Lisa Travers Art

Spring has sprung

2011-04-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

I recently began some training with Creative Alliance in Birmingham: ‘School-Up’ a mentoring scheme for artists and creatives who want to take their practice into educational settings... Being based at the Custard Factory I felt right at home, and looking forward to seeing what the rest of the course will bring…

In Moseley the Cross café & bar have initiated an exciting promotional project, inviting local artists to contribute artwork for combined monthly calendars and listings for the venue. I’m the first artist to be asked and thrilled with the outcome (see above)...

I have been taking some time to consider how web presence contributes to the output of an artist, and how to expand those networks that began in 2009. To begin I’ve created a sister blog Eloquent Graphism: a photo journal that I’ve had in mind, a place for images of handwriting and graffiti…

And I’m getting ready to launch an online shop Salvaged Script. ... Etsy.com is the most inspired and marvellous trading place for makers and collectors, if you don’t know it then go and check it out now… Read all about Etsy here…

'Ècriture’

2010-12-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

In two more sleeps time I’m opening my little ‘Ècriture’ exhibition in my favourite café – Maison Mayci (the Moseley branch)… I’ve been asking Remi there if I can hang some work on his walls ever since they opened earlier this year, and so… finally, just before we see out 2010, we’ll be hosting a pretty little evening of art, and booze, and French patisseries… This is my first exhibition in Moseley in 6 years and it’s a joy to be showing work there again and throwing a party in my favourite part of the city. Opening this Friday at 7pm… and carrying on till late somewhere in the village…

Et voila… Un tres bon soir… Ooh la la!

Come down, have a (French) beer (or two)… Merci beaucoup!

Forthcoming exhibition at Maison Mayci café in Moseley

2010-11-14T07:58:00.000-08:00

I’m opening a little exhibition this December at the Maison Mayci café in Moseley Village… it will include some small artworks and works on paper and I’m planning a special night of French delights! If you haven’t been to this wonderful café yet (they also have a spot on Poplar Road in Kings Heath), I urge you to go and pay them a visit… fantastic coffees, cakes, patisseries, sandwiches, as well as daily fresh bread and other deli-cious foods, we were crying out for a place like Mayci for so long!

...If you would like to come along to the exhibition opening on Friday 3^rd December, please write to me using the email address on the right, and putting ‘rsvp’ in the subject line, or follow this link for the facebook event. Otherwise the exhibition will be hanging for roughly two weeks until the 18^th December…

A blog I’ve been following is that by none other than Keith the landlord of the tip-top Prince of Wales pub in the village – ‘Pub Miscellany’ – wonderful to read some of his staunch and inspired views on Moseley and Moseley economy. A recent post ended with: “We need to look to the creative, cultural, Bohemian side of our brand. These are the attributes that differentiate and these are the aspects of Moseley we need to strengthen to create a vibrant future for everyone.”

Recollection

2010-09-01T03:23:00.000-07:00

Back in 2004, along with my amazing and beautiful friend Kelly Washbourne (and working under the name ARK), we organised a series of exhibitions in Moseley Village... We met when we both worked for Lee Benson at number nine the gallery and connected straight away through our love of abstract painting... Kelly is a natural and brilliant painter who uses colour like no one else I know and she encouraged me massively to exhibit my work. I might never have thanked her properly but I'm doing it now! We always felt that our stuff worked really well together, and though produced in different ways, there's a correlation between how we aim for a bold graphic simplicity and how many of our ideas relate to the landscape... Back then we had a great venue in the newly refurbished (at the time) upstairs of the Cross, and over six months we invited different people to come and exhibit, play tunes, and hang out... Pogus Caesar, pOsH oNe, Steve Woods, Ash Lloyd and the Lying Cheetah Collective, Mark Wilkinson and Sam McEwan were just some of the contributors... We even sold some art! On our busiest night over 250 people passed through and I think that our closing 'Made in Moseley' exhibition really helped to establish the need for a more focussed artistic agenda in Moseley (now spearheaded by the community development trust). Shortly after this I went off to work at the Custard Factory and Kelly moved to London - six years whizzed by and we haven't shown any work together until now... Tuesday 28th September - we're having a party at The Vaults in Birmingham and you're all invited...

