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What are you doing this Saturday from 12-18:30? Hidden River Festival is taking place in a marvelous location beside the New River Path, near the East and West reservoirs at Woodberry Down. The Hidden River Festival is a free annual waterside event, giving local people a chance to enjoy a mix of live music, food stalls, art and fun for all the family with the aim of connecting the communities living alongside the New River, which runs through Hackney and Haringey. The festival is organized by Manor House Development Trust and the schedule looks pretty busy. 🙂
I’ll be present at the festival as I’m doing a Draw with Sand – Create New Rivers workshop and selling small works of art, drawings, prints and KAJ – Krupinska Abalone Jewellery. This will be a good opportunity for any first-time art buyers to start a collection with an affordable piece of art.
©Silvia Krupinska, Trochus sculpture on abalone shell, 2013. All rights reserved.
Abalone Heart ©Silvia Krupinska 2014
I feel for our rivers, the veins of our lives and society. I’m incurably curious about where water comes from and how it is cleaned, appearing by magic in our taps! My Draw with Sand – Create New Rivers workshop gives us an opportunity to learn about our local water spaces and where tap water in Woodberry Down comes from. We are lucky to have Woodberry and Walthamstow Wetlands Nature Reserves on our doorstep. You can talk to me about your experiences walking outdoors while you learn to draw with sand and make your very own river drawing. You can get inspired by the maps of local water shapes, or simply create a phantasy river or lake from shades of sand and abalone mother of pearl flakes.
Competition for all participants: There will be a chance for all taking part to win a mini mountain lake artwork. I’ll pull a winner out of a hat at 5pm the same day.
I’ll be sharing a gazebo with a fantastic bio artist and friend Mellissa Fisher! Her workshop titled Microbial Me will give you a chance to create a microbial self-portrait! There is going to be so much happening. You can check out the festival program just below.
HIDDEN RIVER FESTIVAL – SATURDAY 10th SEPTEMBER 2016 – 12:00 – 18:30
From Redmond Community Centre, along the canal paths of the New River on the East and West Reservoir and Lordship Road, Woodberry Down Estate – Kayani Avenue, N4 2HF
www.hiddenriverfestival.co.uk, www.facebook.com/events/273312146376886/
This month is for questioning of the mediums I practice. I’m making brand new works with use of colour and plaster; all this is set on normally a painting base – canvas. However, the painting is transformed into a sculpture! This new object questions its position. It “lives” between the mediums of painting and object art. Today’s piece is No. 2 of the new series of ‘Sculptures on Canvas’. I’d be interested to read, what you think. You can respond to it by commenting in the ‘comment box’ under the post. Thank you and see you soon! (To see the first sculpture on the canvas in the series, click on this link.)
No.1 artwork of this year is finished. It was started at the 2-day sculpting demonstration ‘Blueberry extraction from plaster’ at The Stone Space Gallery in Leytonstone, London, where I’ve currently another ‘Pearl’ Sculpture in the show – ‘artFORMS‘. Show closes on Sunday Jan 6th, 6pm. If you’re interested to have a similar event in your venue or gallery, contact me for details please. Thank you.
Final touches on the new work. Plaster, limpet. 5.8cm © Silvia Krupinska
First sculpture of 2013 finished. Plaster, limpet. 5.8cm
© Silvia Krupinska
It’s my pleasure to announce a birth of another organic sculpture. Somehow this one is special to me as I’d been planning it for long time.
The images speak best, so I won’t write much more, apart I need to tell you this sculpture is called Perla and it is made from plaster-de-Paris and three pearls. It is 5.8 cm across and it’s available for a limited time directly from my studio.
I’m holding the pearl shell open, about to harvest my pearl. © Silvia Krupinska
Black pearl in a shell. © Silvia Krupinska
Three of my beautiful pearls I harvested. © Silvia Krupinska
Dust of black, white and pink pearl I produced. © Silvia Krupinska
Silvia Krupinska, Perla 2012. © Silvia Krupinska
Silvia Krupinska, Perla 2012. © Silvia Krupinska
Silvia Krupinska, Perla 2012. © Silvia Krupinska
© Silvia Krupinska
© Silvia Krupinska
© Silvia Krupinska
This is my smallest plaster sculpture to date (6 cm across). Work in progress.
© Silvia Krupinska
Botany Bay near Margate
Silvia Krupinska, Outdoor instalation at Botany Bay, England, 2012, Copyright S.Krupinska 2012
These are images of my latest work in progress. This time instead of grapes, I’m using some blueberries as sculpting material. Blueberry extraction technique experiments have been fun to do, and I love the smell of the fruit as well. These are going to be a couple of very healthy art works! For the following two sculptures, I cast 15 blueberries each.
Please click here for more information. Thanks.
Image of a work in progress.
