Here's an influence... Bernice Johnson Reagon. I sampled her vocals, added some beats, a groove and a video.
New World Coming
In art, my influences include Constantin Brancusi, Franz Marc, Giuseppe Penone, Auguste Rodin, Alexander Calder, Yorgos Kypris, Aztec, Celtic, Egyptian art.
This is a small copy I made of one of Brancusi's finest works - The Kiss
My musical influences include Velvet Underground, the Byrds, Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Tom Waits, Bowie, Beck, Prince...too many to name.
Masks
I cut out and collect pictures of sports stars from newspapers showing the range of expressions and emotions that help make up the real time drama of sport: winning, losing, tears, exhilaration, pain, joy, even grief.
I am carving a series of masks based on these images. Here is one I finished in April 06, a portrait of the New Zealand Rugby Union captain Tana Umaga.
The background 'Angel with Spikes' image is a photo I took of the entrance to the Tate Britain in London.
Nature Videos
When I briefly worked for Craigavon Borough Council at Oxford Island, a local nature reserve on the shores of Lough Neagh, I spent a few months filming the local wildlife. Here are two videos I made in Spring 2007, one of grebes doing their courtship dances, and one of a wren building a nest.
Commentary by Robin Moffitt.
Music - Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin - Je t'aime
Frank Sinatra - I Could Have Danced All Night
Music - Paul McCartney - Jenny Wren
Craigavon Safari
Here's a blast from the murky past. Craigavon Safari was a musical extravaganza 'concept-demo' I did around 2002-03. I gave the title track and some photos to my friend Nigel Steele who came back with this crazy shit.....
Apologies for the sound quality, will try to fix...... still, it's had over 6000 hits on youtube !
Hello, my name is Jonny Kerr. I am an artist and a musician. Welcome to myspace, where you can see some of my artwork, and hear some of my music.
As an artist, I am primarily a sculptor, but I also enjoy painting, photography and video work. As a musician, I play guitar, bass, keyboards, harmonica, and I sing. I'm also learning to play banjo and mandolin. When I get the chance to travel, I enjoy collecting instruments from around the world, like my Andean charango.
For five or six years, I was lucky enough to work as a Park Ranger in the beautiful, historic surroundings of Lurgan Park. This job allowed me to indulge my lifelong love of nature, while also providing inspiration and a constant supply of natural materials for my work. Then I moved into Arts Development for a while at Oxford Island National Nature Reserve. Right now, I'm back at Queen's University, Belfast, studying to become a teacher.
Animals are currently my favourite subject as a sculptor. Depiction of animals is perhaps the oldest subject in art, but there is still room for innovation.
Nature's immense variety is an invitation to work with as many different materials as there are different animals:
Yin-yang cats (2006. Limestone, basalt)
Brooding Swan (2004.Marble)
Owl (2006. Donegal granite)
Jade frog (2005. Jade, marble, slate),
Willow robin (2004. Willow)
a driftwood heron, an oak lizard,
ivy snakes, a pine owl, a glass-winged dragonfly, a dragonfly-flute, a bamboo spider, wire crane-flies, even silicone jellyfish and an armadillo armoured in copper coins with cornelian eyes.
It would take a lifetime to fill a carved menagerie, using every available material.
Over the centuries, animals have also gathered many symbolic, mythic and spiritual associations. Sometimes I make use of these associations, sometimes subvert them, as in the Staff of St Patrick piece.
Stone Carving
It is a basic human desire to create something that will remain long after our death. Some people satisfy this urge by having children, by building brick houses, by developing businesses, by committing crimes. Artists satisfy this urge through their art. Sculptors often choose materials that last for thousands of years, that defy the passage of time, such as stone, metal and, to a lesser extent, wood. Artefacts of ancient cultures can tell us more about our ancestors than any written history. These are some of the reasons that I began carving in stone.
