Hands Body Art EXPO

Images painted on hands

Body Art

Check out these amazing pictures. A pity the images aren't saveable otherwise I would have shown you what they look like
Hand art

ART Journal inspiration

Inspiration in an Illustrated Life

Journal yourself to sanity

I have just been so totally inspired by a book I have been reading, called An Illustrated Life: drawing inspiration from the private sketchbooks of artists, illustrators and designers.

Danny Gregory, the author, says: "Keep an illustrated journal to develop your drawing, painting skills, and deepen the way you see the world."

It is the best way to get inside one's (an artist's) head, to feel the raw creativity flow in a book bulging with drawings, scrawled captions, and thoughts. Looking through a journal is a one-on-one experience as you absorb the sketches and notes, with each turning of the page a fresh surprise, a new juxtaposition. The pages unfold like a story; a life. You see ideas unfold and deepen, risks, mistakes, regrets, thoughts, lessons, dreams, sights, experiences, all recorded sequencially, bound by self-imposed rules.

• It doesn't matter if its wildly improvisational with radically changing style, medium and subject to the extent that it is almost impossible to believe it was drawn by the same hand.
• It doesn't matter if it is utilitarian, rough sketches for professional tasks, adding to and subtracting as the idea gestates, unfolds, and hatches.
• It doesn't matter if it consists of post-it notes, pieces of napkin or other paper that has been written on, or pictures that attracted your attention, bills, stamps, tickets of events, travels, or admission to places, doodles, scribbles, found bits and pieces, collect anything and everything that talks to you. Stick it in your journal with glue.
• Whether you record worries, ambitions, aches, intimate details, anxieties, disappointments, obsessions with sex, death, failure, food, whatever; where your journal is your crying blanket, your therapist... Anything goes.

It is amazing what these people have done. Some drawings are definitely not museum pieces. That's what I like about it. We have enough places in life where we need to perform, this seems like a fun adventure without the pressure.

If you feel like getting it for yourself, I have added the links below.

Loot and Kalahari are for South African viewers, Amazon for International (Amazon does not deliver to South Africa. Anyway you have to pay taxes as it is seen as imports and then it costs more. Rather buy local.)

Loot shop

Kalahari online shop An Illustrated Life (this link should take you to the Kalahari online shop) I have found Loot's prices cheaper, but Kalahari has a much greater variety of books, CDs and other electronic equipment. NOTE: The nice thing about shopping online is that you don't have to get into your car, it gets delivered to you. The postage is less than it would take to get into the car and drive to a book store and when you get there they may not even have it, which means you have to go there again, and remember to get it the next time you are there. Hooray for online shopping!

African Arts and Crafts

African Arts and African Crafts Website Launch

This website is for all African Artists and Crafts(wo)men that want exposure on the web on a mediated website. Where your work will be marketed for you so that you can do what you like best; to create, to paint, to draw, to sculpt, to carve, to make, to construct, ...and you fill in the blanks (whatever it is that you do).

Members are able to provide bios, pictures, links to their websites and blogs, CVs, experience, portfolios, and whatever else they would like to have on their web page(s).

This website provides an infrastructure where artists can share their ideas, their challenges, their celebrations, and their joys (if they want to).

Trainers are able to advertise their training, what its about, when it happens, and where, so that people who are looking for training, workshops, playshops, and events can find them.

Exhibitors can have their schedules, exhibition dates, venues, and links to their own websites.

What is art?

You may discover that art isn't what you thought it is. It is not for a rich few. Art is not exclusive to the exceptionally gifted or talented. It is for everyone. Anyone can enjoy art.

Art has to do with the unique, with imagination, creative thinking, sense of humour and what happens to us and around us every day.

It is your original marks, the way you interpret shape, color, contrast, or the lack of it, etc. It can be an expression of anger, joy, frustration, pain, or passion.

Experiment with art, have fun, your biggest flops will teach you the most. Above all, enjoy the creative process and do whatever makes you happy.

Art does not have to be ornamental, art does not have to shock, art does not have to revolt you, art does not have to be "pretty", art only needs to be real.

Art is the translation between the eye and the hand (or whatever you use to create); what you see and how you depict it in your creation, whether that be on paper, canvas, wood, marble, soap, ceramic, or any other thing, or a combination of these.

If you try and draw, paint, sculpt like someone else, you will feel what it feels like to create in a different way, it can be very close, but it will never be the same. Find your own style and your own way of expression. You may find that it filters through to other areas of your life too.

Above all......enjoy!

Click this link to see the African Arts and Crafts Website

A'isha Dollie

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
THE VOICE OF THE CAPE
Event photographer and graphic designer

IZIKO NATIONAL GALLERY
Volunteer Art guide and photographer

VANSA
Designed branding and board profiles for their annual AGM

THUPELO CAPE TOWN, Cape Town
Participating artist

GREATMORE MENTORING MONTH, Cape Town
Participating artist



TECHNOSPECT
Freelance Graphic Designer
- Designed the corporate image of the company

FUSION DESIGN
Junior Design Trainee


EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF STELLENBOSCH
BA Fine Art, specializing in Visual Communication

COLLEGE OF CAPE TOWN, Cape Town
Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship , 2002










FRANK JOUBERT ART SCHOOL, Cape Town, 2002

SANS SOUCI GIRLS' HIGH, Cape Town, 2002

RELEVANT DESIGN SKILLS
Typography, illustration, concept design, marketing and branding, clay-animation, stop frame animation, corporate identity, planning campaigns, painting, photography, printmaking

