likely to turn me down because I am not backed up by the Arts Council. I also have great trouble dealing with authorities on the phone as I have a horror of talking on the phone with strangers but also easily get things wrong due to a bad line, not catching numbers well, or due to linguistic reasons. It was not funny when I needed the IBAN number from a company and the lady had a New Zealand accent. Seven was "zieevn", for instance, and there was a confusion about the amount of zeros which were five and not two! (Martins says she probably said double O triple O, which would not be evident to me!).

The point of view of the AC is that I should just apply the normal way like everyone else who is articulate, but this is contrary to the reasons I applied through the Creative Steps Programme in the first place. I may be articulate, this doesn't automatically mean that I'm any good at reading complicated guide lines. I know it can be hard to believe but those who know anything about fibromyalgia know that this can be very true. The guidelines are hard to follow even for normally functioning people like Martin. And it seems to me that I don't know how to get the wording right for any "official purposes". I am and will remain a person with my own subjective language and point of view.

Gareth Foulkes who is the new North Wales officer of Disability Arts Cymru said this in an e-mail to me: "Your work is very important as it is identifiably Disability Art and makes powerful statements that will be of interest to those involved in the Arts in Wales". I did at the time of my rejection ask the Arts Council why my artistic messages about disability and specifically invisible illness where not considered important enough, and the answer I got back was that it was not relevant for the scheme because there were priorities of a more pressing nature. It appears that the disability community disagrees with this point of view and are now trying to help me further. The first step is that I will be giving a talk about my experiences, and though public performances always take a toll on me I have agreed to continue my fight for the rights of marginalized people.

The other aspect of all the rejections I have experienced recently (apart from putting me so close to giving up) is that there is no longer any doubt that I am part of the outsiders in art. All these years I have found myself putting on a straight face and pretend to be normal, for fear of rejection. If people know you have health issues, they are not very likely to ask you to contribute with any form of work. For instance, I may not have been considered for the talk and the workshop I gave in Finland in November 2010. The reality, however, is that I am hardly ever asked to do anything because I'm not able to push myself out there enough. Even if I did, it would take a huge toll on me unless I was given a bit of "special treatment". Who would want to do that unless they felt that what I had to give was important enough? So this has been a Catch22. The decision to stop trying to fit in is nonetheless the better one, as I can no longer play along with the normal people. I need to set my concerns and worries aside and just do what I feel compelled to do, which is to continue exploring ideas surrounding invisible disability. At least know I know that there are people out there who believe that this is important and that I have something to give even if it's not on the larger scale it could possibly be if I had more help. We shall see how it goes. It's the irony of life that I have never disclosed the fact that I dropped out of art school in France because I couldn't take it any more. I tried to cover this up as much as possible for fear of not being taken seriously and to be honest it was alright as long as I didn't deal with any art authorities in Finland. In reality I was kicked out of that school for not keeping up and was not welcome to try again. At that point I was so sick and tired of the harsh mentality that I was very happy to return to the scholarly studies at The University of Helsinki. I didn't do too badly during the first year of Arts Foundation in Perpignan (France) in spite of the language barrier, but the studies in graphic design and illustration that followed were rather pointless. So in practice I'm pretty much a self taught artist. Now it's been disclosed.

One of my pieces was featured in the Pallant House Gallery Magazine because the article mentioned the upcoming Outside In exhibition for outsider artists which effectively takes place in the Pallant House Gallery. I was astonished at the quality of the magazine and proud to be in it. I will definitely submit two pieces for the exhibition, only making a choice is very hard as usual. I have also sent a proposal for an exhibition in Brighton... it's specifically for non- or semi professional artists. I think I have to concede that because my CV lacks any fancy commissions, awards and more than just a couple of small grants over a period of 20 years, I can probably not call myself professional no matter how much I might have wanted to. After all, Axis doesn't want me! Surely that says it all.


Martin is finally able to speak up about his new project:

"A new project has been hinted at for some time, and now we can reveal... This season's big news is that after a lot of hard work, Martin has secured funding from the Arts Council of Wales for his new project, "Synthesis". The name reflects the fact that it's about using new media (specifically, at the moment, material from the Internet, and from 3D fractal-based computer modelling) and combining it with deeply traditional drawing techniques to create an innovative new body of work.

There are 2 strands to the project - the first and most extensive concerning the use of open-source text from sites such as Project Gutenberg as material for new illustration projects. The first candidate will be the Irish fairy-tale-for-grownups "The Crock of Gold" by James Stephens. The book was suggested by Vivi-Mari, and contains a wealth of rich imagery in the Celtic tradition. At the top of this mail is a test piece I made during the planning stage - "Character Study for Aengus Óg". The project begins in earnest on the 1st April, with all the artwork to be completed by the Autumn, along with a signed and numbered limited edition hardback and a downloadable e-book version. Not much to do there then!

The great news is that the whole project will be exhibited at the Radnorshire Museum and Gallery in Llandrindod Wells from 1st Nov through to January, and will move to MOMA Wales in Machynlleth in April of next year. Other exhibition venues are currently being courted! More details about the exhibitions closer to the time, but before that there will soon be details available about how you can get involved with the project ahead of the first exhibition - watch this space!

At the same time as all this is going on, the second strand of the project involves developing the work that Martin has done with 3D fractal modelling, to create new objects, fauna and flora after the style of the 'unlikely realms' series of abstracts, but again using them as source material for drawings using traditional media. You can see a piece in similar vein on the blog here. This will form the start of another major exhibition project, hopefully to be continued in 2013."

THE OPEN STUDIOS ARE NOW OPEN!

Robin has diligently been keeping his position as studio cat in my studio throughout this weekend when we've been open to the public as part of  Powys Arts Month. So far we haven't witnessed any enormous interest but it's only the beginning as we will still be open the two following weeks from Thursday to Friday. I've been a bit ill this weekend so it's just as well... A couple asked a lot of questions about my art, it was lovely and refreshing to have a reason to talk about it all again. We do question whether maybe Powys just isn't the greatest place to show art, and when we have time we will be looking elsewhere for a public. We think that the beautiful catalogue should have been more widely distributed, across the borders.

We also need to work, it's funny how hard it can be to find the time sometimes. This is the startup of my own project: I'm working out a figure from the photos, and have also scanned and printed a huge amount of old copy right free images seen to the right that will feature in my new work.

This is how full our walls are of my work... there are 46 pieces on the walls as well lots of old work that I am selling out very cheaply. Prices vary from £ 5 - £ 700.

Postcards and a browser full of bargains...

MARTIN'S ART:

Original oil paintings in Martin's studio

Lots of prints of Martin's earlier work in our living room

The 11 dragons for Llanidloes in our (half renovated) dining area -
where guests can also have tea and cake and write name, comments
 (and e-mail address if they wish to receive our newsletter),
in our guestbook

Martin's alchemical laboratory...
Small prints for sale.
On top, the plane model that British Airways sent Martin
when he was short listed for the Great Britons.

MARTIN GIVING A DEMONSTRATION AND TALK...

On Friday he did a talk and demonstration at the Ceredigion Art Society in Aberystwyth (a big university town on the coast, not too far from us).

Martin is explaining how he makes a print of the kind of gradient, e.g. a sky, that he wants to paint,
and then matches the oil colours with it.
This is the print he used for the painting of a sky that he is using as an example.

Martin is talking about some of his art work.
To the right, the gradients that he has started to paint
as a demonstration.

In this picture,
Martin is demonstrating how you create smooth gradients
(using oil colours)

I am also available for talks, namely about the symbolism of my art and symbols in general.