Welcome to the first exhibition at the Artlog. It evolved out of the interest of regular visitors in my practice of making articulated paper maquettes for use as compositional aids. A few of them felt encouraged to produce maquettes of their own, and thereafter everything just blossomed.
MAQUETTEEERS
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Jodi le Bigre: metamorphosis
Leonard Greco: raising the dead
Chloe Refern: all the pretty little horses
Sally Wakelin: unfolding forms
Jodi le Bigre: metamorphosis. I’m interested in the way Jodi le Bigre’s meticulous draftsmanship extends even to the laying out of the beautifully drawn elements of her maquette on a single sheet. It seems almost an act of vandalism to cut up such a lovely and intriguing thing, but since it’s the artist doing so, we must accept her choice. Some might be inclined to make a scan of the original intact sheet and cut up the copy, but Jodi’s finished maquette is of course even more precious for being constructed from the original painting. The artist has had some unexpected upheavals in her life recently, and this inventive and moving maquette has emerged from what must have been a difficult time for her, both personally and creatively. She wrote to me of the experience of making the maquette:
‘Actually, I was happy to work on this, it was a good project to concentrate on through everything. I decided to use this as an opportunity to invent something that would bring me through hard times, something from a harsh and airy place that could pierce through any difficulty. It was lovely to have the changeability that a maquette affords.’
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See more of Jodi’s work at her blog,
HERE.
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Leonard Greco: raising the dead. Leonard’s astonishing outpouring of maquettes has been a revelation. Every day at his blog new figures appear, and as this repertory company of maquette actors has grown, he’s assembled increasingly elaborate arrangements of them as his compositional blueprints for planned paintings. Leonard’s explorations draw on the Maya resurrection myth of the Maize God and his post-dismemberment fathering of the Hero Twins on a passing princess. There’s grand guignol and snaky priapism aplenty here, and so those of a nervous disposition may wish to avert their eyes.
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See more of Leonard’s work at his blog,
HERE.
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Chloe Redfern: all the pretty little horses. More connections here, as it was Chloe who I turned to last year for the
Christmas gifts Peter and I gave to our friends Liz and Graham Sangster when we visited them for the holiday. Chloe has been making beautiful horse maquettes and charting the process on her blog at
Slightly Triangle. When she’s not making paper maquettes she produces delightful painted and stitched hanging decorations that you can find
HERE, though she will make horse maquettes to order if you have a mind to ask her.
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At the last moment Chloe sent images of this spirited hare, and he’s just too good to miss out.
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Sally Wakelin: unfolding forms. Sally is a jewellery maker and artist. She’s also a talented website designer, producing sites for a good many artists,
mine included. You can see her silverwork
HERE.
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Just one of the aspects I’ve always loved about Sally’s jewellery is her skill at making jointed collars and bracelets of silver in which the interplay of individual elements is invariably beautiful
and ingenious. She has the engineer’s gift of being able to envisage her creations at their earliest stages in three dimensions, an inheritance perhaps from her sculptor/architect father,
Dick. Her silver works are objects that ask to be touched and explored. The clasps are always cleverly hidden, and I once tried on a Sally Wakelin bracelet only to find I couldn’t get it off again until she showed me where the connection point was.
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For this exhibition Sally has produced a paper maquette for a linked collar/bracelet that is as much a piece of sculpture as an item of personal adornment. This is something that my fingers would itch to play with were it to be lying on a table in front of me.
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More Maquettes in Part Three, soon.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog: 
I meant to comment yesterday, but oh my so grand. Jodi’s work is indeed marvelous, I was enchanted by the first snippet now I am in full thrall.
Chloe’s horses are marvelous, I grew up with horses, I never tire of their grace and their delightful energy, Chloe clearly knows a thing or two about our equine pals. And yes the hare is particularly charming.
My Nana was a jewelry maker, traditional Edwardian fare, a different beauty from Sally’s work but she would have been delighted and inspired by Sally’s modernist maquettery, as I am. Such a useful tool for one working in precious material.
My own work- odd to see it out of studio context.
Thank you Clive.
LG
and i was thinking of the jewelry, and how frank gehry refuses to use a computer, instead building his models for buildings out of paper, the way she’s done for the jewelry, here. masterful 🙂
wow! i agree, from start to finish, jodi’s work is so beautiful! i love the idea of attaching the different heads like that–apart or together–it seems, especially when you add in the saint’s aura, like all the different sides of a person, including the animal nature. and the multiple arms! what a clever use….
the hare is a joy! and again, so distinct from all the other animals here.
and those mayan creatures! wow!
So many, many brilliant approaches and sterling touches! I LOVE Jodi’s preparatory drawings, and her meticulous layout. LOVE Leonard’s figure and the power of the physique, the iconography and the color. Chloe’s horse and hare… much there to LOVE as well… especially the hare because of its lifelike qualities and the tenderness. Sally’s structures have always been a LOVE of mine. Intricate, yet sturdy, and always a study in simple geometry. Wholly inspiration, one and all!
