This morning i just couldn’t think of anything clever or amusing for the write up for this piece, so whilst racking my brain I thought i’d have a quick trawl of the interweb to see if i could find any inspiration. It wasn’t looking great until I came across an article about google’s new poetry AI and that’s when things started to fall into place. So instead of some well thought out prose I give you some poetry created by a computer after a little nudge in the right direction by myself. I hope you enjoy:
Psychology of Pink
First I fell into an idle bed;
Drowning all a feeling with a think
To breathe those flowers upon my head.
Psychology of blue
He knew that an artist, an marked school,
Brought on its heart, like the distant dew
As if a dog I might paint a fool?
Now if that doesn’t strike a chord i’m pretty sure you are dead inside…
We here at id-iom sometimes get ourselves into a little bit of an impasse. One of us likes drawing nudes and the other does not, saying things like ‘Back on the naked ladies tip I see…(winking face)’ whenever I share a new one with him.
This is exactly how the conversation about this piece started and it would have ended the same way as it always does, that was until I found this quote from William Blake ‘Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed’ which I quickly scrawled across the picture. I might have found a workaround for this picture but the trouble is I have about 20 unfinished pieces all of naked women, can I find 20 more quotes about naked beauty I’m not so sure I can…
We here at id-iom seem to like Ramesses II or Ozymandias as the Greeks called him as this is our second picture based on one of the greatest pharaohs of the Egyptian Empire. This time I feel I should use the now famous words of Percy Shelley to describe the king of kings:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
As a side note he lived till around the age of 90/91, most men don’t live that long nowadays and this was 1213 BC. Maybe there is hope for me then…
What’s better than one picture? Two pictures! Since it’s coming up to Easter I thought it about time we treated you to another double sided creation.
Side one features a privacy inspired CCTV wallpaper design. In today’s always-connected society the feeling that you’re being watched is very real indeed. Because you probably are. If the proliferation of CCTV covering the length and breadth of our fair isle isn’t enough we have our online movements tracked by just about everyone with most of the information apparently available to the highest bidder. What strange times we live in. To commemorate this I decided to create this lovely bespoke wallpaper design as a reminder.
Side two features a somewhat androgynous looking lady with Lord Byron’s poem ‘She walks in beauty’ as the background text. Apparently Lord Byron went to a ball and met his cousin by marriage, Mrs Anne Beatrice Wilmot, who was in mourning and wearing a black dress set with spangles and next morning he’d come up with what is widely regarded as his most famous work. Inspiration can strike at strange times it would seem. Once you’ve combined that with our jazzy striped background then you’ve got another certified id-iom piece.
Painted on a 60cm x 40cm wooden panel with id-iom’s patented ‘hang either way’ industrial look picture hanging system. She’s sure to brighten up just about anywhere she’s hung. Drop us a line if interested.
For our fifth visit to Whitecross Street Party we thought we’d go for something mysterious and classy. Whether or not that’s worked is up to you to decide. The lady is based on a picture of ‘plus size’ model Robyn Lawley. Why on earth she is referred to as ‘plus size’ is beyond me though. If you saw her in the street I’m pretty much ‘plus size’ would be the last thing you’d be thinking. It’s an odd world we inhabit.
The lettering we’ve used all over the piece is Lord Byron’s poem ‘She walks in beauty’. Apparently he went to a ball and met his cousin by marriage, Mrs Anne Beatrice Wilmot, who was in mourning and wearing a black dress set with spangles and next morning he’d come up with what is widely regarded as his most famous work. Inspiration can strike at strange times it would seem. Once you’ve combined that with our extra busy striped background then you’ve got another certified id-iom piece. It’s on a 120cm square board. Just drop us a line if interested.
A big thanks to Teddy for having us and, as ever, it’s nice to catch up with the various people that dropped by for a chat. Let’s hope we can bring back some glorious sunshine for next year…
This is the tale of Sir Skellington Win,
who lived up a tree and was incredibly thin.
He constantly told tales of sorrow and loss,
yet somehow still thought that he was the boss.
He had a hat made of glass and two hairs on his chin,
and whatever he played would invariably win.
Apart from love where he was a loser,
even through fantastical tales he could never amuse her.
One day he was walking in his armour of tin,
and happened upon a lady stuck in a bin.
She really was making such a din,
that he could do little but stare and take a sip of his gin.
He took his bottle and looked within,
and could see the reflections of his favourite kin.
With this bitter thought he came to see
that thinking in rhyme was incredibly twee.
So he helped the lady out of the bin and she was very grateful. And that was that.
Can you tell I’ve been having some trouble with today’s write up? If you think you can do any better then i’d suggest you take up professional poetry as my effort is surely gold star standard for an under 12?
Cheers
id-iom
Title: Sir Skellington Win
Media: Spray paint and screen print on slate
Size: 46 x 31 cm slate
Please email if interested
This picture came about via a commission but eventually they didn’t choose this design and went for something entirely different. As I always liked this one however I thought I’d go ahead and paint it up anyway. I wouldn’t usually do this as designs that have been done for a particular commission are usually discarded or partially recycled because they had there time to shine and didn’t quite make the grade. This one though managed to pass muster though although i’m not really sure why.
Title: Fear not for the future, weep not for the past
Materials: Paint pen, acrylicr, spray paint, glitter and charcoal
Size: A2
Please email if interested
In what i’m hoping will be my last post of the day we have this slightly odd commission. I’m not entirely sure how the mirror came to broken (i.e. I’m not the one with seven years bad luck!) but as soon as it was brought in for us to evaluate exactly I knew there was something just crying out to be put on there. We could not try and hide the crack as it would then look even worse than it did already so we thought the best thing to do was to highlight it’s imperfections.
Once we’d found a suitable font, cut a couple of stencils and also got a couple of lightly glittered arrows on there to really put all the attention on the crack we realised that we had job done and to do any more would risk ruining it so we decided it was time to down tools. I’m particularly happy with the result as i managed to restrain myself before adding more and in hindsight it just fits perfectly. One more happy punter taken care of…
For reasons that are hopefully completely apparent it’s pretty tricky to photograph a mirror whilst: a) trying to make the mirror look relatively normal shaped b) trying not to get yourself or any other objects that just attract the eye in shot c) trying to highlight the big crack running across the mirror and the text either side of it. Now whilst i’m certainly not saying that Duffy, Donovan or Bailey couldn’t do better I think I did a pretty reasonable job considering my usual level of skill with a camera.
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