Marja-Leena Rathje
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scrunched 2


scrunched_feet2.jpg

scrunched_mag.jpg

scrunched_mag2.jpg

scrunched_owl.jpg

More explorations with torn and scrunched papers, this time from magazines. Quite different from the scrunched print I did recently. Wonder where these are going?

Marja-Leena | 21/11/2012 | 18 comments
themes: Being an Artist, Photoworks, Textures


18 comments

That first one made me grin. There certainly is a lot of stepping on toes that goes on all over the web. I'm glad you have one of those blogs that draws people together by showing just how many different ways there are of contemplating life in the world.

Susan, I'm delighted you found some humour here, yet what a comment on the world. Thanks so much for your kind words about this strange place of mine, and for your always faithful visits.

I think the scrunched toes are ethereal. There is something which relates to the carved toes of angels in religious settings about the image, also a vulnerability and a discarding of it all. Really thought provoking.

I like the feet one especially too.

Olga, thanks, glad you think so. I love how that one turned out via the scanner, with the reflections making it ethereal, as you write. I liked witnessing the transformation of what was an attractive page in a magazine. The other ones are more abstract, aren't they?

Lucy, yes, that's my favourite too.

Marja-Leena!

I smiled at the fact that I so often find crumpled up printed words on my floor. And I honestly tried very hard to learn how to throw the typewritten pages into the wastebasket like some Hollywood 30's film noir type, unfortunately I've forgotten who. Maybe many types.

You know the guy: can't make it in doing a sale to studios of a genius's screenplay for all Oscar winning manuscripts? Some must've been made, so many frustrated characters were hanging around there. And more came from Europe all the time, for instance B.B. and Kurt Weill.

I would've been happy to get a grant in order to study in Reed. No such luck!

Marjatta, it's interesting that these images made you think of typed pages thrown on the floor. Yes, I recall scenes like that in the movies - frustrated reporters, novelists, screenwriters. That in turn reminds me of many hours writing essays in university days, my thesis, then working grants. The visual artist's version is all the bad drawings and print proofs we make, rip up and toss!

Like the feet--odd light, a kind of glaze, good with the crinkling...

Bit of Yeats (The Rose of the World) for them:

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

Marly, it's the glossy paper that gave me those magical effects. And thank you for finding such a lovely and so-appropriate poem for this!

The feet are my favorite as well - the scrunching gives them dimension and yet you know they are also flat. There's a nice tension from the slip of perspective going on there!

This is a very interesting project.

May be a bit late to say so but I applaud that circle of toes.

Julia, thanks for the great observations, glad you like it.

Anna, kiitos käynnistä! Yes, it's interesting for me as well, a way to play around with ideas.

Joe, not late at all. Glad you notice the 'circle of toes', which is how I tore and arranged the paper.

These feet have stolen the show from the other images. Did anyone notice the owl's eye in the bottom one, with the barely discernible words 'going, gone'?

Did see the owl, and thought the bent fur close by looked cat-like... Chimera-ish.

Marly, chimera-ish sounds wonderful to me!

You do make me see. After looking at these pix I was staring at a towel on the floor, about to pick it up and throw it in the hamper, and suddenly saw it with all the wrinkles as a visually interesting thing.

Oh these are beautiful! Always something new to discover here. Marja-leena, your eyes have special powers to pluck the miraculous from the familiar.

Hattie, what a lovely thing to say, thank you!!

Natalie, You too, I'm quite touched that you, another artist, think so. Thanks so much.