Stone carving is one of the most ancient trades, practised by craftsmen who devoted their whole lives to their work. As a part-time artist, however, I do not have sufficient time to use exclusively traditional stone carving tools. So I use grinders, drills and rotary tools to speed up the work. Though a piece may still take months or years to carve, these tools greatly reduce carving time. Of course this comes at a price. Grinders are dangerous tools, their edges can cut guitar-playing fingers just as easily as they cut stone. The vibration they produce can cause numbness and pins and needles in the hands also fatal for a musician. Even the dust that is produced can be fatal, since many types of stone contain silicates, which when inhaled can produce silicosis, a lung condition equally as grave as asbestosis.
In fact, the full name for this condition is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis - the longest word in the English language ! If you're gonna die of something, at least make it exotic !
My studio is very small, and I have no dust extractor. When I was carving basalt my shedstudioshed looked like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, three inches deep in dust in places, and I was choking like a one-man dustbowl, at risk of getting the dust pneumonee like Woody Guthrie.
Therefore, when stone carving, safety equipment is vital. I wear a mask or a respirator, gloves, goggles, ear-muffs and a dust suit. At times I feel like Im about to go deep-sea diving, or welding, I am so trussed up. Since these stones were first shaped millions of years ago at the bottom of an ocean, or in a volcano, the comparisons are apt.
Still, if you want to create something that will last a thousand years, you must be prepared to make sacrifices, and devote a long time to making it. My Yin-yang cats for instance, took a year and a half from start to finish, but will hopefully still be on display somewhere long after my bones have turned to dust.
New album from The Bonnevilles available now GOOD SUITS AND FIGHTIN' BOOTS from Motor Sounds Records, £8, Including P&P WORLDWIDE Click the pic or visit www. motorsoundsrecords. com
Hello to you my friend! My comment is to bring,to debate,issues I feel are very important,concerning the lisbon treaty.Below are a three videos. The first is very short(3 min)and is of an MEP who sees the "Totalitarian nature of this treaty"
The second is a documentary called "The real face of the European Unio" which is very important as it outlines, once again by MEP's,"An unsettleing Agenda" from an EU that is "Rotten to the Core" .. The Third is from a group of Irishmen. "End of Nations". It is an excellent documentary and it outlines the Lisbon treaty in full.Once again interviews with MEP's. Just be prepared to be a little shocked.
.. I'd encourage you to repost this comment If you feel it is of value. I will be posting a bulletin with the details and code of this comment.Press reply to bulletin, copy and paste the message, then repost as a comment.Thanks for taking the time to read this! Baz.....
hey johnny cant wait till saturday night!(dont know if you know that song buy hey its a goodun)Myself and sinead have commissioned other artists to do a piece for each of our kids names ie aoife and fionntan,we would like something done for our youngest "ciaran" meaning little dark one,he is named after a donegal saint ,if you could come up with something in stone we would be over the moon ,we are in rome at the moment see you when we get back ,come down for a feed and a glass or two ,slan ,Barry & Sinead
Yeah you know the know boy. The centralised, basically symmetrical image represents the fatalism of Buddhist thought. Most people just see a tree in the snow, which tends to the pragmatic zen reading of the image. Yeah, that'll do.
I posted the previous message before I got to this so scrub dat shit dawg. "Fiendishly handsome" young man on the boom stick there I'm sure you'll agree.
Hey Jonny, Stephen here. Just replying to your telephone message you left. We had to shoot on from the gig the other night because I was poisoned enough from the other lads and I had to drive home!! We didn't get any cash for it. Could you drop one of your new EP's into the bar for me? Id appreciate it!
That was a cheeck dirty ass trick putting up picture of some white man pretaing to be me.
man I got so many photos i dont know what to do with them. Took a whole series of my back garden as spring was about us. Have to try and get some sort of slide show going, but it take so good dam long just selecting nevermind gettib=ng the series right.
hello jonny! how's it going? never got a chance to thank you for that very refreshing beer...ummm, it was yummy. much better than the stuff i'm drinking in oz.... :)
Hey Jonny! Those carvings are awesome. I particulary like the staff. If it's up for purchase my legs are what they used to be. Very nice work. Pete from Tates is running the Tates Moderne site if you're looking to exhibit...
