Title: “Long-eared Owl (Art Puzzle) (You Are What You Eat)” Artist: Michael Autumn Life-sized handmade solid oak jigsaw puzzle (Limited Edition of 7)
Long-eared Owl (Art Puzzle): Full image Size: 20cm (W) x 30cm (H) x 4cm (depth) @ 1.5kg weight Medium: Solid European Oak, hand-cut, hand-engraved, hand-carved, art puzzle + acrylic eyes. Date: 2022
Long-eared Owl
The story behind this art piece was to have a free-standing, tactile, life-sized long-eared owl, and to toy with the idea – “You are what you eat“. These birds are ferocious predators (as are all owls) – and will basically eat anything that moves that is smaller than them. They often swallow their prey whole, and regurgitate a large pellet of the undigestible parts – such as bones, teeth, hair, feathers. Indeed, examining their pellets is how ornithologists know so much about what they eat.
I often think about predator-prey relationships – perhaps being a veggie has something to do with this… All animals have to get their energy and material they are made of by consuming specific things – protiens, carbohydrates, and fats. Herbivores obviously get this material directly and indirectly from plants – which is often widely available (they don’t usually eat fats directly, but make them from carbohydrates). However, they usually have to eat a lot of plant material in relation to their size because it is a low concentrated source of food – requiring long, slow, complex digestion. Predators usually don’t eat plants – instead they prefer much more concentrated and complex food in the form of other animals.
I have designed the owl to show that it is literally made of many of the wide variety of creatures that it eats. From the moment of conception – where it starts as a single egg – it literally takes parts of smaller animals – and its amazing body chemistry converts them into material to make (and maintain) it’s growing body – and energy. I used the simple jigsaw-puzzle you-are-what-you-eat metaphor to illustrate this puzzling (pun intended!) transformation of lots of small animals making up an owl.
Owls typically eat 2-4 mice-sized animals per day – so about a thousand a year. Without owls, goodness know how many mice, moles, voles, rats, small birds, newts, etc. there would be…!
(I have to confess this was originally intended to be a tawny owl! I haven’t been lucky enough to actually see a wild long-eared owl, and as I got a long way into designing this piece I felt it would look better with ears – and, of course, a tawny owl doesn’t have visible “ears“… So I thought, okay, I’ll change it to a long-eared owl – they have great “ears” (well they look like ears, but they’re actually not – they’re just tufts of feathers!). The two species are quite similar in many respects – so the change was easy!)
The phrase limited edition in this case is a bit of a misnomer. These are all individually handmade by me from my original design. I really wish there was, but there is no mechanical or chemical process I know of by which these can be reproduced – like screen printing, lithographs, card puzzles (using a die and jigsaw press), etc. (for more details please see the aforementioned post).
Life-sized handmade solid oak art puzzle (Limited Edition of 7)
Tawny Owl with Egg (Art Puzzle): Full image Size: 50cm (W) x 82cm (H) x 8cm (depth) @ 20kg weight Medium: A single piece of waney-edged European Oak, hand-cut, hand-engraved, art puzzle with inset full-size replica tawny owl egg and acrylic eyes. Date: 2023
First and foremost I want to mention that the eggs used in my work are not real – for obvious ethical reasons (it is also illegal to take wild birds eggs). They are life-size replicas made of a plaster resin composite and hand-painted – not by me, but by a very reputable leading replica birds eggs maker.
Tawny Owl
Following on from Guillemot with Egg (Jigsaw Puzzle) (see https://michaelautumn.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/guillemot-with-egg-art-puzzle/), I thought I would pay homage to another favourite bird of mine – the Tawny Owl (Strix aluco). These, like all owls, are very mysterious – especially the noctornal ones (which tawnies are) – because they do things the opposite to us: they sleep/rest during the daylight, and come out – and hunt – at night. They are supremely designed and adapted to this lifestyle: they have excellent hearing and eyesight, they fly almost silently, and their hunting strategy is to hunt in the darkness – when other small nocturnal animals think it’s safe to come out…!
Mice, voles, shrews, moles – in fact any small rodent up to the size of a rat – are largely nocternal to avoid daylight predators – like kestrels, buzzards, merlin, sparrowhawks. But while rummaging for food and going about their normal lives – in what they think is the relative safety of darkness – a tawny owl – alerted to their presence by their quiet, but inevitable, sounds – can swoop undetected near to the unwitting little creatures. From close by the tawny can watch their prey’s every move – until they decide to pounce, crush and puncture them with their razor-sharp tallons – and then invariably swallow them whole…
Little birds could be roosting or sleeping in trees or bushes, but if they make any sounds in their sleep – even just quietly snooring or sleep-calling/singing – they are easy game for these owls… Frogs, toads, newts – in fact any small reptile – making any kind of sound at night – are likely to court the deadly attention of a tawny owl. Even fish splashing about at the water’s surface, or in the shallows, are fair game for these owls…
Suffice to say that if it is small and it makes a noise, it is on the menu…! So I thought I would play with this idea and illustrate as many of the small creatures tawny owls eat – as jumbled up jigsaw pieces surrounding the main protagonist. The whole design slightly resembles a huge regurgitated pellet of the tawny owl, and the small prey animals are all jumbled up – like fragments in a pellet.
I like art in the form of a jigsaw puzzle because it is interactive, and by careful design of the shapes and carving on the pieces, I can get the puzzle-solver to look at, and think very carefully about, them – in a way that is simply not possible with non-interactive art. Indeed, someone could look at a piece of art like this and not even notice the small creatures surrounding the main owl – let alone have any understanding why they are there – and why these particular animals. However, trying to solve a puzzle like this is a very different matter – they will definitely think more about what it is they are looking at…!
I have deliberately made the jigsaw puzzle very subtle because Nature is very subtle. These creatures are very difficult to see because of their camouflage and because they mainly come out at night – and it is precisely because they are so difficult to see that the owls rely on the noise they make to home in on them… The puzzle metaphor lets me toy with the idea that these small creatures think they are invisible – or out of harm’s way – but to a tawny owl, in the dead calm of night, their sounds makes them highly visible…
Owls typically eat 2-4 mice-sized animals per day – so about a thousand a year. Without owls, goodness know how many mice, moles, voles, rats, small birds, newts, etc. there would be…! If all the creatures a tawny own ate over the course of its lifetime were put into a 30cm diameter (about the width of this jigsaw puzzle) very tall clear tube – I wonder how high the pile of eaten animals would be…
Close-up of the life-sized tawny owl with replica eggSome of the art puzzle pieces laid out
The phrase limited edition in this case is a bit of a misnomer. These are all individually handmade by me from my original design. I really wish there was, but there is no mechanical or chemical process I know of by which these can be reproduced – like screen printing, lithographs, card puzzles (using a die and jigsaw press), etc. (for more details please see the aforementioned post).