As Organicities approaches in 2 weeks I’m considering how to refresh the installation of my sculptures, especially those that are longing their “natural” environment. To be more specific, I’m talking about “From the Bottom of the Sea Sculptures“. To make it feel more comfortable, and “like at home” I’m having a go at testing it’s unfinished cousin, plaster ball, immersed in water. There might be even special guests joining, it would be VIF to be precise. To find out more about them, pop in to Debut Contemporary on Saturday15th October 12-5. If you would like to read the press release click here, or for e-flyer click here.
Experiments with the installation of From the Bottom of the Sea Sculpture.
Testing of an unfinished plaster ball in water, is making me think that VIF guests will be coming in! You'll be sure to find out their names on 15.10.11, in Debut Contemporary.
Do you know that feeling, when you sit in your studio, after washing the floor, arranging the wall of your art again, getting ready for an open weekend (more about that later), and just sitting in a chair listening to Radio 4 (yes, I know) and staring in the the ceiling, in pure bliss of being so lucky to have such a space for storing your art ?! The temple of my creation. And then, there it is. ‘My Altar’ 2010 was created. An installation, one of many, that I set up rearanging stuff.
I keep coming back to this picture of my gradmother, back in Slovakia. The power behind it is wordly for me. And I keep daydreaming.
S. Krupinska, 'My Altar' 2010
Krupinska's Studio, August 2010
I love using fruits for my inspiration. I’ve used also pods, nut and seeds previously. What they all for me have in common, are their textures and colours. Something quite special, I could go on and on about it, instead I’ll indulge my self here with a photo. Enjoy!
Hi there. I’ll start to write about my From the Bottom of the Sea sculpture no. 6, and I’ll take you around the journey of sculpting processes in it.
What is it made from? Outdoor plaster, oil paint, and in the making process I used also plasticine. First of all I decided to go for outdoor plaster because previous works I produced, in the same medium seemed to work well for me, and sculpting out of the outdoor plaster was enjoyable. It was strong and wasn’t chipping and it allowed me a certain kind of freedom of decision. Taking a step back, another reason why I wanted a strongest plaster, for it to last long time and make my life easier in transport, but a disadvantage of the denser plaster is, it is very heavy, which I realized in the process. As to when I used Alpha Plaster (Fine Casting Plaster), that left a whiter surface colour however, it was significantly more brittle.
I’ve made five other similar but much smaller plaster sculptures previously, I’ve given this series name: From the Bottom of the Sea.
How is it made? I hesitated about revealing this however, I think sharing processes and techniques is OK, and it gives a deeper insight into my thinking and where I’m getting. This information is only going to be published exclusively on my blog.
I have poured my plaster mix over hundreds of plasticine shapes, into a mould in a square shape measuring about 70×70 cm, to be honest it was an old unused stretched canvas. I isolated it before pouring and let it set overnight. When I returned next day, I struggled to lift it up to my desk. No, it wasn’t stuck in the frame just very heavy. I guess it was at least 20kg. Somehow, I managed to lift it from the floor of my studio to my large desk, where I continued working.
There were a few different stages in making, and the next one was trying to dig out all the shapes from the set plaster, achieving the gappy see-through effect. See the image on top, where some holes have been produced, some plasticine is still showing. The image on the right is showing the reverse side of the piece.
I continued to excavate till all the plasticine was out. After taking a few steps back, looking at the shape and the texture, I needed to make it look neater and shape it so it felt right. I used a power tool to sand down the circles, and I made a decision to cut off the edges with a hand saw, and round it all up into a circle. See the both sides on the photographs with my sculpture rounded.
Organic feeling of the piece and something that looked like it could have been shaped by the water were some of my criteria. I continued on to sculpt the larger organic looking holes and digging into them to multiply the number of them. It was a long process and a lot of hard work. The plaster at that point was already stone hard, and all my tools are looking over-used.
All about the shape. Yes, back to the shapes. In the past, I liked to use as a ‘holding’ shape of a piece circle or square. As I looked at the unfinished sculpture, it being a circle still didn’t work for me, because it felt too real, tight and not natural for what I imagined could have come from the bottom of my imaginary sea. With a little hesitation, whether I’m going to break it in half, or ruin it completely, I made a drastic decision to shape it with a chisel-like tool and a saw to make it less regular with some broken edges, as they have been hitting rocks and sea bottom for some time. Despite it being probably most exciting moment after lifting it from the mould, gosh it was scary too! But aside all that drama, it quite fullfilled what I was aiming for and the final shape was born!
Colour next. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t entirely happy with the sculpture yet. I would sit at home with my laptop, download all images from my camera, which I take each day and I would stare at them.”Think, think, think!” Next day in my studio, I made a decision to go for it, and make a painting of what I felt like it could have been some sort of old floating plants, either attached to my artwork or flowing near it in the water. There, was the sea-weedy colour overtaking the surface of my sculpture, and drops would suggest the direction, where the colour drips and splashes. The sculpture was finished!
Silvia Krupinska - Organic Contemporary Sculpture Blog 
