The Atomic Collection

I have always had a love of science, I enjoy watching science programmes and reading books on science. I love how it bends my mind out of place, and how many scientific concepts are simply too big and complex to understand. I love that some people can understand it, and if only I tried a bit harder maybe I could too.

I have to admit that I am pretty hopeless at maths, at least technically, but I will dutifully sit through expositions of complex mathematical principles - trying to just hold onto some of it - even though I can’t even really do long division.

I am particularly fascinated by the very big and the very small. Just how big is big, and just how small is small? Obviously the answer is VERY. But it is so bamboozling it makes my head pleasantly fuzzy with uncertainty. If only I could think harder maybe I could comprehend it!

However, the actual engravings started from a different place entirely. 

I decided to do some abstract devices as an exercise, I love doing these because they call for all sorts of mark-making without the need to represent anything in particular - a real exercise in textures and patterns.

My start point was a trio of devices engraved by Eric Ravillious - I traced the outline sihouette of each one, and then just dived in. The interior pattern is my own, the outline shape started as Ravillious’. If you were to look through his work, and I invite you to do so - you won’t be dissapointed - you will probably spot which ones I started at.

Whilst working away on them you have a lot of thinking time. Each engraving takes a few days, and whilst you need to concentrate hard on the task at hand, you can enter a kind of fugue state, where your mind naturally wanders far and wide.

I had been thinking about a project based on very big and very small, and these engravings seemed to somehow capture these feelings - all they needed was titles.

We love thinking up titles for our work, sometimes very descriptive, sometimes obscure, titles can really change the nature of an image.

The words Quantum, Nebula and Big Bang are great words! They pack big punches.

Having done the engravings we decided to do silkscreens using ‘neon’ Fluoro colours, which brough a vicid intensity to them.

There are cards too - what else can we do...?