Title: “Oak Tree (Art Puzzle)” Medium: Hand-drawn, hand-cut and engraved solid European Oak art puzzle (Limited Edition of 7). Size: 60cm (H) x 61cm (W) x 4.4cm (depth) @ 11.8kg weight Date: 2022
It started out as a clock!
I can’t remember why, but this started out as a design for a clock! But after a short while I decided I should make a clock jigsaw puzzle and an oak tree jigsaw puzzle – as completely separate works.
My Favourite Tree
The oak (English Oak – Quercus robur) – is probably my favourite English tree, and I’ve wanted for many years to pay homage to them. I’ve travelled quite a bit over the UK, and often it has been to get somewhere lovely by sunrise – or close to it – and often I’ve driven home at sundown – because I don’t particularly like driving in the dark (for the simple reason I can’t see anything). So I have seen a lot of sun rises and sunsets (sometimes both in the same day) – and the visions that stand out most in my memory are oak trees with the sun rising or setting behind them. Many an oak I have seen with blood red skies, blazing yellow and orange skies, gloomy slate skies, fresh cold blue skies, stiflingly hot blue skies.
A great irony of the massive plunder we have done of the natural oak forests in the UK is that the very few trees that remain really stand out alone in the landscape. Often you will see a solitary great oak forming part of a hedge, or standing proud in the middle of a field. And so we can probably see and appreciate them much better now than if we were to go back a thousand years or more – when the country was blanketed in them – and you literally couldn’t see the tree for the forests.
I particularly like to see oak trees in winter – when you can see their gnarly cauliflower-shaped fractal trunks, branches, and twigs – and the great silhouettes formed by the trees and the ubiquitous chocking parasitic ivy.
How to capture the essence of an Oak Tree?
A 2D photograph doesn’t do an oak tree justice because there is so much to them. But as a starting point, what better way to depict an oak tree than by carving an oak tree from a big chunk oak…?
How to capture an oak tree in all of its many different guises? Among other things, I wanted to try to depict their status as a keystone species. So many species of mammals (like squirrels, mice, bats), insects (like moths, butterflies (and their caterpillars), and flies), most woodland birds (like owls, tree creepers, nuthatches, tits, finches, warblers, pigeons, doves) – depend on the oak as a place to live. Birds and bats live, rest, and/or nest in the branches, holes bored into the wood, or simply cracks in the bark. Insects shelter on, and in, the bark and leaves (often highly camouflaged). Many parasitic plants like ivy and mosses live on it, as do many species of lichens and fungi.
Many species depend on oak trees directly or indirectly for food: fungi have a symbiotic relationship with them, bees and wasps pollenate its flowers in spring, insects eat its leaves, bark, and wood. Moths prey on its flies, bats prey on its moths.
Birds eat the oak tree’s caterpillars (of the butterflies and moths) – indeed many, like tits, specifically time their breeding to coincide with the huge glut of the caterpillars in spring – and most warblers in the UK travel all the way from Africa in early spring specifically to do this. Jays, squirrels, and some wasps and bees feed on the acorns, but it is the Jays and squirrels that actually hugely benefit the oak tree by spreading its acorns (seeds) far from where they fall. Without these, the oak tree would depend on the very poor and unreliable mechanical dispersal of acorns rolling downhill or being washed by rain water away from its canopy – in order to spread far and away, and stand a good chance of survival (often there are no plants on the ground under an oak tree’s canopy because of its very dense leaf cover and the competition for nutrients – so this is a very hostile place for the oak tree’s own seedlings to grow).
The oak tree is a keystone species even when it is dead (or killed). Fungi, lichen, mosses, and insects will eat and/or digest them, many insects will lay their eggs in them (which in turn will eat the dead wood), and homo sapiens have built navies, buildings, used them as firewood and in the smelting of metal ores and in metals for thousands of years.
So in a very small way I have tried to capture some of this ecological complexity…
Fractals
I also wanted to capture something about the oak tree’s fractal appearance. Small branches resemble a whole tree, and so do large branches. If they are pollarded, what look like whole trees grow out of their stump.
Seasonality
I also wanted to capture something about the oak’s seasonal differences – specifically that they have two distinct personalities: one with leaves and one without leaves. Most of the leaf clumps (summer) in the work can be removed – leaving exposed branches (winter).
Oak’s Fruit
I wanted to capture something about the fruit of the tree – the humble acorn – and how that tiny thing can grow into a monster of a plant – with the chance of living five hundred years or more – and it’s dead body – timber – in the right conditions capable of surviving a thousand years or more.
Why a Jigsaw Puzzle?
A jigsaw puzzle seemed a very apt way to represent or capture some the complexity and interconnectedness of the oak tree – which is very interesting because this is proving to be a very fruitful visual communication medium phase I am going through at the moment (I have worked in many art mediums)…
A jigsaw puzzle is, among other things, a metaphor for my appreication of the wonder of Nature and its mysteries. It is my (very feeble) 2D representation of the 4D (3D + time = 4D) complexties and variaties of some of the huge number of spieces’ interconnectedness – where jigsaw pieces and carved lines are symbolic of some of Nature’s species, camouflage, and its mixed uses.
Naturally, with this jigsaw puzzle being made of quite chunky oak, the hard, heavy, wood directly communicates oakness to the viewer. So in some unique, and perhaps mysterious, way, the material and the original whole subject – the oak tree – express each other…
Texture
Finally I wanted to capture the texture of the tree – particularly its very rough bark. I’ve tried to do this by the tactile nature of the puzzle pieces and the engraving on the work.
“Limited Edition” of 7
The phrase limited edition in this case is a bit of a misnomer. These are all individually handmade by me from my original design. I really wish there was, but there is no mechanical or chemical process I know of by which these can be reproduced – like screen printing, lithographs, card puzzles (using a die and jigsaw press), etc.
Life-sized handmade solid oak art puzzle (Limited Edition of 7)
Golden Plover with Egg (Art Puzzle): Full image Size: 59cm (W) x 41.5cm (H) x 4.4cm (depth) @ 9kg weight Medium: Solid European Oak, hand-cut, hand-engraved, jigsaw puzzle with inset full-size replica golden plover egg. Date: 2020Golden Plover in artist’s dining room (click on image to see artists’ home studio, workshop, and gallery).
First and foremost I want to mention that the eggs used in my work are not real – for obvious ethical reasons (it is also illegal to take wild birds eggs). They are life-size replicas made of a plaster resin composite and hand-painted – not by me, but by a very reputable leading replica birds eggs maker.
Golden Plover
Following on from Guillemot with Egg (Jigsaw Puzzle) (see https://michaelautumn.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/guillemot-with-egg-art-puzzle/), I thought I would pay homage to another favourite bird of mine – the Golden Plover (Pluvialis apricaria). In winter plumage these birds are lovely, but unremarkable. However, in summer plumage they are absolutely stunning. The males are slightly more outstanding than the females, however, both are very distinctive and eye-catching. The spring transformation of the Golden Plover from winter to summer plumage is one of the most extreme, and beautiful, I know of. The word “dandy” comes to mind. They become the most striking of all the waders I know of.
