Gathering Ideas

Animated Chronicles.

Lace Detailed Steel Objects of Cal Lane

Cal Lane is an artist from Victoria, British Columbia, currently living in New York.

I like to work as a visual devil’s advocate, using contradiction as a vehicle for finding my way to an empathetic image, an image of opposition that creates a balance - as well as a clash - by comparing and contrasting ideas and materials. This manifested in a series of “Industrial Doilies”, pulling together industrial and domestic life as well as relationships of strong and delicate, masculine and feminine, practical and frivolity, ornament and function. There is also a secondary relationship being explored here, of lace used in religious ceremonies as in weddings, christenings and funerals. With this notion of desirable oppositions I created the structure “fabricate”. In this Structure I hand cut lace trimming patterns into 9 I-beams, then constructed a tower, simultaneously macho, and of delicate finery. The metaphor of lace further intrigued me by its associations of hiding and exposing at the same time; like a veil to cover, or lingerie to reveal. It also introduces a kind of humor through the form of unexpected relationships…

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9 Squares 21

Romain de Tirtoff  aka  Erte (23 November 1892 – 21 April 1990) was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté, from the French pronunciation of his initials). He was a diversely talented 20th-century artist and designer who flourished in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor.

Erté is perhaps most famous for his elegant fashion designs which capture the art deco period in which he worked. One of his earliest successes was designing apparel for the French dancer Gaby Deslys who died in 1920. His delicate figures and sophisticated, glamorous designs are instantly recognisable, and his ideas and art still influence fashion into the 21st century.

The Maya ‘Wall of Skulls’ (Tzompantli) at Chichén Itzá, Yucatan, Mexico.

Tzompantli means “skull racks” in Nahuatl, and were described by the horrified Spanish conquistadors. This Mesoamerican architectural form is usually found in central Mexico during the Postclassic Period, where they were often made of the real skulls of sacrificed people. Low platforms with carved friezes depicting such skulls are found at some Maya sites in association with ball courts. The shown frieze from Chichén Itzá is one such example of this.