Blog written by: Fabian Musto | Written on: Tuesday 1st February 2022
Made from: Wednesday 12th January to Monday 31st January 2022.
Artist: Fabian Musto | Inspiration: Olafur Eliasson | "Braille of Loki"
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In early December 2021, my artwork for the previous project were displayed at the Affordable Arts Fair at All Saints church, Hereford, from Monday 6th to Friday 10th December 2021. Six copies of each artwork were sold, and I was impressed to see how well my work sold.
At the same time, a new project for the course was introduced, that being the Accessibility project. We students were told to create an artwork that is accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities.
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INITIAL IDEAS:
2nd December 2021: This was the day when the Accessibility project was introduced. Some of the artworks by students will be featured in the Courtyard, a performing arts theatre on Edgar Street, Hereford.
There was an announcement by an Arts tutor about the project, and after it was finished, I wrote four ideas of what I could make for the project. The first idea was to recreate my mural artworks from February 2021 to real-life, and I was going to make prototypes on BluffTitler (a 3D software) that would help me build it. The second idea was going to create a college of my photographs from 2017-21 on my Geograph account. The prototype photograph featured in the drawing below features Avenue to an Elan Valley Aqueduct valve... © Fabian Musto :: Geograph Britain and Ireland. That can be seen in the centre of the prototype drawing.
The third idea was going out the comfort zone for me, as I planned to build a structure that would fit up to six people inside. This was based on the work of James Turrell, an American artist that popularised the skyspace architectural design from the 1960s onwards. My fourth idea was creating a series of steel rings around my main logo symbol; the "T of Wonder" from 11th June 2017. I originally thought about creating steel outlines of various logos, which I rejected when I drew the drawing ideas later the same day.
The conclusion writes my thoughts on the final outcomes, and I added in another idea that would be my fifth idea. This would be a braille artwork of my minimalist murals from February 2021, which would have looked identical to the first drawing idea seen to the top-left of the photograph seen to the right.
7th December 2021: Around this time, I wrote my project proposal for the Accessibility project. I concluded to work on the combination of my second and third idea. Roblox Studio was the software I used to create 3D prototypes of what the structure and access would look like. I decided to incorporate three of my mural pieces from February 2021 on the skyspace building too.
The only feature I added for disabled users was the slope leading to the entrance, and wheelchair users would be able to look around. I hadn't added braille text to the building since the artwork took all the space on the walls inside. I also realised had to work in the workshops to get this project done, which wouldn't be good for my social anxiety problems. I decided to think of something else.
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8th December 2021: After losing ideas for the Accessibility project, I decided to draw a tribute drawing to my first cat Loki during the afternoon. He passed away tragically on 21st November 2021 while the Affordable Arts Fair project was work in progress. I used my Faber-Castell greyscale markers to colour in Loki, as well as using my Derwent blue metallic marker for Loki's collar from mid August to early November 2021.
14th December 2021: During the ending days of the Autumn term, I talked with my ALS (Additional Learning Support) tutor about my ideas for the Accessibility project. They later told me an idea that made me plan my final piece for the project, and that was tactile artwork. The Henshaws website describes “Tactile art is a way of being able to share a message with your audience” - Henshaws.
This was one of the websites I used to research tactile artwork, as well as being watching this YouTube video on multimodal maps for blind people https://youtu.be/mB-6TNHS7X0.
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ARTIST RESEARCH:
Here is my artist research presentation on a blind artist named Maxim Loskustov, which I made on 20th January 2022 on Microsoft PowerPoint. I reviewed his work by analysing his street artwork on the streets of Yekaterinburg in Russia, and he is based in Moscow, the capital city of Russia. Here is a link to his website, which is named after himself Maxim Loskutov.