Golden Plover in summer plumage
In summer their coal black bellies and faces, fringed with a slim cotton white mantle or fringe, and their “golden” upper parts – are a bold, brilliant sight to behold. But golden they are not! They are “buff”, ochre, or sandy brown – like most wading birds – who feed predominantly on mudflats and shorelines – and thus gain good overhead camouflage – so as not to draw attention to predators such as peregrine falcons, marsh harriers, etc.
To highlight this golden misnomer I thought it would be fun to actually make them golden – 24 carat gold gilt to be precise! Gold is an incredibly beautiful and mysterious metal – mysterious both in terms of its physical properties and appearance, and its hold over us. Gold, with its density of 19.3 (over 19 times that of water), is the absolute nemesis of flight! Gold, with it strikingly bright, mirroring, shimmering sheen – is the nemesis of camouflage!
24 carat gold gilded Golden Plover
I hope the metallic gold of the Golden Plover in the above pictures is clear. Being metallic the light reflects differently according to the angle being viewed and the available light.
Migration
In summer Golden Plover breed in the tundra – countries such as Iceland, Greenland, Scandinavia, and northern Russia – where the days are very long indeed – and over-winter in warmer climes – and where there isn’t perpetual winter darkness – such as here in the UK (some go as far south as northern Africa). The migration to and from Iceland is no mean feat for such a small bird. The main bird in the picture is life-sized: they are approximately 20cm tall, and 28cm long. Many bird migrations follow land masses with hops over the shortest water expanses. For example many of our summer visitors, like the warblers, coocoos, hobbys, etc. come from Africa – where the largest stretch of water they have to fly continuously across is the English Channel – a mere 20-odd miles – less than a hour’s flight (the Straights of Gibraltar – the sea hop from Morocco to southern Spain is less than ten miles).
In contrast, the non-stop shortest bird flight distance from Iceland to the UK is 850 miles. Golden Plover can fly at speeds up to 60 mph, but for long distances they are more likely to cruise at speeds more like 40 mph. So the non-stop flight from Iceland to the UK would take them a minimum of 21 hours. To salute this feat I have added an Icelandic reference in the picture – see if you can find it…
The phrase limited edition in this case is a bit of a misnomer. These are all individually handmade by me from my original design. I really wish there was, but there is no mechanical or chemical process I know of by which these can be reproduced – like screen printing, lithographs, card puzzles (using a die and jigsaw press), etc. (for more details please see the aforementioned post).
There are many different types of artist and many types of journeys in creating a work of art. Much art in the last century is what I call utter rubbish – slipshod, slapdash – made within minutes to a few hours or a day or two. And it shows. For example Pollock’s drip “paintings”, or Hirst’s “spin” “paintings”. Most of it is utter contemptible rubbish in my humble opinion. Even many of the Impressionist’s work was done in a day – often outside with a portable easel and done in a single sitting (however, purely aesthetically, I do like a lot of work from that period from that art movement).
I’m certainly not saying that the more time and effort spent on an art work the better it will be – and vice se versa. I’m saying that the more effort an artist puts into their work the more I will respect it and the more I will try to understand and appreciate it – and the better quality it is likely to be. This seems obvious to me…?
Consider a book of a handful of words compared to one of 100,000 words… The latter usually is expressing much more than the former. But a 100,000-word book is not necessarily saying more that a 10,000-word book. The former could be very waffly and poorly structured. Whatever one is trying to express there is usually some minimum or ideal way of expressing it (for the target audience)… My general point is that something expressed very briefly or quickly is usually not expressing very much – compared to something where a lot more time and effort has gone into it…
I’ve been working on a piece called “Golden Plover with Egg” (Jigsaw puzzle) for over ten weeks now, and I’m coming to the final stages – where things are finally starting to take shape – and, at last, I’m beginning to feel good about it. Often through the long arduous hours – many of which have been physically very demanding – I’ve been deeply anxious. Why am I doing this? Why is it taking so long? Am I wasting my time? Will anyone appreciate it?
Not that I am doing it for money (more on this later), but will the work be worth anything? Will it have a value that is reflective of the effort I have put into it ? I’ve worked in I.T. for many years where I was paid quite a high hourly rate. What I would earn in three months (because I have about another two weeks work to go on my current piece) was a not inconsiderable sum. What might my hourly rate be for this piece…? (Not that I will sell it, but I will hopefully sell other editions of it…)
The peculiar thing about art is that some art created in a slapdash fashion sells for thousands, if not tens – or even hundreds – of thousands, of pounds (£) – making the hourly rate absolutely ridiculous. Picasso made about 46,000 works of art in his lifetime – many of which were created well within a day. So his hourly rate was in excess of £100,000!
Some art takes hundreds of hours – and sells for a pittance – making the paid hourly rate utterly pitiful – and puts a contemptible value on the artist’s time/life. Clearly there is no relationship between an art work’s value and the amount of time and effort that went into making it. Yet, for most other goods in society, the more time taken to make them the more expensive they are. It’s a very strange world we live in…?
Why do I do art – I keep asking myself?! I don’t have to. Unlike some artists, there are plenty of other things I could do – and have done – for a living. The simple answer is: I don’t really know! I just know that I like making things and commenting on things that interest me.
Yesterday, while working on “Golden Plover with Egg”, I was thinking why I do art – and this piece in particular? It’s so much work, effort, and cost (the raw materials and special tools are expensive)?! Mahler’s beautiful Symphony No. 4 was playing in the background, and I thought of the effort he must have put into composing that sublime masterpiece – the trials and revisions that it must have gone through. I wonder what emotions and motivation drove him to do it, the frustrations he experienced, the ups and downs he went through, the anxiety he felt of what others might think of it…? He was a fellow artist, so I thought I must share some of his emotions and anxieties…?
Malher didn’t have to compose that symphony. No one asked him to do it (as far as I know). Possibly something inspired him, but, like many great works or inventions, inspiration is one thing, implementing it is quite another… Something in his deep psyche drove him to do it. No one told him how long it must take. He just set about doing it, and didn’t stop until he was satisfied with it. And all through the journey he will have applied his skills as a musician, and his heart and sense of aesthetics to evaluate and refine it. He would have been striving for a level of quality acceptable to him – and only him.
There are no rights and wrongs with art – so there are no objective ways to judge it, or to know if the objective has been achieved. Well that’s not strictly true. In each form of art there are usually a few ground rules. Like music for Mahler, I guess he ruled out discordances, wanted to use (or felt he should use) certain instruments, and he possibly wanted four movements – because that was the standard Western classic symphonic tradition he was raised in?
He had to figure out how to make the sounds he wanted – or at least make sure it was practically possible – i.e. playable and audible. So finding a practical solution to each and every note, phrase, passage – were upmost in his mind. He possibly followed other music rules that we don’t know about (because he didn’t write them down), and those I’m not competent to know or understand.