Synergy

2010-08-24T04:11:00.000-07:00

'The combined action of two or more forces is greater than the sum of its parts...'

Mono-types

2010-08-09T03:46:00.000-07:00

Simplicity and joy in the repetition of single forms...

Power of the flower

2010-06-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

The meeting of minds...

2010-06-18T02:12:00.000-07:00

My friend and one of my favourite Birmingham artists Glenn Anderson has curated this 'meeting of minds', to be opened to the public next Thursday at Sauce Gallery in Digbeth, and kindly asked me to join this esteemed crew with some of my work...

Join us for a drink next week if you're in the area!

Cosmos, infinite love

2010-05-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

The piece is made from a salvaged tabletop and measures 80 cm across. I found it half buried in the Cyprus countryside and set about rescuing it and re-using it as a surface. The tabletop has decayed and reveals an interesting texture. I worked on preserving this surface, adding elements of inlayed gold, and of red paint. The piece is inscribed with continuous expressive abstract ‘writing’, which I hope communicates something about love and continuity without words. From afar it looks like a kind of planetary orb, as you get closer the writing swirls around the piece on raised textured areas and the inlayed gold glints along with tiny crimson red details.

Through the (studio) keyhole

2010-05-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

Reflecting

2010-04-06T00:58:00.000-07:00

A restful Easter and time to reflect upon the last two months spent working in Cyprus... I think I made some of the best work I ever have. I also found a new sense of freedom in my calligraphy... The peace and sustained hard work has been good. Today the grand studio scheme begins... "An artist needs a studio" (as my friend and fellow artist Alannah Krutina would say)... a space to accommodate and inspire; to facilitate ideas, work and equipment. A place to reflect. Mine has been a work in progress for some time. But things take time. I'm nearly there... I'll let you know how I get on... x

'Ikons' Exhibition

2010-03-28T23:45:00.000-07:00

E X H I B I T I O N

THE CYPRUS COLLEGE OF ART

6 ELEFTHERIAS STREET

LEMPA

EXHIBITION OF WORK MADE IN CYPRUS

BY ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

L I S A T R A V E R S

PRIVATE VIEW, ALL WELCOME

SATURDAY 27^TH MARCH 5.30 – 7.30 pm

Well, its my last week in Cyprus and my residency at the Cyprus College of Art has literally flown...

The first month was spent working with students from Canterbury UCA and the post grad group here, presenting lectures and receiving wonderful feedback... and the second month was almost entirely spent in the studio creating new work. I feel so lucky to have been given this space and opportunity and am massively grateful to the Paraskos family and the Cyprus College of Art, and all of the students here for their support. It was my chance to thank everybody properly on Saturday evening with a great party... follow this link to see photos from the exhibition...

One more week to go which will mainly be spent clearing out the studio and preparing to travel home... its so bittersweet! I will miss my lovely friends here and the studio so much! all good things must come to an end they say... I'm just so happy that I came back to Cyprus...

Entropy... "is a little bit complicated!"

2010-02-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

The term ‘Entropy’ (brought up here by tutor Mike from Canterbury UCA in a discussion about artist Robert Smithson and land art) seems to encompass many ideas about processes of decay… it’s a word that’s inspired much discussion here amongst the students and has made me consider the elements of decay I’m trying to relay through the work I make… I’ve always tried to make pieces that say something about the place where they come from… and the walls of places for me - tell stories; of history and the passage of time; human gesture; and nature… and this is part of what I will try to translate: creating a reflection of the Cyprus walls that I photograph, and the irreversible processes of decay inflicted upon the facades and exteriors of buildings and city streets… The textures, colours and details I can record in photographs are a constant inspiration… the level of development here, and remnants of history remaining in the in-between and left-alone spaces mean you are constantly exposed to crumbling layered decay… these walls have a special kind of beauty I think… just like the walls of Birmingham, or New York, or anywhere… but entirely specific to this place…

I'm trying to recreate works on paper that reflect this... the photo above shows some experiments I've been doing to create papers to work on... the photos below show sunlit walls of Cyprus...

graffiti ikons...

