User:Shushanik-moutafian

Shushanik-Moutafian

Object from the Boijman

Gertrud Vasegaard,Ronne 1913 - 2007

Kom, 1974

Steengoed, glazuur

Research: Gertrud Vasegaard

Gertrud Vasegaard is the great Danish ceramist of the 20th Century. In Denmark she was recognised again and again and awarded many prizes. Privately she lived a very quiet life, like a Zen-Buddhist, from 1969 alone, together with her daughter the ceramist Myre Vasegaard (1936-2006). Her art, however, was just as generous and subtle as her daily life was austere and modest. Her ceramic work an art pure and strong – equals a level as high as that of Lucie Rie and Hans Coper.

Bowls, vessels and other traditional forms created by Gertrud Vasegaard in stoneware, with such personal integrity and magnetism, make the surrounding rooms vibrate with their own emptiness. Her works just stand there – mild and majestic – with great serenity. But a unique work of Gertrud Vasegaard only reveals its subtle depths slowly. There is a greatness and nobility embedded in the simple, sophisticated, and textural. Form, decoration, body and glaze always unite, giving each piece a silent, warm mental plenitude. No loudness is to be registered, only dynamic rest – like "a Chinese jar still moves perpetually in its stillness" (T.S. Eliot). Each piece stands tangible, down-to-earth, the stoneware mass can be felt in such a way that the textural effect of the material comes into its own. Decorations might look as simple ornaments, engraved, painted, or pressed in contrasting colours, but in fact they are part of her artistic way of celebrating our existence. She was no ceramic rebel; but a master of the craft and an artist who was also a poet. Art is the craft of the mind. The art of Gertrud Vasegaard is obviously connected to the abstract movements of the visual art of the 20th Century, but it is also of a timeless character.

Her works reflect the light, almost dancing with it, but never absorbing it. Gentle tones of grey and white, however the works are never monochrome. Her restricted palette has delicate modulations of umbers, siennas, whites, greens, greys and blues – not unlike the works of the famous Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi. Gertrud Vasegaard wanted light to reflect an openness and spiritual feeling of benevolence. Technically, she achieved triumphs in making lightly crackled glaze that shine – almost like the famous “Ru ware” from the Northern Song Dynasty made between the years 1086-1106.

Her use of lines is special too. The visual movement is upwards. Abstract triangles, quadrangles, spirals, stripes, and rectangles are seen on her forms in perfect harmony. She actually has made the use of the line a speciality in Danish ceramics, using the line as controlled energy and a formative element in the individual work. Form and decoration melting together in a unique way. Lines bring elements together: base and top, the movement of the eye and the three-dimensional form. The "kumme" form has been one of her most innovative ceramic cylinder forms with upward moving lines – giving a stronger sense the "turning" of the cylinder. However, they are also part of a story of well organized "dividual" lines. Giving a spiritual expression to each piece of work, dividual and individual elements, are interconnected in a way that recalls the work of Paul Klee.

Even Anita Besson was not able, years ago, to convince Gertrud Vasegaard of the fruitfulness of a solo show abroad. That is why this exhibition is something special. Gertrud Vasegaard wanted to concentrate on making new bowls, vessels and her masterful "kumme" cylinders. It is only now that we can get a full evaluation of the unique strength and importance of her achievements. During her lifetime only one retrospective exhibition was to be organized in the Danish Museum of Art & Design (Kunstindustrimuseet) in Copenhagen in 1984, followed by Stockholm and Holstebro. Some of her most beautiful and important pieces were made after this exhibition and have yet to be widely seen.

In the summer of 2011 a second retrospective will take place at the "Holstebro Kunstmuseum" and at the "Bornholm Kunstmuseum" in Denmark. She is represented in public and private collections in many countries. Although she participated in the international breakthrough of “Danish Design” during the 1950s and 1960s and became known worldwide inside the craft world, she never wanted to look for international reputation and honour. However, more than just being seen as a member of a local craft movement, she should be recognised as a great artist.

Gertrud Vasegaard had a meditative way of working and living, with warmth and humanity at its core. No wonder, she also had an objection to being quoted. She worked as a ceramist from the 1930s till the beginning of the 21st Century. Many of her most important works were shown at the "Martsudstillingen", an exclusive group of fine artists with whom she exhibited from 1969 to 1982, and later at "Den Frie", in "Clausens Kunsthandel" in Copenhagen and in "Galleri Profilen" in Aarhus. The quality of her work was steadily improving until she stopped working in 2003.

In a masterly manner Gertrud Vasegaard has used colours, clear forms and lines, and simple but subtle decorations to create the greatness of silence, a suspending of time; yet her works seem pregnant with the potential of endless becoming.

2/24 February 2011 Henning Jørgensen

Professor (in political science) at Aalborg University, Denmark. Author of Danish Art History from 1930 to 1995, and a forth coming biography of Gertrud Vasegaard.