However, the vast majority of the huge number of decisions that go into the artistic creative process are entirely subjective. Do I like everything? Do all the pieces “go” together? Do they “gel” together and create some form of harmony? If not, what can I change so that they do? Is it good enough? How can I improve it? What am I trying to say or communicate with this? Is what I want to communicate interesting and/or important? Have I achieved my goal/s? Is it finished? (I certainly don’t believe all, or even most, artists think like this – but the best ones do…)
I think Edison’s phrase: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” is a gross understatement. I think it’s much more like 0.0001% inspiration – or even less – and the rest perspiration!
Back to my thoughts yesterday and Mahler’s Symphony No 4. While listening to all four movements, I thought how each was utterly sublime, perfect, and complete on their own – yet Mahler created a unified whole with them all. A staggering and wonderful achievement that enhances and enriches anyone who listens to it. It occurred to me that possibly only artists fully appreciate other artists – because they will have some insight into, or empathy for, the effort and emotion that has gone into the creative process…
I don’t know what drives artists to create unnecessary, uncalled for, unusable, works of art, but listening to Mahler’s Symphony No 4 I thought: “thank god they do”…
I think back to my last piece – “Guillemot with Egg” (http://michaelautumn.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/guillemot-with-egg-jigsaw-puzzle/) – which took a similar amount of time and effort as my current piece – and I forget all the effort, trials and tribulations that went into designing and making it. It may seem strange, but I love to look it, and I’m just so glad I did it! It’s such a huge sense of achievement – of fulfilling something that was such a tall order. If it was easy many people would do it – and it wouldn’t be such a sense of achievement…?
It’s very nice that other people seem to like it, but that’s not why I did it. And they will have no idea of the amount of work, sacrifice, and emotion that went into it. But hopefully it communicates something to them – about the ideas I was trying to express – that no other form of expression could achieve…
But why, oh why…? And does anybody apart from me really care…?
From henceforth I will sign all my works simply as “Autumn”. There are extremely few “Autumn”s in the world, it’s smaller and easier to sign, and from a marketing perspective – something all artists need to be savvy about – single names seem to have a certain cachet…
Life-sized handmade solid oak jigsaw puzzle (Limited Edition of 6)
Guillemot with Egg (Art Puzzle): Full image Size: 59cm (H) x 42cm (W) x 4.4cm (depth) @ 8kg weight Medium: Solid European Oak, hand-cut, hand-engraved, art puzzle with inset full-size replica guillemot egg. Date: 2020 Guillemot with Egg in artist’s dining room (click on image to see artists’ home studio, workshop, and gallery).
First and foremost I want to mention that the eggs used in my work are not real – for obvious ethical reasons (it is also illegal to take wild birds eggs). They are life-size replicas made of a plaster resin composite and hand-painted – not by me, but by a very reputable leading replica birds eggs maker.
“Limited Edition” of 6
The phrase limited edition in this case is a bit of a misnomer. These are all individually handmade by me from my original design. I really wish there was, but unfortunately there is no mechanical or chemical process by which these can be reproduced – like screen printing, lithographs, card puzzles (using a die and jigsaw puzzle press), etc.
I never intended to make this jigsaw puzzle myself! I researched for weeks into using CNC (Computer Number Controlled) engineering techniques, laser, and waterjet cutting. For my puzzle design I wanted 1 ½” – 2” (40 – 50mm) thick oak wood, and I wanted the thickness of the wood cut to be less than 1mm – ideally about ½mm. I realised that CNC would not work because the drill bits would be too weak to cut that deep – something less than 1mm to cut through very hard oak nearly 2” deep using side pressure alone – no way.
I don’t like the idea of laser cutting because it burns and leaves the edges of the cuts black – something very unappealing – and very un-puzzle like! Indeed there is a very real risk that a wooden puzzle this thick could catch fire if cut by laser!
For a long time I thought I had found the solution in waterjet cutting. From fairly extensive research I believed it could have a cutting width of about ½mm. So I went ahead and designed the most intricate puzzle drawing – down to about 1mm curves and circles! I thought I could use shallow cut lines to show extra detail – like a drawing or carving on top of a puzzle – and full cut-through lines obviously for the jigsaw puzzle pieces. I, extremely naively, thought all I had to do was to supply the design to a waterjet cutting company and they would do the rest! And I could have hundreds produced. If only…!
What I don’t want is to have just one of these. I want one for myself and I need to make a living… I have invested a considerable amount of time and effort into this and would like to be able to continue to create work of this standard or better.
At the moment I am not famous enough to make and sell just one of these and earn enough money to make it worth my while – so I have to make a few. Six feels like a reasonable compromise – and not so many that I become a sweatshop jigsaw maker…!
Birds
My love of birds dates back to my mid-teens – after a new boy arrived at school whom I befriended and who happened to be a “twitcher” (a fanatical bird ticker-off-er!). I went with him on many trips and continued my interest after we went our separate ways (we went to different universities to study different subjects). As time has gone by, I have become more and more enthralled by bird’s beauty, abilities, resilience, and tenacity. I have photographed birds, filmed them (I built a special camera incorporating a telescope specifically for this purpose and I built a bird hide in my garden!), recorded their sounds with and without film (see my YouTube video channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcNBRvK_RcVoj6WFm2z8GRg), and have painted some.
As an artist I realise I can’t compete with photography (including film) in terms of capturing the beauty and detail of birds, and I don’t want to even try to compete with the likes of Audubon and other great bird artist and illustrators (Peter Hayman for example). However, I have been hoping to do something different and personal with them – something that I hope will show off some of their majesty, beauty, surroundings, habitat – and hopefully to do them justice.
Chunky Wood JigsawPuzzles
My interest in chunky wooden puzzles (well over an inch thick and that can stand up on their own) arose from a simple tree puzzle I stumbled on in a Swiss airport souvenir shop about twenty years ago. (When I travel I like to buy at least one nice item of art from the country.) I loved it’s smoothness, heaviness, tactileness, simplicity, beauty, and it’s differentness. It was expensive (about an average person’s day’s pay (£200 in today’s money)), but I just had to have it. I still have it to this day. I also just love solving puzzles of any kind. I liked the way the tree puzzle had unexpected shapes – that, when taken out of context, you had no way of knowing what part of the tree they occupied! About two years ago (2018) I had the idea of trying to design and make my own wooden puzzles and started to look into how to make them and to see what others had done…
M.C. Escher Influence
About two years ago I had the idea of trying to design and make my own puzzles. This coincided with my renewed interest in M.C. Escher’s work. As an artist, I don’t want to copy anyone and wondered if I could blend my interest in chunky wooden puzzles with Nature – and include ideas that fascinate me – like camouflage – particularly shape and textural camouflage – and the geometry of the line… I share this interest of the line with Escher, and he has most definitely inspired me.
