The Colour out of Space

After putting the moon art on the blog recently, I remembered another sci-fi related piece i'd made a while ago, using found materials and a kind of textured effect. 'Schism' came about after a holiday in Cornwall when i'd spent a great evening collecting shells on the beach. As i'm a serial hoarder, I always have odds and sods lying around waiting to be repurposed. One such item was a lens and a concave mirror from an old projector I had taken apart years ago. I liked the idea of having light and reflection play a part in the artwork, so I had the idea to make the mirror become a feature of the piece, as if it was bursting through the canvas. So the piece became the concept of a bright and powerful energy punching its way into another continuum and as a consequence, the dark, earthy 'asteroid' is sent fleeing away from the source of light.

While i'd been on the beach, i'd picked up all kinds of flotsam, including a lot of damaged and worn shells. I had a slice of agate, a crystalline mineral that i'd bought from a gift shop too, so i used this to form the basic shape and arranged the shells around it. To fill out the gaps and to make a sleet of white material in the lower corner, i took a sachet of silica packing gel and slit it open, bedding the beads into wet paint. Basically, this is a 'free' way of creating the same texture gel effect that i'd bought off the shelf this year. But it shows that art needn't be expensive!