artwork
ornament
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Of course jewelry is associated with ornament; the jewelry object is usually an ornament for the body. But what's really being offered there? Are they small graphics or sculpture superimposed on a person, or is ornament a rich enough topic to stand apart from sculpture and graphic design? Are the qualities of ornament separate enough from the concerns and history of sculpture, painting or graphic design to consider on its own?
Ornament, or "applied art", is a topic with some history. Western, (American, British and European) 19th century design was obsessed with it. Manufacture and trade of personal goods and commodities was (as ever) competitive. "Good" ornament was good for commerce. Schools taught skills for developing ornament in order to compete for market share.
In creating systems of educating people for creating ornament, certain strategies were employed to instill aptitude and sensitivity. These included life drawing, copying ornmental motifs from antiquity (especially Roman and Greek), learning a lexicon of important symbolic forms that could communicate an idea was also important. But most important was the study of nature. What, in the natural forms (nature), could be recognized as interesting... compelling? In practice, could these be geometricized, stylized, and extropolated into synthetic forms that mimicked, or even magnified the compelling qualities of natural form? Isn't that the general recipe for much of ornament?
Of course in the context of 19th Century mercantile trade, ornament served as the thing to be appropriately (or not) applied to whatever contrivance required some kind of embellishment in order for it to be desired and purchased. That consideration, for the most part, is pretty eroded. We don't really weigh the virtue or appropriateness of an ornament to the object's function in the same way as 150 years ago. However, the cultivation of visual communication using synthetic form, that has meaning, and resonates on a deep level may be worthy of exploration on its own. Separated out from the context of application, can ornament be understood, and/or appreciated? Certainly ornamental creation on its own is simply an example of visual language.
Early on in my work these became an important questions. As a collection of related rhetorical questions, there may be answers, but as rhetoric, answers are likely to be deeper questions.
Ornament, or "applied art", is a topic with some history. Western, (American, British and European) 19th century design was obsessed with it. Manufacture and trade of personal goods and commodities was (as ever) competitive. "Good" ornament was good for commerce. Schools taught skills for developing ornament in order to compete for market share.
In creating systems of educating people for creating ornament, certain strategies were employed to instill aptitude and sensitivity. These included life drawing, copying ornmental motifs from antiquity (especially Roman and Greek), learning a lexicon of important symbolic forms that could communicate an idea was also important. But most important was the study of nature. What, in the natural forms (nature), could be recognized as interesting... compelling? In practice, could these be geometricized, stylized, and extropolated into synthetic forms that mimicked, or even magnified the compelling qualities of natural form? Isn't that the general recipe for much of ornament?
Of course in the context of 19th Century mercantile trade, ornament served as the thing to be appropriately (or not) applied to whatever contrivance required some kind of embellishment in order for it to be desired and purchased. That consideration, for the most part, is pretty eroded. We don't really weigh the virtue or appropriateness of an ornament to the object's function in the same way as 150 years ago. However, the cultivation of visual communication using synthetic form, that has meaning, and resonates on a deep level may be worthy of exploration on its own. Separated out from the context of application, can ornament be understood, and/or appreciated? Certainly ornamental creation on its own is simply an example of visual language.
Early on in my work these became an important questions. As a collection of related rhetorical questions, there may be answers, but as rhetoric, answers are likely to be deeper questions.