Lines
For most practical purposes the visual world consists entirely of coloured dots (or pixels). Lines are a fundamental visual unit. They are a two-sided shape. (We can’t see a one-sized shape because it would have no length or depth – and so it is invisible.) Even a dot is a line – albeit a very short one! A triangle is obviously three lines, and all 2 & 3D shapes can be made from triangles. A square is four lines (or two triangles), and a circle is a line that changes direction in a precise and regular way. A circle is also an infinite number of very narrow triangles (I deduced a formula for pi from this simple idea as a mathematical thought experiment/exercise many year ago). 2D becomes 3D by simply adding the height dimension in the form of lines or triangles sticking out from a flat shape. But the central raw material for any shape is always the line.
What have lines got to do with puzzles? Well they are the cuts in the wood and any additional detail in the form of those that appear in the picture the puzzle is printed on, or any carved lines on the puzzle. My main interest is to only use lines – cut or carved – in my puzzles – as opposed to conventional puzzles where an image stuck to wood or board is cut with a puzzle cutter (known as a puzzle dye).
Boundaries
Real things have boundaries. In a sense that is what makes them a thing. An apple is a plump, sphere-like collection of organised cells with an outer red, green, or red and greed outer skin. We can see the apple because we have learned that a tennis-ball sized smooth green, red, or green and red thing is very likely to be an apple. It’s not just its’ colour that is key to our identifying it, it is it’s shape or boundary as well. We would not think that a sheet of apple-coloured paper or item of clothing was an apple – we might say it is apple-coloured – but that is not sufficient to categorised it as an apple. Likewise, we would not think that an outline of an apple was an apple if it didn’t look three-dimensional and wasn’t apple coloured.
Lines and Perception
Lines are the primary means by which we detect or perceive things. In Nature or reality there are very few actual lines – as in a thin strip of different colour or shade compared to the background – i.e. a simple pencil line. From a distance a tree without leaves can look like a series of lines. And the horizon between sea and sky can look like a line. A line can simply be a colour change boundary. A green leaf against a blue sky (or any other colour sky) can be thought to have a line around the edges of the leaf. But green leaves against other green leaves still have a boundary – or lines – because there is a perceptible difference between them. In fact it is fair to say that if there isn’t a perceptible difference between two edges then there is no line. If we were to put a cut-out of a green leaf onto an exact same green piece of paper it would appear to disappear.
Animal senses seem pre-disposed to detecting changes or boundaries. Visually that means detecting colour boundaries and movement (movement is just changes in colour boundaries over time). This is what vital to animals’ survival. The things that matter to them have to be detected and acted on. Changes in the animals’ visual environment can mean a threat – like a predator or dangerous boundary – like a cliff or fire – or simply something to avoid – like not to walk or run into. Other changes in the animal’s environment can be positively sough after – like food, a mate, somewhere to safe shelter and sleep.
Eyes have evolved to convert a vast stream of a narrow spectrum of electromagnetic radiation into a stream of real-time pixelated colour data to the brain from coloured rays of light. Light from the animal’s environment enters through the cornea (lens) and excites the rods and cones in the retina – which in turn transmit electro-chemical signals about the light rays to the visual cortex and beyond into other parts of the brain. But it is the mind that makes sense (pun intended) of all this data. The mind seems predisposed to “see” patterns and forms – especially from boundaries – because these are highly suggestive of something different and potentially important and/or useful.
Visual perception is an amazing feat of form recognition from lines and colours (texture as well – but this is a form of line and/or colour). This incredible capability can sometimes be mistaken but my interest is to highlight this by having some fun with it. We “see” elephants in the sky, horses in the sea, etc. – but of course no such things exist!
The brain is always looking for patterns to match up with its growing database to quickly identify things in the environment.
A line (or boundary) can be represented as something drawn – what I call a positive line (because something has been deliberately added) – or is can be a cut or carved – what I call a negative line. A line is anything that shows a boundary (including simply a colour change).
I decided to have some fun with this puzzle. With just cuts and carved lines I wanted to capture a busy seabird colony with a life-sized guillemot (Uria aalge) as the central focus. I mixed carving and cuts because if everything was a cut the pieces would be too small and would be nearly impossible to make them to join together – as real puzzle pieces – i.e. with interlocking lugs.
Art (Jigsaw) Puzzle
What is a jigsaw puzzle? Classical wooden/cardboard jigsaw puzzles are usually pictures cut up into small interlocking pieces – where the puzzle is more of a challenge or exercise, and the picture is the end goal. So in a sense the puzzle is a journey and the picture is the destination. In my case, in the case of this work, the puzzle is both the journey and the destination. The puzzle is the picture.
Classical wooden/cardboard jigsaw puzzle pieces usually have two to four structurally interlocking lugs to hold it together. The number of lugs usually depends on where the piece is: corner pieces usually interconnect with two other pieces, the side pieces usually interconnect with three other pieces; and the inside pieces usually interconnect with up to four other pieces.
This work is a jigsaw puzzle within a jigsaw puzzle.
Showing some jigsaw puzzle pieces
It is in part a camouflaged jigsaw puzzle. It starts at the right more or less as a conventional puzzle (the “cliff”) – albeit I’m using the size and angle of the pieces as a perspective device – but as the scene progresses to the left I slowly morph the puzzle shapes into natural shapes (animals, fish, waves, etc) to camouflage the lines of the puzzle pieces themselves.
I use a plethora of shapes and sizes of puzzle pieces and lug and devices – and many decoys and deflections – to make a picture-less jigsaw puzzle naturalistic and fun…! 🙂
All birds are amazing, but guillemots (Uria aalge) are among the most amazing. The Guillemot chick’s first and only time of leaving the “nest” – a few square inches of bare rock(!) where it’s parents incubated it on their feet – could be as much as a 300m plunge off the ragged cliff edge – into the sea (hopefully!). The chick can “fly” on this maiden voyage, but obviously they are not proficient, and it is more of a clumsy glide. Often it is not a straight flight/glide into the sea. If the chick crashes into rocks before it reaches the sea – and if it survives that – it has to navigate over what is often very hostile terrain – and it may encounter predators en route to the sea – where it’s parents will be calling from. A small chick can be quite feisty and hold it’s own against common predators like artic fox (but many do fall prey).
East coast of the UK Guillemot chicks, if and when they reach the sea on their maiden flight, swim with their parents all the way to Norway – a considerable task in and of itself.
Other fascinating facts about guillemots. They are one of the few animals that can inhabit land, air, sea surface, and underwater (a bit of a misnomer?!). They can swim underwater practically as well as they can fly in the air – and that means they can swim as well as most fish! Indeed they swim after fish to catch them – this is their primary source of food. It could be said that they fly underwater. They can dive up to 150m – indeed the deepest known dive by any bird is Brünnich’s guillemot (Uria lomvia) at 210m!
The Life-sized Guillemot
Detail of life-size guillemot
Why life-sized? I have a penchant for life-sized natural history art because it does the subject justice, it is honest, and most people don’t know the size of many animals because they never get close enough to them. Perhaps a better question is: why not life-sized…?
