Printmaking

I just thought I'd share with you the print that I made in today's Wednesday art workshop at Culture at Work. The classes are on each week at 10.30 am, and cover a range of techniques and subjects. (Visit the website to find out more.) This week's class was printmaking using foam sheets.

I drew the image freehand, based on a photograph that was in today's newspaper. I liked the industrial feel of the steel plates, bolts and spanner because it sits well with a new project I am working on, a series of craft projects in the steampunk style.

Steampunk is a combination of vintage nostalgia and futuristic vision, a way to celebrate the past while we move into an uncertain future. If you'd like to find out more about Steampunk Style, please visit my other blog.

Gaudi and technology

If you're interested in the crossover between art and science, you might like to attend a Centre for Human Aspects of Science and Technology (CHAST) lecture entitled: "Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família and its role in assisting the art-science dialogue" by Professor Mark Burry, Director of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, RMIT.

The lecture is to be held on Thursday, 24 May 2012, at 6pm in the Old Geology Lecture Theatre, University of Sydney. All welcome. Free admission, no bookings.

Here's part of the blurb from the website:

While the typical image of Gaudí's work is one that focuses on his artistic virtuosity, his handle on technology nevertheless placed him at the forefront of his profession at the time. His approach to geometry, especially in his later years, places him at the forefront of today's architectural practice. In many ways Gaudí was a reactionary preferring to restrict his building repertoire to traditional techniques, but his approach to design required him to innovate regardless. Mark Burry's talk will describe the translation of this design research into coherent building information and will demonstrate how the technological link between this project and its particular needs have actually contributed to cutting-edge design research for contemporary architecture almost nine decades on from Gaudí's death in 1926. It is the unexpected holism of Gaudí's oeuvre that helps support Mark Burry's view that great architecture helps bridge the gulf between art and science thus offering an essential dialogue between the two.

For more information about this and future CHAST events, including an upcoming lecture by Nobel Prize-winning astronomer Brian Schmidt, go to http://sydney.edu.au/chast/upcoming_events/.