The two collections so far are so wonderfully various–we are so lucky that you sprouted such an idea! And I’m sure everybody who comes by feels grateful to the maquetteers for putting in such love and time on the maquettes.
Wow, the inventiveness of everyone’s work is just blowing me away and moving this art form to a whole other plane that I hadn’t imagined. Just loving seeing these pieces!
Wow, what an exhibition this is turning out to be!
I’m amazed and impressed… Jodi’s work is as always, very beautiful, these hinges do lend themselves to the changing of body parts don’t they…
And Leonard’s maquettes are astonishingly brilliant too as was Phillipa’s work – what lovely peasanty figures.
Looking forward to the next installments!
Thank you Clive for your generous and inspiring artistic spirit 🙂
Wanted to remark how I loved the way Jodi has used the brads. The obvious tendency is to keep them as discreet and camouflaged as possible, favouring smaller or coloured ones over the traditional heavier brass paper fasteners. But here those have become an element in their own right, and look like wonderful big brass bosses, offsetting the fineness and delicate detail of the drawing. Tom pointed out how she’s turned the ankle joint ones outward so they look like spurs.
Sorry to keep butting back in but all these really do merit looking at again and again…
Astonishing stuff. I don’t think it’s too early to congratulate you on a fantastic online exhibition — even if Parts 1 and 2 were all there were, it would still count as a resounding success. (Also, priapism is a such a grand word! Thanks for reminding me of it.)
(Looks as if you forgot to add Part 2 to your Maquettes and Constructions category. You might also consider in addition creating a special category or tag just for this exhibition, so those of us who like to link to things on Twitter, Facebook and our own blogs will be able to send people to the exhibition as a whole when it’s complete.)
Thanks Dave for pointing out my category omission, now corrected. There has been such a mass of material to deal with that I occasionally get completely confused, my new desktop screen littered with the exhibition i-photo folder, incoming files of images, reference pages, numerous WordPress posts-in-waiting scattered about and the daily incomings of requests for images re forthcoming books, posters and exhibitions. I think I need a blog assistant!!!
I confess I’ve never understood exactly what tags are, nor how they differ from categories. However if you say I should try adding them, then I must master the idea. You know I bow to you on all blog matters.
I can’t add any more categories. Well I can add them but they just don’t show in the topics window. I’ve looked and looked to find a way around this, but I think there must be a cap on the number of them that can show at any given time. The only way I’ve found to add a category is by eliminating an old one. Ho hum.
Yes, I think the Categories cloud widget is probably limited to the 50 most-used categories. You can get around that however by swapping in a regular Categories list, which lets you display them as a list. The functional difference between tags and categories is that the latter are hierarchical, meaning that you can have sub-categories, and the former are not. Not all blogs need both. In practice, the general rule is for categories to be used for broad, recurring topics, and tags to be used for topics or that may only be mentioned a few times in the lifetime of the blog. It can also be a useful indexing system for your own and readers’ use if you get in the habit of tagging every significant mention of a person, place or thing — the sort of thing that would be put into an index if this were a book. This is especially useful since WordPress’s search function is so wretched. It also helps to drive web traffic to your site, because Google is much more likely to pick up on a tag than a mention of something in your fourth paragraph. If you want, for example, someone searching the web for “Sally Wakelin” to find this post, that would be a good tag to add. You don’t have to add tags to your sidebar (though there are widgets for that). But if for example you want a permanent link to this exhibition there, you could simply use a text widget and insert the HTML for the exhibition tag (if you create one). I can help you with that code via email if you decide to go that route.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain. I’m quite sure I’m going to be coming back at you with this one Dave. Things are clearer, but not yet crystal!
Delightful, all of them. Such a fantastic idea Clive.
Thank you Pamela. We do our best here.
What an amazing collection! so varied, so imaginative. As Lucy says- it’s difficult to single one out, however Sally’s is brilliant! I can’t wait to see more in part 3.
I’m so pleased that you think this little experiment has worked Liz. I’ve been surprised and touched by how much effort the Maquetteers have put into it.
I can’t remember seeing such a concentration of wondrous, surprising artwork all in one place on the web before, and we’re still only on part two! Pointless to try to single out any favourites, they’re all amazing in their different ways, all branching out so variously from one idea. I think you can take a bit more credit than just for lighting a blue touchpaper though…
Not my work. The credit must go to the makers. (-;
Thank you though for the kind words.
Had to vanquish two trojans to view. So worth all the work to get here because now I’m absolutely speechless, breathtaking work!
They’re an inventive bunch, these Artlog Maquetteers!
Wow, ravishing stuff, I’m gobsmacked by how beatiful all of these are. Obviously a heck of a lot of work has gone into them and the results are tremendous; all so different but all so wonderful – Chloe’s hare is just stunning
A last minute addition, that little hare, but such a worthwhile one.
These are so cool! It comes as no surprise that you should have such talented friends. They’re all so very inspiring. As are you, of course!
Why thank you Thom. What an elegant compliment. Once the Artlog exhibition was announced, the submissions poured in. All I did here was to light the blue touch-paper and retire.