Working journey of the making of the main guillemot jigsaw piece…
The guillemot is not painted. I love oak – and wood in general – and think it sacrilegious to paint it. I only allowed myself to use a light and a dark wood stain to achieve the hopefully realistic coloured effect of the main bird. The whole work has had two coats of Danish oil to bring out the wood grain, give it a warmth, and to give it protection. It should last hundreds, if not thousands, of years…
Another challenge was to try to capture the smoothness and aerodynamism of this most perfect of birds – supremely designed for flight in the air and flight “under” water. I hope that by placing the main guillemot in the centre of the jigsaw puzzle as single smooth life-sized piece among dozens of other smaller pieces – accentuates it’s majestic shape and form…
I had a eureka moment for the eye (albeit after thinking about it for days!). A key visible feature of any animal are it’s eyes. They give so much of the essence of the personality and behaviour of the animal, they give it life and vitality. I thought long and hard how I could bring my guillemot life – and am extremely pleased with the solution I came up with.
Guillemot eye detail
The Embedded Life-size Egg
Birds eggs are extraordinarily beautiful, the shells are extremely strong (relative to the amount of material they consist of), and they are amazingly complex, but highly functional, creations that have their own lifecycle and incredible journey. For example, when the shell-less egg growing inside the parent reaches full size the hard shell is slowly secreted around it from calcium carbonate (CaCO3) crystals from the parent (who has to have enough of this in their diet otherwise the eggs will be soft and break).
Eggs have a complex structure, but obviously the main function is to protect and facilitate the growth and birth of a young bird. All the nutrients the growing foetus requires are contained within the egg, however, the egg has to be strong enough to protect the embryo through all the knocks and bumps – and being stood or sat on by the parents; it has to be porous to allow oxygen in and carbon dioxide (poisonous waste) out; and has to protect from bacterial infection. If the egg is laid, and spends time, on bear rock– as is the case with guillemots – then the shells have to be particularly strong. However, near the time of hatching an amazing metamorphosis takes place: the embryo absorbs some of the calcium of the eggshell to form an egg tooth. This is a double strategy to help the young emerge from the shell: after the shell has fulfilled it’s purpose it is weakened by the young bird absorbing some of it, and at the same time the young bird gains a sharp hard tool by which to chop itself out.
The blunt end of the egg is the weaker part of the egg (that is due to mechanical geometric properties: the shallower the curve the weaker it is). The embryo’s position in the egg seems designed to exploit this weakness when it comes to hatching. The orientation of the developing embryo is such that the legs are usually at the “pointed” end and the head is usually at the “blunt” end – so the head is in the ideal position to start the hatching in what is obviously a very tight space…
With the main interest of this work being a life-sized guillemot in it’s busy natural surroundings, and working with thick oak, it occurred to me from the outset of this long project that I could incorporate a life-size egg into the design somewhere. I bought some eggs to test the idea and after several trials I worked out how I could do it.
Eggs are generally developed in the parent “pointed” side down and are rotated prior to laying so they emerge “blunt” side first. It seems unclear why this is so, but I wanted to highlight this phenomenon in the work.
I wanted to create a mystery of how the egg got into the body of the guillemot – and how it comes out – hence I made the egg opening (front and back) smaller than the egg itself – with no way for the egg to have got in or out… The Guillemots’ eggs are relatively large in proportion to the mother’s size, and I wanted to highlight the fact that the mother has to fly and dive with this huge thing inside her abdomen. I have made a guestimate of where the egg would be in the mother (which, as mentioned above, has to be turned in situ before it is laid).
Full-size egg inside the main Guillemot puzzle piece
Epilogue
It has been an enormous relief to finish this work(!) – so much so that I needed a few days to recuperate. The intense concentration and sheer physical effort in handling this 8kg block of solid oak wood for highly accurate cutting through the most intricate and precise twists and turns – has taken it’s toll on my arms, back, eyes, and brain. (It measures 59cm x 42cm x 4.4cm thick. This work is two pieces of oak I have hopefully invisibly joined. I would have used one piece if I could have sourced such a wide piece of oak.)
Design – 6 weeks (plus many tests, trials and errors!) over a 16 months period; carving the approximately 2mm deep detail black “lines” – four days; cutting the 44mm (1 ¾”) deep oak jigsaw pieces – 4 days – both with a full face mask most of the time and with the noise of an air filter (industrial hoover) running all the time (I used ear plugs); 1 day to carve out the egg opening and incorporate the full-size egg into the body of the main central guillemot (and the stress and strain associated with that!); 1 day finishing – this included rounding off jigsaw pieces (front), sanding (back), and applying finishing oil to all the convoluted surfaces; 1 day framing.
Work in progress
This project started back in September 2018 and finished (under a great deal of time pressure (largely due to the non-arrival of a faster-cutting fret saw ordered on 3rd January)!) on 17th February 2020 – just in time for submission to the 2020 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition…
I’m quite keen on chess, but I’m no expert by any means. Quite randomly I was looking into the history of chess (I often look up stuff just out of curiosity) and stumbled on the beautiful Isle of Lewis Chessmen.
Attribution: National Museums Scotland
I was intrigued by the pieces and thought they looked wonderful, intriguing, and tactile. They conjure up a real mediaeval battle – quite unlike any other chess set I’ve seen, and the detail on them is very impressive – especially considering they’re 12th century – 800 years old – and carved out of walrus ivory! (Ethically I’m not impressed with the material but I am impressed with the craftsmanship.)
I love to have beautiful things in my house, and if they’re functional that’s even better – so I set about seeing how expensive a set would be. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a full-sized resin set costs under £100 (2018 price). There were more expensive sets but they were out of my budget at the time (and didn’t look much better). The set came with a rather disappointing, unbefitting, cardboard chessboard, but I thought I could get (or make) a better one later…
As chess pieces go they were quite big – about 3½” (9cm) high – and reassuringly heavy (the heaviest piece, the king, was 98g – a little less than the official replica copies from the original National Museum of Scotland’s set @ 126g). The pieces were very nice but there was a plasticky look and feel to them. Nevertheless, I liked them and played a few games on the board that they came with.
Why choose a wall-mounted chess board?
The board that came with my chess set was quite big (about 19″ (47cm) – with the squares about 2″). Devoting a table to a chess match for several days is a bit of a problem in most households, and obviously there is a risk of pieces being accidentally knocked over – with the serious additional problem of not knowing where the pieces were before. An intense chess battle of several days could be obliterated by someone simply bumping into the table – and so I started to think of alternative ideas…
I considered a wall-mounted chessboard – because this would be out of the way, would take up no floor or table space, and in theory would be far less prone to accidents. How often do people bump into wall-mounted pictures…?
