Shaun Kardinal was one of the artist/photographers that I thought link really well with my project manufactured structure. In most of Shaun Kardinal's work, there is usually a graphical element dominating the landscape image he has taken. Though that happened mostly organically, I was definitely impressed and inspired by the digital collage work of Mark Weaver, who often incorporates bright, bold circles in his work. The use of thread has a very specific limitation: one can only work in straight lines to create a curve (like a bright, bold circle), one has to trick the mind with an organized series of lines, so these geometric patterns arise.
"The earliest exhibition you’ll find on my resume was a show devoted to photographs of buildings. After falling in love with photography in my teens and subsequently losing interest during my depression-riddled early twenties, those photos were definitely part of a re-emergence for me. I got my feet wet exhibiting work a few times and found a real connection to Seattle’s art community. At the time, I was also co-running an alternative space gallery, which was based in a frame shop that handled work from most of the art galleries downtown — so I was really in the thick of it!
After about a year with the buildings, I turned the camera on myself for a series examining mundane daily existence. I really enjoyed that work and people really seemed to like what I was doing. I landed some great exhibition opportunities and met some amazing people. But even as those opportunities grew, I began to feel less inspired and in need of a change. I found myself exhausted with artist statements, applications and the incessant race to get the next show. So, I stopped seeking them out. Even turned a few down.
In 2009, I participated in a few of Vital 5’s Arbitrary Art Grants, which had amazingly off-beat calls for art (such as: photograph a sculpture you make out of grocery store items while in the store or act as a wall, displaying art in an imaginary storefront), and the experience was definitely an impetus to try new things. For a short while, I was very much into making bumperstickers! I also started making small pieces that I sent to friends in the mail, undocumented. One day I received a piece from Dawn Stechschulte — a small, hand-sewn collage with painting, stickers and an old magazine clipping. In response, I cut up a few postcards and sewed them up to create a fictional landscape. I loved it, and made more. Soon I was making them for no one — just keeping my hands occupied. For three years now, I’ve been hooked on paper embroidery, and allowing it to evolve as the ideas come to me.
"-SHAUN KARDINAL
After about a year with the buildings, I turned the camera on myself for a series examining mundane daily existence. I really enjoyed that work and people really seemed to like what I was doing. I landed some great exhibition opportunities and met some amazing people. But even as those opportunities grew, I began to feel less inspired and in need of a change. I found myself exhausted with artist statements, applications and the incessant race to get the next show. So, I stopped seeking them out. Even turned a few down.
In 2009, I participated in a few of Vital 5’s Arbitrary Art Grants, which had amazingly off-beat calls for art (such as: photograph a sculpture you make out of grocery store items while in the store or act as a wall, displaying art in an imaginary storefront), and the experience was definitely an impetus to try new things. For a short while, I was very much into making bumperstickers! I also started making small pieces that I sent to friends in the mail, undocumented. One day I received a piece from Dawn Stechschulte — a small, hand-sewn collage with painting, stickers and an old magazine clipping. In response, I cut up a few postcards and sewed them up to create a fictional landscape. I loved it, and made more. Soon I was making them for no one — just keeping my hands occupied. For three years now, I’ve been hooked on paper embroidery, and allowing it to evolve as the ideas come to me.
"-SHAUN KARDINAL
I decided to take a set of images at a construction site, as I was influenced from my abstract experiments. By creating my own mini sculptures and photographing them, it got me thinking about actually photographing the building process of buildings around my local area. I took this set of images at a building that is under construction in Eltham as there is quite a lot of building development going on in that area. I tried to take my images from quite a few different perspectives, so all different parts of the construction were photographed. I like that throughout all the image, there is a running element of lines, mainly from the scaffolding and cranes.
I then started to edit my images by, changing the exposure, contrast and definition.
I then used Shaun Kardinal's inspiration of using embroidery over images because it creates more structural shape to the image and colour. So I used colourful thread that was thick and drew on the back of the image the lines that I wanted to sew. It is difficult to create a circle with embroidery because you can only use straight lines therefore I attempted a circular shape that has long and short lines coming from the centre.
I then started to edit my images by, changing the exposure, contrast and definition.
I then used Shaun Kardinal's inspiration of using embroidery over images because it creates more structural shape to the image and colour. So I used colourful thread that was thick and drew on the back of the image the lines that I wanted to sew. It is difficult to create a circle with embroidery because you can only use straight lines therefore I attempted a circular shape that has long and short lines coming from the centre.
I then took this idea further because it was successful and used it on the same image however, I chose to change the appearance of my stitching and shape. For example I went over the construction line of the scaffolding in different colours and this changed the image from being flat and having a slightly higher level to it. there is already rough texture on the image because of the bricks but I wanted to add even more texture so I used cut out material that look like nets and placed it over the fences and on the blue net that is placed over the scaffolding. This has made the overall image more effective because through doing double stitching and using material over the image it has added many different elements to the image.
Combining influence from Zacharie Gaudrllot and Shaun Kardinal, after I used Photoshop to dissect this building and using the concept of under construction, I used the embroidery but gave it meaning through using it as what makes the dissected building built again. My continuous use of bright and vivid colours was used here too.