2010-02-24T02:12:00.000-08:00

Return

2010-02-16T02:45:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Pafos just over a week ago... kindly greeted at the airport at 5.45 am by my friend Paul Croft who runs an archaeological project here, and later happily reunited with friends Kimberley Herbert, Sarah Mason, Josh and Mandy Mohler, and Alessandra Desole... its great to be back here at the Cyprus College of Art, and back in Lempa... even with the cold nights and occasional hail storm! I'm also living with a group of 11 students from UCA Canterbury ... so I'm getting to test out my seminar skills on them and have a laugh at the same time! ... Once again life is sweet and joy of joys I have my own - rather lovely - studio space...

Sketchbooks...

2010-02-03T02:49:00.000-08:00

I'm traveling very soon and always struggle with the amount of stuff I need and the amount of stuff I can actually take... did you know that sportsmen and women get special baggage allowances for their skis/golf-clubs/racquets... but artists do not for their materials... ?!

I fill a lot of sketchbooks and like to have them with me... right now I'm making digital records of some pages so I can have them wherever I go... so maybe I'm a little more digital than analogue after all...

'Writing without Meaning' Part II

2010-01-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

I am pretty new to blogging having only been on here since November. As such I am basking in this new communication with people I have not yet met, and the wonderful response I have received through blogspot and my facebook page. It was so nice to get a message from Ausrine Kersanskaite who is studying fine art in London and shares some of the same interests and concerns as me… I offer a little more here from the introduction of my MA thesis, and wish her the best of luck in her studies… (this excerpt does not include footnotes and references)

‘Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida has essentially underpinned the concept behind this work; that illegible writing in art might convey the contradictory nature of: language, indoctrinated systems and ‘meaning’ itself…’

‘…[written language] is a given system, an external system of marks, sounds and meanings that must be complied with to operate successfully. In this way it could be thought of as an imposed order for communication: if we don’t speak ‘correctly’ we can be misunderstood, if we can’t read or write we are ‘illiterate’ and thereby excluded from the written communication and knowledge of the world. Handwriting itself promotes a prescriptive idea of correctness: it is a skill-based action that involves hand-eye co-ordination, memory, and an alphabetic system that is learnt. This is instilled through systematic education and to achieve writing, letters are practiced over and over again in an effort to create legible meaning on the page. Writing the alphabet is one of the elementary things taught at school, and it is through schooling (an authority system) that handwriting is ultimately ‘sanctioned’, and illegibility is banned. Because of this educational specific, writing may be considered in some ways symbolic of social and cultural oppression: a privilege, and by that, selective. We might also consider that empires and totalitarian systems have ultimately been administrated through the means of writing. Writing then, might be seen as emblematic of power-driven systems: a doctrine and order which seeks to specify and contain meaning and that is in fact, the tool of a hegemonic elite, a ruling class and biased society...

But just as written language may be seen as something contentious or controlling, writing is also a powerful tool for the individual and the collective. The handwritten mark might be considered a vital sign of the individual in a world of impersonal commodities: a fundamental emblem of individual expression, freedom, and power. Words are available to everyone and carry an authority that can be used for personal and politicised motivations, and as a means of subversion. Writing offers the user a means of personal expression and protest. It can act as an exposure of the self; a personal code or declaration that is both ‘personal and personalised’. It can also be made anonymously, and still powerfully subversive, as found in forms of graffiti writing, which are an attack on a physical environment, and appear as a declaration of an individual or collective expressed through the handwritten mark...'

