Cloud Cutter

Posted by Clementine Woodhouse Appleby  

I was employed to help artist Helen Reynolds get her cloud installation ready for the Translucent Landscapes exhibition. It all starts with a drawing by Helen that looks something like this:  

My job was to trace the shape onto a new piece of paper and label it; then I had to cut off the outside layer and and draw around the new shape - which became the next layer. This process was repeated until all of the cloud layers were drawn separately onto paper. Then the cutting began! 

Every shape had to be cut out and kept organised. When a whole cloud had been cut out, I started gluing. We glued small squares of foam board to the biggest layer (the first one I cut), and then put dollops of glue on top of each square and laid the next biggest size on top of that, smoothing it down to strengthen the bond. We kept moving down in size but up in height, until eventually the clouds really began to form before our eyes.  

There were regular caffeine breaks of course - there are only so many squiggly lines one can look at before they start moving on the page in front of you!

At the same time as all of this was going on, the other artists were popping in and out, getting their work finished and their rooms ready for the opening. They came during their lunch breaks and as soon as they had finished work, which really showed me their dedication to their art and how much they cared about it.

I’ve really enjoyed working with Helen and know I’ll never look at a cloud the same way again! The whole experience has given me a new appreciation for artists and art alike and I hope this exhibition continues to go really well for all these lovely people.

Clouds by Helen Reynolds

Light in the Antarctic: Margaret Elliot

Freeze Frame 1

 The pressure ridge reared up like a frozen wave threatening to break as we walked along it into a distance of shifting cloud shadows. I am still fiddling with this work, must stop. 
500 x 2000 mm.

Freeze frame 2

This work recreates some memorable light effects I experienced outside Scott Base at 1 in the morning. The photos I took didn’t really do it (I often find bad photos make a good starting point for a painting). 
300mm x1500 mm

Freeze Frame 3  

This currently looks like a collapsed Pavlova. It is currently being made less distinct and hopefully more translucent. Watch this space

Freeze Frame 3a  

Light effects …… If I only had time 

The studio with the works under construction -- still tweaking.

Visit to the Optometrist's

One day two weeks ago, the cloud on the Rimutakas so low it was like driving in the sky, I joined the other nine artists involved in Translucent Landscapes at the exhibition venue - an abandoned optometrist's premises in Ghuznee Street, Wellington. I am a poet - being part of an 'exhibition' is new to me. The others are visual artists in a range of media from photography to videomedia to installation art, landscape architects, a composer. 

We arrive around noon, most of us, some have been there a while. We stand at the edges to start with, this is, have you met. Helen, the gentle organiser. She's made muffins with oats and fruit in them. Her son, the composer, plucks at the mandolin, walks in arcs.

We peel off. Follow the composer's lead. Stand and look: the well-lit reception with 2 x 2.2 windows, a long desk, the plastic hooks where spectacles were displayed once, lit squares in the walls for goodness knows what, the view onto Glover Park. When I was studying landscape architecture, we observed the park for 24 hours, all through the night, taking shifts. 

The small eye-testing rooms with no natural light, white walls. Perfect. Can I paint it?

Some of the artists cluster. Talk about children. Holidays. 

Measure. Squint. Take photographs. Gesture at corners, walls. Stalagmites. 

I was just thinking. That one for me. Perhaps. How about this one? How would that be for you? I like this. Yes, this. This. Thinking. No not there. Here. Have you thought? I'm still. 

Eating one of Helen's muffins. There's take-out coffee. Across the road it says PARKING, The French Art Shop, World Trade Centre (faded). 

In Glover Park people come and go inside the neat squares. Mostly apart unless already in a cluster. A father with two children and ice-creams, a couple standing on a bench animated, man reading the newspaper, a pigeon. A reflection of us, inside. Coming and going. Framed in the windows. On show? I think so. 

On the other side of the park is a building with an elegant dome and a place at the top to stand and look at the world. A widow's walk. I bet you can see the harbour from there.

Maybe if I put. This room, for me, for sure. Over here. Fine. A projection. At night. The park. How much? How about? 

And the poems, where? The composer, Iain, and I talk by the spectacle hooks. He's not recording his music, will play it on the launch night with a guitarist and violinist. A performance. Just that. I wonder if that's enough for a poem: performed on launch night, printed out, perhaps. A few pages, displayed on the spectacle hooks. 

There are, as you'd expect, a lot of mirrors here, as well as the windows. Everywhere, squares of light, muted by city dust. The windows need washing. I'll ask Eddie. 

Still, a poem exhibited is a compelling idea. In large font on a large window, perhaps? The words opened up, given depth, by the place where they rest. Resolutely opaque but still, in a way, translucent - the light allowed (figuratively) through. The 'landscape' behind the words: PARKING, The French Art Shop, World Trade Centre, Glover Park, the dome, the widow's walk. I'll look into it.

Make notes. Measure with my feet. Take photos with my phone. One of the shots is in the middle of the optometrist's, somewhere between mirrors and windows. When I get home, I see myself in it. Framed and blocked by the light. Yet, possibly, vaguely translucent.