Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: October 2010

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Art Outside th Box:The Anatomically Impossible:

2:41 PM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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This wonderful demonstration by Brandon McConnell is an amazing display of my favorite kind of art: the Anatomically Impossible.

You know what I mean. The kind of thing you look at and say, "How did they do that?" Head scratching, astonishing, omygod kind of art.I love it even more when it turns out not to be so hard as so amazingly clever. It means someone has really thought outside the box.

Nowadays, so much of what we do as artists has to be something you can teach. Is it quick? Is it easy? I understand not wanting to daunt anybody, but if it's too quick and too easy I can't quite pull it in to bother.There has to be something there to make my heart flutter with the impossibility of it. It can be technique or simply a rendering of something I never expected in a way I never dreamed. Or an ability to go wild with saucepans and spray paint.

All my life as an artist, I wanted to to the work that would make jaws drop because it was anatomically impossible.I think what that really takes is an ability to bend, break, mutilate and somewhat ignore our hidebound rules.The ones that stop us from making something large, or flat, or different. The ones that don't really relate to an art form we're doing. They just used to.Changing the rules can be a wholly liberating experience. Can stippling threads cross? Touch? Kiss? I hope so. Can I use purple and orange with blue as a chaser? Will the world go on fire?
I hope so.
I hope you all take time to look at a rule, a truly limited rule that needs some real mutilation, and bend it out of shape.Because when we do that, the anatomically possible is a real probability, glowing ahead on the highway of our next creation.

You'll find Brandon McConnell's astonishing work and classes on his site at Spacepaintings.com