'...I hope to establish that the handwritten mark can transcend the specificity and context of language in favour of visual and material value and significance: opening up the possibilities for the written mark in art and enforcing the idea that the handwritten can carry meaning beyond a conventional concept of language…’

(Taken from 'A Problematic View of Handwriting')

‘…when the context of language is taken away one might say that the written mark ‘reverts’ to drawing, and as an abstract gesture, is therefore open to a different kind of ‘reading’. When reconsidered as a purely graphic visual gesture, without the ‘distraction’ of language, writing is less dependent on a fixed linguistic code and conceptual, objective meaning, and is more attuned to an open interpretation, which in turn creates a space for freedom. Words and writing are not easily severed from meaning and their initial function; to be freed from reference, and freed from a linguistic role, the signifier and signified must be disengaged: the writing must be ‘illegible’ so that it can exist as pure visual form. I hope now to demonstrate in a simple way, how the illegible handwritten mark can manifest as image.’

(Taken from 'Writing and Drawing: The Handwritten as Material Object')

'…In looking at two examples of ‘foreign’ (not English) and anonymous handwriting found in the street… these examples of writing are intended to promote a response in the viewer that contests a usual response in looking at written text. In the loss of a ‘readable’ message I hope to establish a material and visual significance beyond the functional written message, by considering the ‘abstract’ nature of ‘illegible’ handwriting…’

‘Evidently writing is essentially a visual thing: we have to see it with our eyes for it to function and to understand its meaning we have to read it, but the visual nature of it – the marks made and the materials used, still exist and operate with or without our comprehension of the words written. They retain a visual significance without a primary conceptual function. I am reiterating that writing, because of its graphic and material nature, can exercise a visual effect beyond linguistic content. But what is that visual effect? In considering the illegible handwritten mark purely as graphic expression, severed from function and ‘readability’, what is left behind? Is there a message in the illegible?’

(Taken from 'Looking at Illegibility')

Column

2010-01-11T07:27:00.001-08:00

Time to turn a new page!

2010-01-01T02:19:00.000-08:00

A beautiful new day, a beautiful new year, and I'm thinking about exciting things to come... my residency at the Cyprus College of Art, print editions with Fine Grime Gallery, and exhibitions of new work... 2010 is here brothers and sisters! we are officially living in a very futuristic sounding time!

Night Scripts

2009-12-29T09:58:00.000-08:00

'Writing Without Meaning'

2009-11-29T12:37:00.001-08:00

In August I completed my masters degree at Birmingham City University in History of Art. My thesis - Writing Without Meaning: Investigating illegible handwriting as an artistic device - puts into context all of the artwork I have made and the work I want to make... I include an excerpt here from the introduction and I am having the essay produced in book form with the inclusion of many images...

'This dissertation will explore the nature of illegible handwriting in art, considering forms of writing that defy the usual conventions of language to create a kind of writing without meaning. The idea of meaningless writing would appear to be an anomaly as written language is specifically designed to communicate a readable message, yet I will set out to look at the ways that some artists have created exactly that: wordless script; writing without semantic content; writing that through illegibility subverts a fundamental structure upon which we might say the communication of meaning depends: language.

Handwriting is a recognisable and distinctive kind of mark making which may constitute messages for the viewer beyond an original intention. I wish to explore the possible messages carried in ‘meaningless’ writing in artworks by means of exploring the essential character of the handwritten mark and the possible reasons for making illegible script... Drawing on the significance in abstracting a key method of communication, I will look at some art practices that have done this and explore the possible reasons why... Considering the anarchic and subversive space this kind of expression may occupy, and instigating some questioning in terms of why would people wish to develop such an art form as ‘meaningless’ writing? And can this 'writing' really evade meaning?...'

Pictures like music...

2009-11-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

rhythm & verse... lyrical expressivity... undulating and beating line... of dynamism, simplicity and repetition... beatific!

