66 Layers of Carved Acrylic on Board
August 29, 2022 7:10 AM Subscribe
Hannah Jensen is a New Zealand artist who first builds up dozens of layers of acrylic paint on a board and then carves through them to reveal intricate designs, wild animals and beautiful botanicals. Her Instagram contains a lot of process videos and some recent more colourful works.
Ooh, it's the grown up and artistically competent version of crayon scratch art, which was my absolute favorite kid art activity! So soothing to scribble wildly away with the black crayon and then scritch the waxy crayon away to reveal the colors underneath. I can smell the crayon wax just thinking about it.
posted by the primroses were over at 8:57 AM on August 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by the primroses were over at 8:57 AM on August 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
Me, too, the primroses were over. When my kids were young, you could buy prepared kits for scratch art, but when I was a kid I did a layer of varied crayon on paper and then covered it with black paint.
I love her work, and would love to own a piece. I'm especially fond of the small round flora and fauna images, especially the birds, and could imagine affording one some day (as opposed to some of the larger, more intricate pieces that can go for more than NZ$20k.
posted by Well I never at 10:48 AM on August 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
I love her work, and would love to own a piece. I'm especially fond of the small round flora and fauna images, especially the birds, and could imagine affording one some day (as opposed to some of the larger, more intricate pieces that can go for more than NZ$20k.
posted by Well I never at 10:48 AM on August 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
I have no artistic talent whatsoever. I see these amazing pieces of art and I am just floored. Thanks for posting.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:30 AM on August 29, 2022
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:30 AM on August 29, 2022
Very pretty...but is it more craft than art?
[placeholder for future ten paragraph angry rant about the intense damage done to creative culture by this specific mode of capital-a Art baggage]
posted by cortex at 11:32 AM on August 29, 2022 [19 favorites]
[placeholder for future ten paragraph angry rant about the intense damage done to creative culture by this specific mode of capital-a Art baggage]
posted by cortex at 11:32 AM on August 29, 2022 [19 favorites]
But in any case, yeah, these are lovely! I really like this general notion of physically additive-then-subtractive art-making; its a whole way of thinking about a sort of there-and-back-again process that opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities. Jensen's stuff here is just fucking gorgeous for how she so carefully and successfully executes control over that. The tonal subtlety of things like this Kudu piece is great; managing that with multiple hue strata with this magnolia is even better and reminds me of some of the compositional difficulties of e.g. reduction linoprint.
It's off in a different direction than her work, but I did a couple little very rough experiments years ago with layers of acrylic and sandpaper and really enjoyed the pieces I stumbled into (shocker of shockers, it was a couple of Menger sponges) but beyond the pieces themselves I found myself a little thrilled by the chanciness that came with it: the idea of putting something down and then sort of rediscovering in a chaotic way pieces of it as you go. Unfortunately the physical hand-sanding for these pieces was terrible for my shoulder; I'd like to find a way to get back to it with like low-speed machine sanding some time (high-speed sanders just melt the acrylic to goo instantly).
posted by cortex at 11:40 AM on August 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's off in a different direction than her work, but I did a couple little very rough experiments years ago with layers of acrylic and sandpaper and really enjoyed the pieces I stumbled into (shocker of shockers, it was a couple of Menger sponges) but beyond the pieces themselves I found myself a little thrilled by the chanciness that came with it: the idea of putting something down and then sort of rediscovering in a chaotic way pieces of it as you go. Unfortunately the physical hand-sanding for these pieces was terrible for my shoulder; I'd like to find a way to get back to it with like low-speed machine sanding some time (high-speed sanders just melt the acrylic to goo instantly).
posted by cortex at 11:40 AM on August 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
> Very pretty...but is it more craft than art?
You raised the question. Want to explain your thinking?
These are amazing and I desperately want to touch them.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:47 PM on August 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
You raised the question. Want to explain your thinking?
These are amazing and I desperately want to touch them.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:47 PM on August 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
Very pretty...but is it more craft than art?I also don't have the wherewithal to really respond to this at this time. The main thrust of what I can say right now is
[placeholder for future ten paragraph angry rant about the intense damage done to creative culture by this specific mode of capital-a Art baggage]
- Read up on Scott McCloud's six-step path of art in Understanding Comics.
- "art" is any creative endeavor
- "craft" is part of making art, namely the "getting it done" part
Here's an old blog post from a video-game programmer talking about this from the perspective of making games. I'm surprised I can't find more posts about this, and more-recent ones.
posted by cardioid at 1:52 PM on August 29, 2022 [5 favorites]
Very pretty...but is it more craft than art?
Of course! This isn’t some low effort garbagey piece of art like a banana taped to an angry tortoise, or someone cataloging the time, date and place of every sneeze of theirs over a 20 year period, or selling an NFT of their grandma’s hair to a Saudi prince, this is craft, and therefore much better.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:40 PM on August 29, 2022 [2 favorites]
Of course! This isn’t some low effort garbagey piece of art like a banana taped to an angry tortoise, or someone cataloging the time, date and place of every sneeze of theirs over a 20 year period, or selling an NFT of their grandma’s hair to a Saudi prince, this is craft, and therefore much better.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:40 PM on August 29, 2022 [2 favorites]
Am I the only one who noticed the bland spiritual versions of religious figures and the frankly awful skull with headdress and dream catcher - there’s no curiosity in them, just twee subjects.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:41 PM on August 29, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:41 PM on August 29, 2022 [3 favorites]
Process-wise, I am reminded of Jen Stark’s paper art!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 2:41 PM on August 29, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 2:41 PM on August 29, 2022 [2 favorites]
Am I the only one who noticed the bland spiritual versions of religious figures and the frankly awful skull with headdress and dream catcher - there’s no curiosity in them, just twee subjects.Yep. This is a method in search of a subject.
posted by device55 at 9:54 PM on August 29, 2022 [2 favorites]
These are very nice. I've been trying to figure out how long it would take to generate all the layers and the best I can come up with is x number of weeks. That level of patience is just one more reason I'm not an artist!
posted by dg at 10:19 PM on August 30, 2022
posted by dg at 10:19 PM on August 30, 2022
I wonder about that, dg; one of the nice things about acrylic is it will dry real fast, especially when applied thinly, so building up a whole pile of layers wouldn't necessarily need to take a long time. Under decent conditions you could probably do 5 or 6 an hour even. But I don't know if you'd be getting into trouble doing that many layers quickly, if you'd want to give it more time to set up more thoroughly etc.
posted by cortex at 10:38 PM on August 30, 2022
posted by cortex at 10:38 PM on August 30, 2022
Yes, it would dry relatively fast, at least on the surface. If you wanted it to be hard (eg the sanding method you used), I think you'd have to leave it at least a few hours, otherwise the layers underneath will take an extraordinary time to harden if they ever do, because the solvents need to evaporate for it to harden. This could be the reason for your experience of acrylic 'melting to goo instantly' when trying to use machines - because the layers underneath weren't hard.
If you wanted to carve through the layers, though, I think you would actually prefer the layers underneath to be less hard. Something like the hardness of lino would be ideal for carving I guess. So, maybe not so many weeks ;-)
posted by dg at 11:01 PM on August 30, 2022
If you wanted to carve through the layers, though, I think you would actually prefer the layers underneath to be less hard. Something like the hardness of lino would be ideal for carving I guess. So, maybe not so many weeks ;-)
posted by dg at 11:01 PM on August 30, 2022
Beautiful, delicate work — very similar to linoleum block carving.
posted by cenoxo at 4:14 AM on August 31, 2022
posted by cenoxo at 4:14 AM on August 31, 2022
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