Twigs

London Sculptor, Chris Kenny often uses found objects (in this case, twigs), to create works of art. 

www.chriskenny.co.uk

As soon as I saw these photos on Facebook, I made a mental connection with Irene Mawer and Ruby Ginner. My instant thought was ‘frieze lines’!

The twigs are photographed on a plain white background and “each twig evokes the shape of a human body in postures expressing joy, enthusiasm, surprise, confidence, reserve… the whole range of emotions that the body can express in its non-verbal language.

Sommervogel Page L’Art en tout

None is similar to the other, all are different, it is the work of Mother Nature that is presented to us through the prism of the artist’s gaze, with the zest of anthropomorphism seen through the examination of these very simple and yet so telling twigs.

Laureano Chevalier
Sommervogel Page L’Art en tout
(Facebook 22 February 2021).

These twigs remind me very much of my own mime training, using the body to express emotion, and also of a body requiring a great deal of flexibility.

Kotte from the art website ‘This is Colossal’, explains “the artist’s sparse creations rely heavily on the human desire to see objects or patterns in inanimate objects, a term called pareidolia.” (Kottke.org)

Apparantly, pareidolia used to be seen as an illness – thank goodness that is an outdated opinion, as I have a really bad ‘case’ of pareidolia in my everyday life!

I wonder what Irene would have made of these figures? Perhaps she would have seen them as a great opportunity to interpret another type of Nature Rhythm, I like to think so.

Take a moment to have some fun, and see if you can spot any of the stick-figure frieze lines in the real stick figures.

Author: Janet Fizz Curtis

Janet Fizz Curtis is trained in the Irene Mawer Method of Mime and Movement.

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