Custom Art Installation

A month ago I blogged about not finding the right birthday present for T. After much research and random surfing, I came across this American artist who does wire art works by pure chance. Bart Soutendijk is an artist who creates drawings with wires and he took custom orders via his website.

His work has been exhibited mostly in the US but earlier this year, was shown in Palestine. The website Wirewallart showed some of Bart's work . This is titled Jazz Funeral at an art exhibit at the Masur Museum in LA.

This one was exhibited in the Fort Smith Convention Center, AR.

I found the work very interesting and I always liked charcoal etchings or outlines in black and white, simple but effective. He explains his work on the website :

I work to simplify an image with my art.. Making a line drawing of an object is like undressing it. I ask myself: “What is it about this image that’s unique.” Then I strip away the lines that aren’t required to convey that “uniqueness.” I use line to capture the feel of the image, and wire emphasizes that line.

The final work — after I compose the drawing and make a wire model — is a free-hanging sculpture made of painted steel rod. No colors. No tones. No paper. No frame. No line-thickness fluctuation. Just a line drawing in space. You can’t get simpler than that. 

My next task was to find the perfect photo for Bart to transform into art for me. I thought first of a skyline, perhaps one of KL twin towers and they would look impressive especially in outline. The problem was,  that was in the past, I knew I wanted this to represent something else. Something that would represent the present or the future.

My lightbulb moment came a few days later, when I saw one of our framed pictures. This is a picture taken of stilt fishermen in Sri Lanka, the place we both love and hope to spend a lot of time in.

After deciding on the picture, things moved along. It was easy getting in touch with Bart via email and telling him what I wanted. I specified the size and sent him a photo of the stilt fisherrmen. He wrote back almost immediately with a quote and a preliminary drawing.

This was his initial drawing.

He made it into 3 separate pieces so I could hang them individually or arrange them differently. When placed right next to each other like this, the size of the work was 20 by 40 inches.

Besides making a minor addition to the drawing, I was very happy and could not wait for the final product to arrive. Keeping this a secret from T was not easy.

Bart said he would have it sent end August and true to his word, it landed on my doorstep just a week after T's birthday. He was super happy with it and it went on the wall immediately.

This would definitely be something we would treasure for a long time. Thank you Bart !