On 6th December 2021, prior to making the 3D prototype designs for my rejected skyspace building, I made two artist research presentations on Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. Olafur Eliasson is based in Germany, albeit his origins goes back to Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark. This artist and the previous are based in Europe, while James Turrell, has always been based in his home state of California in the United States of America. I hadn't analysed their artworks until 20th January 2022. I found these two artists by viewing the Art21 page on Olafur Eliasson https://art21.org/artist/olafur-eliasson/ , where James Turrell gets a mention in the video on the page. This article was mentioned in the Accessibility leaflet by Hereford College of Arts on 6th December 2021.
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BRAILLE OF LOKI:
6th January 2022:
This was the day I began to think of a new idea for the Accessibility project. I thought of replicating my tribute drawing to Loki into braille, and I converted a photograph I took of Loki on 23rd September 2021 to the Image to Braille (505e06b2.github.io) website.
The photograph was one of the last taken of Loki, and it was taken at 7:28am when he was looking out the window from the windowsill. Before he passed away, I regularly looked back to this photograph since it presented Loki in a dark atmosphere from the background. The photograph shows one side of Loki bright, while the other side shows him as a silhouette. The photograph was taken around the time he turned ten years old (fifty-six human years).
9th January: I believe it was this date when I purchased the A2 canvas, gorilla glue and 4mm glass pearl beads from eBay and Amazon respectively (last one was purchased on Amazon). However, I was told three weeks after that this method is not sustainable, although there was no other option.
12th January: I began to sketch horizontal and vertical lines on the canvas, and my lines were drawn 4cm away from the corners.
I had previously inserted eight 4mm glass pearl beads onto the canvas, and I had to measure the width of each bead (horizontally and vertically). The result turned out to be 0.4cm across and above for each bead. The picture above shows my canvas on Wednesday 12th January at 9:54am, and the picture to the right shows my canvas on Thursday 13th January at 9:37am. This was a fun task, although it had taken three hours to finish!
13th January: The original braille picture I made on Thursday 6th January originally included 5,400 braille characters... yes, that much! I decided to make a smaller version of the picture, and the picture to the right included 1,364 braille characters. I used this picture as the basis for the final piece, and like the previous braille picture, I made this on the Image to Braille website https://505e06b2.github.io/Image-to-Braille/.
At 12:43am, I had drawn the right side of the braille picture seen above, which took me two hours and twenty-five minutes to complete (I begun drawing the dots at 10:18am). I was impressed by the achievements I got from doing this, and I decided to call it a day as my right hand was aching.
18th January: I begun to insert my 4mm glass pearl beads onto the canvas, and the gold glass pearl beads indicates the window-frame seen behind Loki in my original photograph. The dark drown beads indicates the silhouette of Loki, and the picture to the right shows my progress on Tuesday 18th January at 12:10am. Note the tweezers that were used to put the 4mm glass pearl beads in place on the canvas.
19th January: At the end of yesterday, my dark brown beads ran out, after realising they only took up ½ of the 1,396 glass pearl beads I bought. I had to purchase 750 4mm dark brown beads on eBay yesterday, so while I was waiting for them, I decided to fill in the left side of the canvas. I was originally going to insert the window-frame in my original photo, but the blind may not understand what the messages mean, so I thought of an idea.
I decided to include the title of my artwork on the canvas, but chose to convert it to braille. The text was translated on this website Unicode Braille ⠮ (xahlee.info), after some attempts of finding a good website that would translate braille text (the Braille Translator spelt Braille as ⠃⠗⠁⠊⠇⠇⠑, not ⠃⠗⠇!).
The braille text on the top-left of the A2 canvas is shown on the picture above, while the braille text on the bottom-left of the canvas is shown on the picture to the right. They translate to (the numbers refer to paragraphs); 1. Braille, 2. Silhouette, 3. To My Late, 4. Cat Loki. 1. 18 01, 2. 2022. This text refers to the date I glued the braille beads on the canvas.
21st January: My dark brown beads arrived on this day, which was on a Friday. Normally, I don't do college work on this day since the day routine of my course at Arts College is from Mondays to Thursdays. However, I chose to work on the artwork to save time. I was surprised to find out I nearly used all the dark brown beads after two hours of working! The picture to the right was taken at 4:53pm when I stopped working, since it was getting dark.
