Category: art

Some readers may be aware that R & I are opening an art gallery/retail-emporium (tongue in cheek) in Waterford City. We’re calling our little venture Manifesto which dictionary.com informs me means
“a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization.”.
So that’s sorted then! It’s very exciting to meet new artists, peruse the generally amazing collection of work they’ve got stashed away and then talk them into letting us sell it in Manifesto. By and large the feedback has been very positive. Last night we attended an exhibition in Waterford by Mercedes Helnwein in Eric Theze’s absolutely stunning new restaraunt, La Boheme. La Boheme is based in the same 18th century listed building as Manifesto and I can strongly recommend both the ambience and the food. Stylish, scrumptious and reasonably priced. You really must visit.
Mercedes is the daughter of iconic 70s painter & all-round visual artist Gottried Helnwein. He of the boulevard and broken dreams fame 🙂 Meeting the child of a personal hero can often be an uncomfortable experience, doubly so when the progeny have embarked on a similiar career path. Mercedes has nothing to fear in any comparison. While her father’s work is often provocative, hers has a warm intimacy and youthful vibrancy that shows a stunning technique to good effect. R & I were suitably impressed as we read her long list of accomplishments so you can expect some Mercedes Helnwein originals to appear in Manifesto in the near future. It’s so exciting to be opening Manifesto. I’ll keep readers up to date with happenings but provisionally, we’re hoping to open at the start of November. I can’t wait!

I’ve filed this posting under art as the best architecture is. In the words of a master “The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization”
The master in question being “America’s Architect”, Frank Lloyd Wright. FLW was born in 1867 and throughout a career spanning around 60 years he developed and refined the concept of organic architecture.
In his own words

“I would like to have a free architecture. Architecture that belonged where you see it standing—and is a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace.”

Truthfully I would have loved to become an architect but I doubt my skills lie in that direction. The engineer in me is fascinated by the compelling mixture of elegant form and function througnout Frank Lloyd Wright’s best works. The most famous of which is Fallingwater. Constructed for Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Kaufmann senior at Mill Run, Pennsylvania, which was designed according to Wright’s desire to place the occupants close to the natural surroundings, with a stream running under part of the building. The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and terraces, using limestone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals. The cost of this architectural masterpiece was $155,000, a pricely sum in 1939. This included the architect’s fee of $80,000. In practical terms we can assume that adjusted for inflation the total cost was over 3 million dollars in today’s money. Kaufmann’s own engineers argued that the design was not sound. They were overruled by Wright, but secretly added extra steel to the horizontal concrete elements. I’ve recently found a fantastic site which enables people to navigate through Failling Water. Click here to find out more.

R & I are currently in Virginia at Busch Gardens. As many of you know she’s a guest artist in Busch Gardens this week. Busch Gardens is located near Colonial Williamsburg which is a living museum recreating the 18th Century capital of Britain’s empire in the new world. That’s the USA folks for all of you who haven’t eaten your generic vitamin-enriched, wheat-based cereal product this morning.
Here’s a pic that I snapped of a lovingly restored colonial windmill.

All of my friends know that I’m fascinated with digital art work based on mathematical constructs such as fractals, cellular automata etc. I’ve long thought that there’s something special about capturing the beauty of an equation or mathematical process which mimics natural phenomena in graphical form. Without wanting to get too philosophical or it somtimes appears that the images give you a true glimpse of the mind of God. Anyway, I’ve used lots of different tools to create pretty digital images of equations that I’m fascinated with. Thse include a 3-D panorama of the “life game” plotted as a plasma graph and refined using Macromedia’s wonderful Fireworks. I’ll be putting an online gallery of my work online over the next week so stay tuned…