SOFTWARE LITERACY
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Indesign, Freehand MX, Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power point, iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Final Cut Pro (limited knowledge)

THUPELO 'FOUND OBJECTS' WORKSHOP at GREATMORE STUDIOS in WOODSTOCK




OTHER EXAMPLES






EXAMPLES OF A'ISHA'S PHOTOGRAPHY

Luciano de Nobrega

Luciano was born in Worcester, Western Cape

and currently lives in Protea Valley, Bellville, South Africa

EDUCATION:
2004 Matriculated at Curro Private School, Durbanville

2005-2007 Ruth Prowse School of Art, Woodstock, Cape Town

DISTINCTION:
2007 Awarded a Distinction for his practical work of 2007
EXHIBITIONS:
Selected for an exhibition at the AVA showing best graduate work from Michaelis, Stellenbosch University and the Ruth Prowse. (29 January 2008)

Selected to take part as an Emerging Creative at the Design Indaba (23-2 feb)

Exhibition at ArtVark (Feb 2008)



Open studio exhibition at Greatmore Art Studio (24 April)

WORKSHOPS:
Mentoring workshop at Greatmore Art Studios (31 MARCH - 24 April 2008)

Take part in an art business workshop at Greatmore Art Studios (May 2008)

Chosen to take part in International Thupelo Found Object Work at Greatmore Art Studios (26 Sept – 11 Oct 2008)

2008 was chosen to take part in an Internship programme at the Good Hope Art Studios (from 13 Oct 2008 )

STUDIO:
2008 was chosen to work at the Good Hope Art Studio. (from 4 March 2008)

PUBLICITY:
- Appeared in the Art Times issue October 2007
- Appeared in the Art Times issue December 2007

SHOOT:
Artwork selected for the Plascon brochure for 2009 (26 March 2008) (Photo shoot)

Two artworks was documented by Summit Film crew on (11 April 2008) (Film Shoot)


SHOWCASE:
2008 Artwork displayed at Truworths headquarters (28 July-12 August 2008)

COLLABORATIONS:)

Collaboration with Arthro Lindsley for Torture (July 2008)

Collaboration with Ronald Muchatuta, Vivien Kohler, Robyn-Leigh Cedras for Poverty (Aug 2008)

Collaboration with Ley for an exhibition (Dec 2008)

What Luciano says about his work
Luciano says about his art that when he is in the creative process "anything goes" and he switches off the logical mind. When you tune into a painting all expereinces meet at a certain point in our mind and all is as one. "It is a place of no words", and when you look at it "you see what you see and feel what you feel".

Anyone who looks at his work will know that it is saying something about some aspect of ourselves.

When asked how he knows when it is "done" is when it has a feeling of completeness.

Ruth Carneson

Ruth Carneson was born in Cape Town and grew up there.

She went into exile when she was 14 and lived in Britain for 24 years where she obtained a BA Honours in Visual Arts. She exhibited extensively in Britain as well as producing cards, calendars and posters of her work.

She worked as a visiting artist in schools where she used art as means of exploring human rights issues.

For a short period she taught at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania.

In 1991 she returned home to South Africa and in 1997 she went to live on Robben Island, initially as an Artist in Residence. She continued to live and work on the Island for the following ten years.

IN 2007 she moved back to the mainland and has a studio in Muizenberg, located on the False Bay side of Cape Town.

The ANC used her “struggle art” for marketing on T-shirts, posters, and cards.

Her recent works have been autobiographical installations where she has combined text with visual images, artefacts and sound. These were exhibited at the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the Waterfront and at the Scalabrini Centre in Cape Town as part of the Voyage Ensemble Exhibition.

In May 2008, Ruth Carneson, as part of Voyage Ensemble, represented South Africa at the HIFA Festival of Determination in Harare, Zimbabwe.


She also held a very successful exhibition in March 2008 at the Lindbergh Arts Foundation.

In October 2008 she was part of a Thupelo “Found Objects” workshop and group exhibition at Greatmore studios in Woodstock, Cape Town.


She says: “Art is as natural as breathing."

"The creative process is a healing one and has helped me through difficult times. It is a magical space where unexpected things happen, where I play with shape, colours and surprising images. It is a place where I do not have to prove anything, where things unfold naturally, exploring without judgment.

The themes in my work are intensely personal as well as social and political. It is trying to make sense of the horror that we perpetrate against each other, the contradictory images media feed us about war, how we cope with it, and the absurdity of it all.

Often it is what is most personal and specific that speaks most to what is universal. It is those small, private experiences that contain valuable information that cut across generalizations. It is important to me that my work speaks to what is human in people.”

Ruth Carneson’s Art history:

• Practicing Freelance Artist since 1975


• Art and Design in a Social Context at Dartington College of Arts, Devon, U.K. Sep 79 to Aug 81.


• Diploma in Higher Education : Art and Design at Newham College, London, Sep 88 to Jun 89


• B. A. Honours in Fine Art, Art History, Art In The Community at Middlesex University, London, Sep 89 to Jun 91


• Postgraduate Diploma in Museum and Heritage Studies, Jul 98 to Oct 99


• Artist in Residence at Robben Island Museum, Cape Town, Sep and Oct 97


• The Artrepeneur, Business partnership, printing and marketing artwork since 2004
  

If you'd like more information about the artist’s work, or to schedule an interview with the artist, please send me an email.