|
Daisy Bowl |
Australian Olive Hughes' two encounters with the medium of pyrography were somewhat by chance. Always devoted to art, Olive set out as a young lady to study painting and that has been her focus throughout her life. This segment is dedicated to telling about her second encounter with pyrography and then linking to a firsthand account of Olive Hughes' original encounter with pyrography--as a factory worker in the 1930s.
By a fortunate twist of fate--after about sixty years!--Olive's talents for pyrography were rediscovered by the Woodturners Guild in Sydney, Australia.
For the last four years, this remarkable octagenarian has been producing work like the examples shown here, decorating their handsome turned-wood pieces in a masterful blending of pyrography and painting.
|
Waterlilies Bowl |
Olive's Curriculum Vitae is a fascinating list of travels combined with art that anyone would envy.
In pursuit of her painting career, Olive has studied with G. K. Townshend, Desiderious Orban, and credits Rubery Bennett with guidance.
Between 1969 and 1979, she visited art centres in nine countries of Europe plus Israel, as well as pursuing studies in England. Also during that decade, she attended a World Education Conference in Japan and studied at the International Academy in Salzburg, Austria. She also went to Vermont, U.S.A. to paint with Claude Croney and was even able to travel to remote Alaska, U.S.A. to see Eskimo art.
|
Two Koalas |
Olive didn't slow down for the decade of the 1980s either--quite the
contrary! She traveled regularly every couple of years to various
places in the United States to give workshops and lectures.
Between 1981 to 1986, in her capacity as an Art Lecturer for P. & O.
Shipping Lines serving the Pacific and the Mediterranean, Olive traveled
to Japan, Korea, China, and Malaysia. She even managed to visit Nepal
with a group of artists. That decade of the 1980s and even into 1991
was also a period when she had successful one-woman exhibitions of
paintings and even sculpture, too. Besides Australia and the United
States, her work is in private collections in England, continental
Europe, Canada, and Japan.
It was IAPA member Sue Walters who first heard about Olive Hughes
through an article in the Australian Wood Review magazine,
issue #23. Thanks to her efforts in soliciting permission from the
Australian Wood Review magazine, the E-Museum was able to reprint
their article entitled Rekindling
an Art in its entirety. The Australian Wood Review, like
many other magazines today, has been observing and documenting the
resurgence of the pyrographic medium in the art world.
Olive's story--especially her first encounter with pyrography--is the
focus of that article, much of it told in Olive's own words, telling
about when she was a very young woman working as an artist in a poker
work factory in Australia starting almost seventy years ago.
You are invited to click on the article's link to visit a period in the
history of pyrography as seen through the eyes of Olive Hughes.
|
|
American artist M. Jordan Tierney works and lives in the same place. She is a partner in 57N Fine Art in Washington, DC, a studio and art gallery complex plus apartments in an adapted warehouse in northwest Washington, DC, not far from the Capitol Building. In addition, she has her own business, Azimuth Art and Framing, specializing in custom framing; exhibit design, fabrication, and installation; and crating.
For the time being, however, Jordan is neither living nor working in
Washington. She just left in October 2000 to work as Artist in
Residence at the Austrian Federal Chancellery in Vienna Austria where
she will be staying through the month of December.
When I last talked to Jordan, on the very day she was hurriedly packing
to leave for Vienna, I asked her if she had learned her pyrography in
college. She replied that she had started burning later. She couldn't
remember exactly when, she continued, but at some "impasse" in
her work, she tried a blowtorch to get the effect she needed.
"Paint sits on the surface," she further explained, "
I want a lot of history and burning achieves that antique feeling
and patina. It is one with the surface."
|
|
Jordan made an analogy to working with charcoal on paper to explain why burning appeals to her so much. She said that she likes to be able to "sand things off" as she's working.
Special Burning
Techniques.
As evidenced in the examples here, blowtorch pyrography has
become a major component of Jordan's recent assemblage work. In
addition, she occasionally uses a conventional woodburning tool. She
prefers to work on plywood for the grain exposure, something she makes
use of quite effectively when working with her blowtorch.
|
|
Although she never felt she was the only one doing pyrography, Jordan doesn't know anyone else working in this medium.
The arranging and texturing of her assemblages is Jordan's forté.
Her use of grid patterns is very striking and not only caught this
writer's attention, but also that of Ferdinand Protzman of The
Washington Post who had this to say in April 1999 about Jordan and
"her incorporation of some form of grid pattern in every work.":
Whether it is the wires of a discarded bedspring in
"Aftermath" or the checkerboard of plywood squares on which
Tierney has painted [in blowtorch pyrography, did he not realize?] a
haunting figure in "Topological
Presence," [on display in her E-Museum Salon], the grid gives
her assemblages a new thematic and stylistic rigor.
He went on to say: This sectioning off calls to mind the way we divide
time and space for a variety of purposes. But the compartmentalization
is also an invitation to individually investigate each square, and then
to try and see how they all fit together.
Jordan juxtaposes shadowy suggestions of human figures with concrete elements of the assemblage. Particularly pleasing and intriguing is her piece entitled "Augural Shadows" showing a human figure, mostly skeletal, partially obscured by rows of flasks. The flasks, which contain paper dolls, are also very curious.
You may, like this writer, have to look up the word "Trephining" in the dictionary to really grasp Jordan's interpretation of an ancient (and gruesome) medical practice that has some modern practitioners today. Clue #1: If you look carefully, you will be able to observe a nail right in the center of the top of the figure's head. Clue #2: Object on lower right of the assemblage.
Visit her E-Museum Salon to see the whole work "Augural Shadows" (shown in detail in this segment) and more examples of Jordan Tierney's assemblages.
|
Pyrography Designs
|
Paperback; 37 color photos; 358 black-and-white line drawings;111 pages;
ISBN: 1 86108 116 2; publisher: Guild Of Master Craftsman Publications
Ltd, East Sussex, U.K.
|
 |
The AuthorKathleen M. Garvey Menéndez learned her pyrography techniques in Guatemala in 1975-1977. Her sister, Artist Sharon H. Garvey, later joined her there to collaborate on a pyrography project designed to promote this art form in the United States by means of a didactic book and a pyrography tool made by Navarro of Mexico.Thanks to the internet, January 2000 marked the beginning of the fourth year of articles on pyrography for the WWWoodc@rver E-Zine, started January 1997, and the third year of the E-Museum of Pyrographic Art, which opened January 1998. In March of that year, the International Association of Pyrographic Artists (IAPA) was formed and members began meeting on line. Linked from the E-Museum's Café Flambé, which hosts the IAPA meetings, is the eGroups uniting_pyrographers mailing list, member list, and chat forum set up by Mixo Sydenham of Australia for IAPA members. |
© 2000 Kathleen M. Garvey Menéndez, all rights reserved.
