Carolyn Cardinet: Visual Art Blog

  Playing in the studio during the Artist Residency at Red Dirt Studio. I had brought some copper wire from Australia to use somehow on an art installation. This didn't happened however what eventuated was the occasion to try to work with copper on several sketching projects. To gauge what could marry and what were the possibilities to serve this material well.  Here are some examples that I work on during that time.  

These portraits in a sense interrogate our social landscapes of consumption I have been traveling for a month long everyday  from Bethesda - Friendship Height metro station to Rhode Island stop and then take the bus down to 34th St off Rhode Island avenue twice a day. During these trips I had the occasion to see all kind of characters coming in and out of the bus and being the minority aboard the bus in this area. These rides gave me the opportunity to try something I had wanted to try for a while.  Making portraits out of single-use plastic waste.  So this artist residency at the Red Dirt Studio as well as the plastics found on the streets around the studio was the perfect time and allowed me to do this side project. Like sketches for further enquiry these portraits were done as preliminary drawing studies for further enquiries when I am back home.

I present to you The Waste Gateway made for  The Sustainable Living Festival 2018  Great Local Lunch  Installing the archway The theme of the Sustainable Living Festival this year was about Food Waste and was delighted to be able to participate once again in this festival which is very meaningful to me and I am grateful for the 4th year to be been making temporal sculptural assemblages. For this year I wanted to create a more immersive assemblage that people would respond to. The archway was created thanks to the many of the SLF volunteers, friends and neighbours who kept collecting through summer for this creation hundreds of fruit or vegetable plastic packaging. These single-use transparent punnets were assembled with used white packaging straps gathered. The idea was to thread the punnets onto the plastic straps as skewers and attached to an archway to create the entrance to the Great Local Lunch 2018 arena space at Birrarrung Marr. After a fe...

This summer collecting hundreds of plastic punnets has been on my dial and of others.  All to be used to create the entrance arc for this year Sustainable Living Festival 2018. Thank you to all whom have been gathering large ammounts Sketch thought process Red fruit Punnets                                                                                 sliced Polyethylene

Here are some of the Fans I have created the last few years for the series FANtastic. Using only single-use packaging to educate towards the breadth of what one can use at home and the longevity of in-house plastics and waste outside every household. May you recognise many... FANtastic 2013-2017 These are specimens anemones and sea creatures that are harmed by plastic

A beautiful day to paint in my studio at the old railway station... Jellyfish trio view from the platform Yesterday I had the pleasure to meet with a couple of local artists in Newstead. Horse (artist nickname) took me to meet Roger and his eclectic sculpture garden. His sculpture park is always in the process of making and remaking to see the possibilities at hand. His house with no running water or electricity is a testament to simple life and what little means  is needed to make some great art .

A great turnout this weekend for the official launch at  the Newstead Arts Hub of Organic Plastic. Agathe, Louise, myself, Julie & Mary Speeches took place between Julie Patey of the Newstead Arts Hub , Mary Blain of Mount Alexander Sustainability group in Castlemaine (MASG)and Louise Jiricek launching her new community project Boomerang Bags Newstead. here with Louise The crowd included Juliet from the local primary school. Some of the children  came to view and show their parents the artwork they put together with trash during our Art & Sustainability workshops at school last week.

And happily I must say as to experience ones studio without the close pressure of an upcoming exhibition. This time allows one to experiment and test what your imagination has given you that you translated in drawing format for the past few months... So I decided and probably due to a lack of space in my studio to render & make small the many sketches i n my artist diary.  Here comes a world of maquettes... However am already finding that I itch to see my new creations in a large or extra large format... Patience is a virtue they say and art has certainly put me through that test along the way.                      The artist studio

Working on the sketches I have drawn in my visual diary for possible large sculpture works. I am enjoying the man-made and nature combination of my recent maquette series which I will post as resolved works as they come out of the studio.

What an experience to see your own work in a magical landscape under the tree canopy of the N.S.W. Blue Mountains. This exhibit of what sculpture is now is an extroardinary survey of public spatial practice with in the lush enclosure of an untouched forest on the side of a mountain.