For sometime now I have been concentrating on the creation of rhythmical linear patterns - abstract patterns that recall the gestural fluidity and repetition found in hand writing, signatures and graffiti tags... In simple terms they are handwriting patterns... in more complex terms: a dynamic complexity and interrelation is formed through the repetition and adaptation of single forms. Together a sense of order, and of chaos is aroused - and, I hope, a joyous expression of gestural freedom that ultimately occurs through the creation of a kind of illegible handwriting as artistic expression...

My Autumn Studio

2009-11-28T05:18:00.000-08:00

In the 'Terry Frost studios', Lempa, Cyprus, October 2009...

Cyprus Walls

2009-11-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

This year I spent some time at The Cyprus College of Art...

This was a wonderful excursion and inspirational break following the completion of my masters degree... I had a beautiful time in Lempa, and made some beautiful friends. I am returning in 2010 for a short residency which will involve some lecturing, more studio work and an exhibition... can't wait! Watch this space...

City Walls

2009-11-24T09:18:00.000-08:00

Wherever I go, I photograph the walls there. Here are just some of the many pictures I have of city walls...

New York (of course)... Las Palmas, Gran Canaria... Paris... Hurghada, Egypt... Manchester... Bath... and Birmingham (... of course!)

m a n d a l a

2009-11-17T06:10:00.000-08:00

The mandala is a kind of infinite meditation... in a circle...

Kandinsky wrote about the ‘inner force of the circle in its countless variations’

I am working on new ideas for mandala like paintings...

I called these pieces 'Lovesong I and II'

A love song is

a simple construction, like a circle... but love is infinite and complex, like a mandala... like the cosmos...

"Conceive these images... "

2009-11-17T03:02:00.001-08:00

'This work is about my love of graffiti and the walls surrounding us that are continuously changed by nature and human interaction... Cities are painted with a thousand signatures, and endless markings - these illuminated and calligraphic lines are wondrous and endless in potential meaning to me... allowing my imagination to soar beyond the regulated space and order of an urban environment...

Nothing says more to me about our connection to the city or our place in it than graffiti - these unsolicited lines are the most natural, spontaneous, and therefore inspirational that I find in my journeys... Next to the concrete blocks of shops and centres, and the endless, endless billboards and advertising... graffiti is a vital sign of life - a sign of the actual individual actually living in this place!

In 1908 Jules Romains wrote: 'I strongly believe that the bonds of feeling between a man and his city, that the whole ethos, the large movements of consciousness, the colossal passions of human groups are capable of creating a profound lyricism or a superb epic cycle'...

I am seeking to convey unspoken visual languages and to capture rhythms in the city's aesthetic that can define the dynamism of urban life and in turn our connection to, and retaliation against the city space... I hope ultimately that these graffiti etched ikons reflect a sentimentality for city walls.

Wall writing, for me, legible or illegible, is beautiful and gestural in its nature... it can also be temporary and fleeting which incites me to make permanent in a piece of art...'

WINDY CITY SOUL

2009-11-16T17:14:00.000-08:00

In 2005 I had my first solo show at the Custard Factory in Digbeth, Birmingham. I was working there at the time and wanted to share my work with the people I had come to know, in a place that has come to be an important catalyst for the creative collectivity in Birmingham... Lots of people came. It was good. Sandra Hall from friction arts took some of these pictures.

Digbeth...

2009-11-16T17:10:00.000-08:00

Digbeth is an important part of Birmingham's culture and heritage - not least because developers continue to rip our city up to create more shops and roads - and it is one area that retains a sense of history and local culture... there's a faded beauty to Digbeth's old streets and factories, and a sense of meaning and future significance in the layers of old, and new lives being lived out there... and there are beautiful walls reflecting this... that's why I love it there...

IKONS

2009-11-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

Around 2002 I began to make what I think of as 'Ikons'... graffiti glazed in wood, 'devotional' pieces... to the 'writing' I had been obsessed by... the unsolicited marks, scrawls, and signatures... I became devoted to the written gesture

begin the beguine

2009-11-13T17:15:00.000-08:00

I have to start somewhere... so here goes... I spent a long time walking around with my camera, photographing graffiti. Lots of it. I love graffiti...