Source: link= http://www.galeriebesson.co.uk/exhibitions.html

More work of Gertrud Vasegaard What I found interesting

Dish with brown decoration, 1990, 8x35.5cm

Lidded pot, 1986, 20x25cm

White bowl with basketwork in brown, c. 1978, stoneware, 11.6x18cm

Hexagonal 'Kumme' pot, yellow and white decoration, 1990, 22.2x13cm

Large bowl, white with brown bands, 1976, 15.5x43cm

Skål. 1978

Cylinder Pot. 1999,Wheel-thrown, scratched pattern, glazed stoneware, 26,5 cm (height), 29,5 cm (diameter)

Ceramics

Shio Kusaka

Bodil Manz

Akio Nukaga

Used plastic

After using the contents of plastic we don't do anything with it and doesn't have a value anymore. By re-using the plastic and making something new out of it the plastic is having an new value. By doing this, we are going to look to the same plastic in a different way. I want that it is going to be more accessible for the people.

Some samples of used plastic

This are some samples what people are making from recycled plastic. What I want to found out is, how I can re-use my own recycled plastic and turn it into textile in an innovative way by finding a special technique

Other artist - Michelle Baggerman

http://www.bureaubaggerman.nl/

Even when you always try to bring a reusable bag or a basket with you to the shops, the disposable plastic bag is a product that is hard to avoid. I researched the lifecycle of these bags and decided it could be made much longer.

The mass-produced plastic shopping bag is a cheap and disposable product, meant to be used no more than a few times before it starts tearing and becomes useless. Of course plastic can be recycled, which is good in principle because it is not exhausting natural resources, but the process of recycling itself isn't very environmentally friendly. Recycling plastic takes lots of energy, heat, chemicals, causes harmful emissions and the recycled material is always of a poorer quality than the virgin material. Better would be to extend the use of a product for as long as possible before recycling, but these plastic bags were made for short-term use and need to be discarded quickly.

My goal was to alter plastic shopping bags in a way that would extend the lifecycle of the material, to improve its negative qualities and preserve its positive qualities.

This lead to 'Precious Waste', a textile made entirely out of used plastic shopping bags that were spun into yarns and then woven. The resulting fabric forms a big contrast with the cheap, mass-produced bags it is made of. The plastic shopping bag is transformed by pure hand work into a beautiful and strong material that's suitable for making new bags with a much longer life-span, or a wide range of other purposes. No chemicals, no heat or even electricity needed. When this textile is eventually worn out it can still be recycled in the conventional way, because it is not mixed with any other material, and can then be made into a new product once again.(http://www.bureaubaggerman.nl/)

http://vimeo.com/108140657

- Dave Hakkens

http://davehakkens.nl/

http://davehakkens.nl/work/precious-plastic/

Plastic is one of the most precious materials on earth. It’s lightweight, strong, easy to shape and great to recycle. But plastic is seen as a disposable and worthless material, it’s cheap, produced in enormous quantities and shipped all over the world. Of all the plastic we use just 10% is recycled. Mainly because the machines that produce plastic products are expensive, extremely complex and are used very efficient to keep costs low. Working with recycled plastic runs the risk of damaging or polluting machines, which might slow down the production process.

Plastic can easily be recycled. It needs relative low temperatures and pressures. Look around and you’ll notice plastic waste is everywhere around us. We just need to sort it and have tools to turn it into new things.This project is a set of plastic machines, developed to set up a small scale plastic workshop. The machinery is based on general industrial techniques, but designed to build yourself. The machine is easy to use and made to work with recycled plastic. Whilst this entire project is still in development, the machines are shared open source online and improved by the community.

- G-star RAW collaborations with Pharrell Williams as creative director of bionic yarn

PHARRELL WILLIAM CURATES A COLLABORATION BETWEEN BIONIC YARN AND G-STAR TO TURN OCEAN PLASTIC INTO DENIM

Pharrell Williams, Creative Director of Bionic Yarn, announces ‘RAW for the Oceans’, a long-term collaboration between denim brand G-Star RAW and Bionic Yarn. Together they launch the first collection made with recycled plastic from the oceans........ http://www.parley.tv/thevortexproject/#vortex4

RAW for the Oceans is a collaborative project that takes plastic from the world’s oceans and transforms it into innovative denim and apparel. The process of making the world’s first denim from recycled ocean plastic, explained from Step One

http://rawfortheoceans.g-star.com/#!/tagged/project/0

STEP 1: OUT OF THE OCEAN. Plastic pollution is first retreived from our oceans, and with 700 million tonnes of it out there, there is plenty to work with.

STEP 2: PIECED IN PREPARATION. The retrieved ocean plastic is broken down into chips and then shredded to fibres, ready to be spun into yarn.

STEP 3: SPINNING THE YARN. Ocean plastic fibres are spun into strong core yarn and then helixed with cotton, making Bionic® yarn.

STEP 4: WEAVING AND KNITTING. The innovation is complete with the weaving or knitting of Bionic® yarn into RAW for the Oceans fabrics.