I’d never seen a real wall-mounted chessboard before – only pictures – and started looking online to see what was available. Obviously it would have to be quite big because each square would have to be big enough for the tallest of the Isle of Lewis Chessmen pieces – the King (at nearly 3 ½”) – so about 4″ (10cm) squares are required…
I looked high and low but couldn’t fine a nice large enough wall-mounted chessboard. The main thing I disliked about most of the chessboards I found was that the squares weren’t square – they were rectangular – taller than they were wide! I thought this was very strange indeed and really didn’t like the look of them – they grated with my sense of aesthetics! So I parked the idea and thought of making my own some day…
Thoughts about making my own wall chessboard
I wanted to buy a nice wall-mounted chessboard but couldn’t find one I liked. I have to really like something for it to get room in my house…! I didn’t want to design and make my own – that would take a lot of time and money! (I make lots of things and I know that the first time you make anything it takes a lot more time and effort than expected because you usually have to buy and/or make tools and templates to help you make the thing with – as well as research and purchase all the materials – and possibly learn new techniques.)
Months passed. I had some ideas about buying pre-cut square pieces of two different types of wood (in contrasting light and dark shades) – but this didn’t particularly inspire me. Also I didn’t think the chess pieces would stand out very clearly because their colour is quite woody… And I couldn’t think how I could do the shelves – I just felt that they should be transparent/clear…
I decide to try to make a beautiful wall-mounted chessboard
I thought over a period of several weeks about the squares – I felt these were crux of the problem – and the cornerstone of the design. Out of thin air it came to me: ceramic tiles! Black and white square ceramic tiles! It was so obvious! They are naturally square and their colour and texture wonderfully contrasts with the chess pieces. Naturally I had technical challenges: what to mount the tiles on, how to make shelves (or compartments), letters and numbers around the edge, etc. Nevertheless, I felt the urge and inspiration to make a beautiful wall-mounted chessboard – and I had a very inspiring starting point…
I saw symmetry, maths, patterns in the chessboard, and I wanted to incorporate twelfth/thirteenth-century ideas into it – as if the board was designed when the Lewis Chessmen were made…
This is my first attempt :-
First attempt at ceramic tile wall-mounted chessboard
So far so good. It’s nice, functional, but it’s just a chessboard… While there is nothing more that can be done to the squares themselves, somehow it needs to be made special/beautiful…
I feel it should have letters and numbers around the border (A-H & 1-8) – and here I can try to add some nice design… I thought about typefaces, materials, and size/scale around the edge of the board – but also about the structural strength of it – because the board is already quite heavy (about 30kg) – being tiled on some very heavy deep plywood (so it won’t warp) – and the border will be the only practical way of lifting it…
So, while there was a serious practical/structural challenge, thinking about the aesthetics preoccupied me for a long time. I plumped for a solid oak boarder – exactly the width of a chess square – for it’s strength and beauty – with raised letters and numbers made of the same material. The oak I chose is from sustainable sources (as is the deep plywood base) and has (for me at least) a lovely block grain structure that adds a wide variety of tones, and contrasts beautifully with the typeface.
Here is the finished first design :-
Solid oak carved numbers & letters 12th/13th century font border
Also I had the idea of adding a large-ish toughened glass shelf for putting taken pieces on.
3rd Draft with shelf for putting taken pieces on.
It’s not perfect but I’m very happy with this design. It’s total weight is about 50kg and so it needed a very strong bracket to mount it on the wall!
Typeface Tribute
I chose a font which I believe may have been in use in 12th – 13th century Scotland – when my imaginary chessboard was designed.
It’s not until you cut, carve, and smooth every curve of all the letters and numbers – and orientate, glue, and oil all the facing sides – that you appreciate all the work and aesthetics that goes into designing a typeface. And to think they had this skill and artistry all those years ago beggars belief…
We will probably never know who designed this typeface, but whomsoever it was, they have my deepest respect and thanks. This typeface is at the core of my chessboard design. I’ve added a tiny personal touch by literally adding a dimension – to give it depth (and existence…). This accentuates the typeface’s delightful sensual shapes and curves – and changes with light arriving from different directions. In some very real sense the board – with the typeface being at it’s core – takes on many different forms depending on the light…
It’s curious to think that my implementation of the typeface doesn’t really exist! It exists only in the shadows from directional light – and is helped by the subtle contrast between the oak grain pattern of the letter and number cut-outs – and the background timber. My alphanumerics primarily owe their visibility to the shadows they cast…
Whose turn is it?!
With a wall-mounted chessboard games can readily take as long as is required because there is no pressure on space. With this in mind I started to think how best to show who’s turn it is? Surprisingly this took a couple of months to solve (off and on – not solidly!) – during which I thought of many different ideas: pointers, sliders, etc. But I wanted something simple, beautiful, “mathematical”, and easy to make – and something perhaps befitting of the 12/13th century. In the end I came up with the simple idea of a black and white disc (with black on one side and white on the other) – and a tight-cut hole to display and hold it – tight enough for it to stay in by itself – and can be easily taken out and turned around to indicate whose turn it is (see below).
White’s move
Black’s move
So here is the final signed Artist Proof (1 of 2) black and white version :-
Might others like to have one of these Chessboards?
It was never my intention to make a chessboard – let alone for other people. But why not, I thought…? Many people who have seen it have said how much they like it. I make art for other people. Is my chessboard art…? Does art have to be completely non-functional…? I thought of putting the whole set in clear resin – so that the pieces couldn’t be moved – and call it: “This is not a Chess set” (or chessboard?). Perversely that probably would be acceptable as art – but is a functional chessboard art…?
Duchamp said if an artist calls something art then it is art – hence his urinal – called “Fountain” (1917) – a completely un-made-by-an-artist artefact. Whether you agree with him or not is an entirely different matter…! I think of myself as an artist so I can call my chessboard “art”… I suppose that if an artist designs and hand-makes something – as opposed to a factory or sweatshop making it – then that qualifies as art…? But that is not to say that everything an artist makes is art…
This chessboard for me is an object of beauty and I have put as much thought, time, and effort into designing and making this as I have put into most of my other (unequivocal) art works. But it doesn’t really matter to me if they are considered art or not, I have decided to share them… At the very least it is a chessboard designed and made by an artist…
And I will submit it to next years’ Royal Academy Summer Exhibition to see what my peers think of it…
Upgrade of the Chess set + change the board colours
I thought: if I’m going to sell my chessboards then I really should sell them with chess sets befitting of them. And the best – in my humble opinion – are the sets from the Scottish National Museums. So I bought a set.
The “white” pieces are ivory/cream coloured – and show up very well against the while or black tiles. However, it struck me immediately that the dark/black pieces of this new set were really dark – much darker than the cheaper set I originally bought (see photo below) – and they don’t show up very well at all against the jet-black squares of my chessboard! This got me thinking about having a different colour for the “black” squares – because I can’t change the colour of the pieces…
Testing tile colours
Choosing a colour is a very difficult challenge – especially of tiles! Feeling red would be the best substitute for black squares, I searched for what must have been weeks, and had various sample tiles sent to me – because the web and a computer screen is not the ideal way to see colours accurately. Eventually I found a red I liked and that worked well with the rest of the colours. (Getting the tiles in quantity was a whole different challenge…!)
