Beginnings....

This little blog will contain the artworks, and the creative process of bringing them into being, of Sean and Kevin Kerrigan and Simon Vine which will be shown at the Aethercon steampunk big day out. It's in early april at the events centre so it's just under six weeks to get enoiugh gear together.

The three of us are all in the business of making things and are keen to use the aethercon opportunity to open a commissioning base and will endevour then to put forward all our talents in the hope that the Steampunk community will embrace us to bring their dreams to fruition.

Kevin Kerrigan runs a business called Leathersmiths which deals with all aspects of refurbishment of leather from the recolouring of skins to the refurbishment of furniture and all other leather goods.

Sean Kerrigan and Simon Vine are predominatly artists with Sean veering towards sculpture and Simon being a painter. Together these three will fill a 3m x 3m space with a variety of furniture and art which they believe will both allow them to show off their talents whilst also being conducive to widening the scope of the genuine Steampunk in filling their worlds with the accoutrement necessary.

Way back in about 1975 one of the first authors that I read my way through after I found the magic contained in books was Jules Verne and his visions of early futurism suited well my expanding ideas of what could be. I already had a do it yourself ethic going on and his descriptions of machines, I would surmise, were somehow a serendipitous event in the beginnings of using art and craft in the world.

But within two years I had found the Head and Tails bookshop in Inner City Auckland and therein found the magazine Heavy Metal and within that the art of Moebius who, to this day, is one of my favourite inspirations. Jean Giraud's (Moebius) metaphysical leanings though had a more profound effect upon me which has forever leaned me towards functional items with a heart and a soul, or if they do not infact have this, then at the very least that it is important for us as humans to be around hand made items.

Steampunk, then, with it's connections to a time when industrialisation was crawling from the it's pre-industrial age of craftmanship  is a very inspiring time for any artist simply because the machine offered the ability to remove most of the hardship from making and left much more time for craftmanship and the role of the artisan whilst also bringing quality and dependability within reach of everyman.

And this for me is the paramount question that Steampunk raises. How much is left to the machine and how much is finished by the hands and as a metaphor it is the question of where we, as humans, sit within what is left of the natural world. How do we place ourselves within this world being both beyond, in terms of lifting ourselves beyond mere survival, but retain enough of that primal energy to exist in resonance with that earthiness. It's as if Steampunk held at it's essence is a cultural archetype that allows us to swim within that partings of the way and discover within ourselves both our attachment to the earth and it's mysteries and our need to dream the big dream of human potential.