KLEON, A. (28/02/2012) Steal Like an Artist, New York: Workman Publishing

The book ‘Steal Like an Artist’ aims to help guide individuals to creative outcomes within the digital age; Kleon covers a variety of topics within the book, mainly based on how originality comes about, the main point being that nothing created today is considered original because everything has been done. He includes quotes from various artists, including, Jessica Hische, Pablo Picasso, and T.S. Elliot to help iterate how successful artists have had to ‘steal’ ideas in order to excel. This book is not only for aspiring artists, but it is also written to appeal to anyone who is trying to “inject creativity into their life”. Essentially, the message Kleon is trying to communicate is that you have to be open to putting yourself out there to discover new ideas and to allow yourself to be influenced by previous ideas in order to be able to create your own. He makes a point at the beginning of the book (pg.2) “all advice is autobiographical”; by this, Kleon means that when people give advice, they’re attempting to stop others from making the same errors that they have.

These pieces were part of my A2 exam project; the concept behind them being to play with folding various materials to discover how the processes and outcomes differ from one another. To create these pieces, I drew, weaved, and painted images of folds in various materials such as fabrics, paper, and foil; allowing me to display a variety of geometric and organic folds. The idea of folding the folded images was inspired by Aldo Tolino’s work with the intricate, geometric folding of paper to ‘transfold’ images. I experimented with a variety of different folds, some being finer and more accurate to generate different shadows and space; by photographing them with harsh lighting, I created intense shadows to make the folds more prominent. I produced these pieces as a starting point for a composition which combined all the elements I explored for this topic; this included works inspired by Tolino, Umberto Boccioni, and Bridget Riley. They also allowed me to discover a variety of outcomes that could be produced with geometric folding. From here, I proceeded to create my composition with the main element being the physical, geometric folds.