Black pieces against red and white ceramic tiles
White pieces against red and white ceramic tiles
Another minor change was to have the glass shelve at the bottom (the original shelf was put at the top more of as afterthought because I had space there). This is the 2nd and final signed artist proof (with the Scottish National Museums‘ Isle of Lewis Chess pieces) :-
Finished article: Isle of Lewis Chessboard (Isle of Lewis Chessmen inspired)Signed & dated detail
Another eery coincidence has occurred in my life. It was only yesterday, while listening to BBC Radio3 (something I listen to a lot because it is not very invasive and it allows me to concentrate on my work; and, not least, because they often play beautiful music!), and really enjoying the sheer brilliance of Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) – that I asked myself: has any music of this standard been produced since? Was the 19th Century the pinnacle of music? Have composers just run out of ideas or lost their direction?
The coincidence was that today I was listening to a BBC Radio 3 programme called Darwin And Music – where Petroc Trelawny was in discussion with Gary Tomlinson, Professor of Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Ian Cross, reader in music and science at Cambridge University and Roderick Swanston of Imperial College. They were discussing the idea that music had peaked with Beethoven – or at least with 19th Century music. They mentioned musicologist Paul Henry Lang (arguably the leading musicologist of the Twentieth Century who produced a seminal work: “Music in Western Civilization” 1941), who lamented the demise of modern music – saying that none of his contemporaries – Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), etc. were as good as previous composers…
But I think there is another evolutionary force in human activities: basically this is not so much survival of the fittest but survival of the most beautiful. That is quality or beauty will survive the longest – the implication being that less beautiful works or works that do not come up to a certain standard will not have the same success at the box office or record sales, and general demand for them will be low. Given the choice between atonal music and 19th Century Romanticism, the latter will win hands down into perpetuity. The less beautiful, or even the non-beautiful (to put it politely) will fall into obscurity – where it belongs.
I think there comes a point when the standard reached by predecessors is so great and requires so much effort and imagination – that would-be successors are in awe, but not awe-inspired. They are simply humbled into defeatism: a feeling that there is no way they can achieve the same quality. Some people’s reaction to this is to try to produce something different: I cannot compete on the same terms so I will try something completely different…
Evolution, as I understand it, is not a gradual and constant “improvement” – somehow defined – but a continuous adaptation to changes. But that is not to imply intention. Evolution is blind. What it boils do to is that if there are changes to the environment (which are always happening due to catastrophic and/or gradual geological phenomena) then those changes may adversely affect the survival of certain species in certain locations with certain physical and psychological attributes. For example, if huge parts of Africa were to turn to a desert the animals have certain choices: if possible move to locations where they are adapted to survive, or nature will whittle out those unadapted – who cannot find food, a mate, shelter.
Random genetic mutations take place all the time in the history of species. However, if, during the aforementioned environmental transition, genetic mutations happen to favour certain individuals – like longer necks, smaller size, longer tongues, or a greater sense of smell of hidden water – then there may be a negative filtering process where the species’ design tends to head in a particular direction. Such biological adaption, however, is not necessarily continuous or beneficial to future generations. An ever-growing neck is only useful as long as the trees are tall. And if the trees disappear and there is only close grazing to be had, then the long neck could be a positive disadvantage…
However, I do think there are some unequivocally good, or universally useful adaptions, and their omnipresence is possibly testimony to this idea. I am of course thinking about the senses of sight, hearing, taste, and touch. Necks can grow and shrink, legs can come and go, wingspan can grow and shrink, size can grow and shrink – as prevalent environmental conditions “dictate”. However, I can imagine no situations where being able to detect one’s environment – to help locate food and mates, avoid potential predators, avoid physical dangers – like not walking off a cliff – I can think of no situations where these senses could be a hindrance. So while many species of animal differ quite considerably, the one thing the vast majority seem to share is the aforementioned senses…
I feel human evolution, where the arts are concerned, is not “natural” in the normal evolutionary sense of the word. Human evolution in the arts is very much pre-meditated and deliberate. But is it? Surely evolution is not about what individual species do in order to try to survive. It is about what history has shown to be successful, and by implication unsuccessful, adaptations – regardless of how those adaptions came about. Some species, like the Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus), have lived on this planet for hundreds of millions of years with little or no change (hence they are sometimes known as “living fossils”), and they are contemporaries of very new species – like humans – who have only be around for about 5 million years. The human species isn’t necessarily the zenith of evolution on the planet: evolution is neutral with regards newness of species (many new species have come and gone in the course of the Eath’s history), or, if anything, it smiles on the longest surviving and most planet-friendly…
In a similar vein, albeit on a much smaller scale(!), some art and classical music has been around for centuries and there is contemporary art and classical music. Contemporary, from an evolutionary perspective, confers no privilege or status – just chronology. If, and only if, two hundred years from now future generations wish to see or listen to today’s contemporary art – as much as we do today for the Impressionists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the 19th Century Romanticists, the Three B’s, Mozart – only then will be we able to say that today’s contemporary art is as “good” as art of yester-year… I bet my life that this will not happen as a general preference.
Perhaps using the term classical music is defeating in this context – because I am effectively restricting how music might evolve. Perhaps the evolutionary direction music in general has taken is to generally favour the smaller more agile species. Let me explain. Conventional classical music is the blue whale or mammoth in evolutionary terms, requiring months of a composer’s imagination and effort, big orchestras, and are generally big, expensive, projects and a slow creative process. To compete with the great works of the past in the same genre is fantastically difficult. Perhaps music has adapted to smaller more agile units with small groups of individuals and single people, and improvisation. Maybe (classical) music has evolved, or is evolving into pop and jazz music and their numerous incarnations and derivatives. This could be as a result of the dissatisfaction of what conventional classical composers were producing. Maybe not. Maybe a new source of food in the form of radio, records, and television brought opportunities that enabled the smaller musical creatives to survive. Let me be absolutely clear: I am not saying the quality of these latter genres is no good – nothing of the sort – some of it is in my opinion every bit as good and I think will stand the test of time. The problem for contemporary music posterity is that there is so much of it…
Maybe the equivalent paradigm shift in visual art has been in graphic art, photography, digital art, animation and film. Maybe the old purposes for, or uses of, art have changed – leaving a lot of artists unsure as to what to produce. Many artists in the past had a “brief”. Today’s briefs are more often for things like adverts, product shots, graphic representations, etc. A lot of art today is completely uncommissioned and with a client’s brief. Maye artists are a bit lost?
So the old notions of art may have changed – scale, medium, patronage, client-artist relationship, etc. But the standards by which they should be judged – and whether they will pass the test of time – are the same. It is not enough just to change medium.
If evolution has any long-term direction I would say it is favours archetypes like progressively improving senses, mobility, adaptability, efficiency of converting food to energy, and … beauty.
I will not be submitting to this year’s RA Summer Exhibition (2008). No time. Focused on earning a living and iz2u development (link). Sometimes there is as much creativity in trying to provide the economic foundations for the freedom to be artistically creative…