Having a week turn around between 2 exhibits has been somehow a challenge to be able to transform the previous work into a new artwork. So spending days and night cutting the ends of the previous work to then glue and assemble the strands into new lengths  to create a totally new work. The experience was interesting overall totally possible but you do not foresee on being totally exhausted from the previous 2 other exhibits you also had in the last 4 weeks or so.  how the work came back from Lorne  Cutting the tentacles   Gluing the strands together  still adding some length needed for the sculptures Thankfully everything went well to the last minute still wrapping the work when my new sculpture was picked up ahead of a long drive up to Sydney. Then a flight and a drive to Katoomba to install the work the next day at 7am. All went well at Scenic World with a terrific team of professionals. and what a setting to show your work under the...

 Exhausted and very happy to have participated in Lorne Sculpturescape this year a massive weekend but so so rewarding to engage with the crowd and hear their thoughts responses and questions about the work for for anyone who didn't have the occasion to ask here is the cheat sheet or Fat Sheet: 1 strand is one 2 litre milk plastic bottle 250 bottle per branches 3 trees 5 branches 1200 bottles although I probably did cut 1500 as some didn't really make the cut for this work all bottle were cut by hand scissors were used at first then RSI injury led me to use a Stanley knife to finish this work it took 18 months to create this work this includes collecting, washing, removing the labels-plastic rings and plastic lids, the cutting & threading onto ropes

48 artists are represented at this year Yarra Sculpture Gallery Art Prize Opening 4-7pm this Saturday 12 December 201 2015 Participating Artists Fredrick White Louis Balis Heinz Boeck Aneta Bozic Tanja George David Waters Tas Wansbrough Sione Francis Liz Walker Helen Braun Maggie Brown Penny Algar Veronica Caven Aldous Conrad Clark Robert Waghorn Brendon Taylor Takahiko Sugawara Kerry Strauss Andrew Paul Smith Maria Simonelli Faustas Sadaustas Stephanie Robinson Katerina Richardson Jackie Ralph Herbz Rah Anna Prifti Merle Parker Linda Oy Ho Deidre Oliver Akiko Nagino Tracey Lamb Katherine Marmaras Richard Monger Robert Mihajlovski Anne-Marie Kuter Glen Jackson Paul Gorman Felicity Gordon Ernst Fries Julian Martino Yuko Dora Justine Cromb Betty Collier iChing2 Carolyn Cardinet Katy Bowman Suzanne Kaldor Cliff Burtt

Wednesday 25 November 2015, 11.00 am  to  Thursday 31 December 2015, 11.00 pm Carolyn Cardinet's  Like and oil spill, plastic never goes away  is an all black immersive installation comprising assorted discarded black plastic and fibreglass PVC mesh. The exhibition space is transformed into a window that reflects on the state of the ocean seabed. This work is assembled out of the black plastic that Cardinet has collected from Port Phillip Bay and gleaned from the streets around her studio. As the artist states, "Most of the plastic ‘detritus’ appearing in the work passed through someone's hands, used only once before being discarded in the overflowing bins of our city streets before washing up on our shores. The work explicitly asks 'how much more plastic do we need?' With current rates of consumption we are arguably at a point of no return. One can easily foresee the whole sea, like this installation, being strewn with debris that will never disappe...

Installation of Poly-sea-jelly on scaffolding went according to plan with a slight and change for the better.  Looking forward to seeing you on Oct 25 for the official opening at Yering Station in the Yarra Valley.

Putting the last touch to my entry for the Yering Sculpture Prize 2015 in the Yarra Valley 'Poly Sea Jelly' is an assemblage of hand-cut polyethylene. Each strand is attached to a single metal frame. The structure is lit up internally with LED's. I must say I cannot wait to see this work  in-situ hanging inside the gallery Opening day Sunday 25th October 2915!

I wanted to share how lovely it is to receive an email with a personal response to my last show. So here it is '...But the exhibition is in a realm way above and beyond my expectations. Your artist statement says it all far better than I could ever find the language for...' Janet B. That is why I do what I do for people to get touched by the work as I do when I think it