Cultivating Creativity Calendar

American artist, Alexander Calder is probably most well-known for his kinetic sculptures using colourful, cut-out forms and wire, which he called ‘mobiles’.  Often inspired by nature and using found materials in his early pieces, he made his artworks by ‘drawing in space’ with materials available to him to create sculpture that came to life through movement, action, chance and the elements.

American artist, Rachel Simmons makes zines and artist books using several art-making processes and effective, inexpensive techniques. Her work looks at the weaving between personal narratives and landscape, particularly memories, as well as social justice and environmentalism.

Her zine, Chain of Lakes, is based on a map of her childhood hometown of Orlando, Florida, and explores the different shapes, colours and textures of its geography, topography, and social make-up.

Irish artist, Kathy Prendergast is interested in geography and landscape. She frequently employs cartography – or map-making – as a vehicle for her artwork, deconstructing, creating and modifying maps and representation of land using different processes to transform and change how power, identity and narrative are in social consciousness.

Her work Fujidelic is an example, where she has overwritten the flat composition of a map of Mount Fuji in Japan by overlaying it with her own hand-painted, explosive and electric meditation on pattern, colour and the infinite quality of space.

Watch a video about Predergast’s work below.

Cabinet-maker, could you craft me a conker?
Oil its wood, burnish its veneer, set it glowing
from within?
Never. Not a chance. No hope at all.
King, then, could you command me a conker?
Compel its green spikes to grow, its white plush to thicken?
Impossible. Impractical. Inconceivable.
Engineer, surely you could design me a conker?
Refine its form, mill its curves and edges?
Manufacture me that magic casket?
Unfeasible. Unworkable. Unimaginable.
Realise this (said the Cabinet-maker, the King and
the Engineer together), conker cannot be made,
however you ask it, whatever word or tool you use,
regardless of degree. Only one thing can conjure
conker – and that thing is tree.

By Robert MacFarlane

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