Two new pieces this week.
The first is called B Is for Biting Back.
It started with a jelly sweet shaped like a shark. I scanned it at 2400 dpi, printed it out, then scanned the print again to blow the image up even bigger. There’s a nice degradation that happens when you scan a scan.
I made the type, which is just the letter B, by scratching a scrap of Letraset onto a sheet of paper. Then I made a separate print by covering a table tennis bat in acrylic paint and transferring the texture of the rubber.
I combined the three so that the shark looks like it’s torn a chunk out of the B.
The second piece is called One Drew East, One Drew West.
I placed four transparent water pistols on an overhead projector in red, blue, orange and green, and photographed the projections they threw onto the wall. Then, in Photoshop, I mixed all four together to make two new multicoloured pistols.
The rest of the piece grew around them.
I wrote the type loosely in ink and scratched two explosions coming out of the guns. For the ground, I covered a cat scratch mat in paint and printed it onto paper. It came out looking like an abstract, cracked desert floor, so I sketched a cactus in pencil on top.
Inspiration this week came from a podcast featuring Matthew M. Williams, Oakley’s new Creative Director of Apparel, Footwear and Accessories, in conversation with Brian Takumi, Oakley’s VP of Brand Soul. They talk about the tension between drawing from an archive and inventing something new, and about the idea that limitations can sharpen creativity rather than get in the way.
Nearly everything I make comes out of a limitation. The restriction is often the material I want to explore, and this ends up deciding the direction of the work.
You can watch the process of both new pieces on my Instagram.
Cheers,
Joe
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