24th January: This day was on a Monday, and I continued to work on the silhouette. There was only a few beads left, as I used most of them up on the day they arrived at my house! This photograph was taken at 10:41am, at the time when I finished gluing the remaining beads on the canvas. A rare sight to see I used all my beads up at the exact time the top-right section of the silhouette was finished, although this would occur again the next day.
25th January: On Tuesday, my extra supply of 750 dark brown beads arrived, after I purchased them from eBay again on Friday 21st January. They arrived at 10:15am, and I went to my summerhouse in my back garden to work on the canvas. It was remarkable that without taking breaks, I used all the beads up three hours after working! The photograph below was taken at 1:48pm, and this was a few minutes after I used all the dark brown beads up. Only five beads were left, though they were small.
26th January: This was the day when I began to infill the background, although I wish I had begun to infill the background first before drawing the lines for the beads two weeks earlier! This was a fiddly process as I had to get my Faber-Castell dark indigo (157) marker in between the beads, and the stylus for the marker was running out less than an hour after using it (I had used it for the previous project, Affordable Arts Fair - Hereford 2021 (gwr517class.wixsite.com). I decided to include right triangles as a regularly featured pattern in the background, since my cat Loki had this shape prominently featured in his legs and chest.
31st January: On Monday, the last day of January, I began to work on my final piece for the last time. My watercolour marker of the same colour and manufacturer (dark indigo 157, Faber-Castell) arrived on Saturday 29th January. Unfortunately, I could not find the pen in the local arts and crafts shop in my hometown (the shop is Roundabout Stationery). I broke the rules of sticking to sustainability yet again, and I could not find it anywhere else in where I live. I will try my best to research next time.
This is what the final piece looks like. The outer frame is left intact because I am wondering if the Courtyard, Hereford, may place this in a picture frame that has has a thickness of 4cm (I placed the artwork 4cm away from each corner in the canvas). The final piece was finished not long after 12am, and I don't mind which material for the picture frame will be used for the canvas.
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TRIVIA: The final piece for the Accessibility project was mainly worked in the summerhouse in my back garden, as I thought working in Studio 18 at Arts College would distract me with the loud background noise.
-There were 1,823 beads used in the A2 canvas for the final piece! That is a lot of beads!
-This is my first artwork on A2 canvas.
-This is my first artwork of a cat using different materials since a long time ago. I was experimental as a young child, using many materials for my works from 2011-14.
-For the first time, I created a PowerPoint presentation that helped me prepare this blog.
-I created an analysis slide in my PowerPoint presentation that highlights the most important sections of my artwork. There is a picture of it below (made: Monday 31st January 2022).
CONCLUSION: This was a project that made me plan many ideas, and the majority of my ideas from December 2021 were scrapped. Despite this, I'm more happy with the decision I made at the turn of the Spring term, where I chose to make a tribute artwork to my late cat Loki on A2 canvas. This marks the first time I made an artwork dedicated to the blind, and I find the braille alphabet a fascinating subject; it creates a piece of art that can be augmented into various art styles, as documented in my silhouette of Loki. My late cat Loki was always present on my bed by me on my computer while working from home on Mondays and Tuesdays from September to November 2021, and I can still picture him in the room watching me work on new projects overtime. This is one of my favourite artworks of all time, and this is an artwork I will always look back on.
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"BRAILLE SILHOUETTE OF MY LATE CAT LOKI" by Fabian Musto,
Written on Tuesday 1st February 2022, 10:45 / 10:45am - 14:40 / 2:40pm.
TR3X PR0DUCTI0NS
P.S. This is my first blog on my Wix website in the new year 2022. Happy New Year!
I made a Tribute to Loki (2011 - 2021) - YouTube video on my second channel on 26th December 2021. The link to it is highlighted in the title of the video seen above.