The frames for the pieces are two old discarded wardrobe drawers I picked up at a junk yard and have had them in my studio for ages, wondering / waiting for a spark of inspiration from my muse ...
The first piece utilizes a small artists' paint box framed in the drawer ... the faux-leather effect is simply hand-made paper glued to the surface + painted natural ochre then black and when dried, lightly sanded back to exposed the undercoat + then polished to give the leather look ...
- Singers of Renown -
Standing upright, the door is unlatched and slowly opened by the viewer to reveal the mystical story contained within ...
Images I have used in these two pieces are from a 1970's book of photographs of famous late 19th century European opera singers and opera impresarios - by photographer Nadar - a book I have had for years that was slowly falling apart and just waiting to find a new life ...
Nadar workshop and lyric art ...
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (6
April 1820 – 20 March 1910, known by the pseudonym Nadar, was a French
photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloonist, and proponent of
manned flight. In 1858 he became the first person to take aerial photographs.
Apologies to all book lovers - I have made a collage of a few of the hundreds of images out of the book - still many more left for a future project - maybe ...
Each image in the collage is framed together with two scrolls representing stories about that particular artist - and then the collage and scrolls are placed behind a clear perspex panel to protect them ...
I have used a beautiful gold-leaf-paper ( donated by a friend ) throughout this piece to highlight the Golden Age - La Belle Époque - from 1870s to before the outbreak of WW1...
The door panel features four images of a dramatic scene from the opera Romeo and Juliet ... the despair of Romeo when he finds his beloved Juliet has taken her own life ...
So many wonderful stories of those beautiful times ...
My second piece is also based on a dramatic opera from the Golden Age and also using two of Nadar's images from the book ...
The Parting
... another old drawer and another pencil box - pre-loved, discarded, rescued and re-worked into an assemblage art piece ... and incorporating two table legs - maybe part of the dressing table of a famed opera singer from a bi-gone golden age ...
... unlatch the door and open it slowly to reveal the mystery inside ...
So many operas tell the fanciful and dramatic story of ill-fated lovers bidding farewell to each other - these two were certainly not youths ( as in Romeo and Juliet ) - maybe he was off to fight the advancing Roman army and she left to rule the threatened Egyptian kingdom ...
... the musical bricks underlying all great drama ...
and so two more artworks completed
with inspiration and materials rescued from the past
- the Golden Age ...
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