The Sporozoan Swarm Movement

What?

I said: Sporozoan Swarm.

This is the sweet brain child of Printtroll, a Seattle-based artist who we are voluntarily showing support for. Pete went to Pratt Institute with him and his wife, and you’ll probably enjoy following her on Pinterest like I do (especially the board highlighting gray couches), but this is a post about the swarm, and freeform art, and general artistic interpretation in my own home. And a little tiny bit about Kickstarter.

Let me back up.

Pete, artist, friend, and supportive dude that he is, received a miniscule sporozoan swarm package from his buddy RobRoy in exchange for supporting the arts. What a nice surprise to have received; this was just a generous token of gratitude for supporting his work via Kickstarter earlier this year (the project was funded in full, here’s a video if you want to know more about that, and here’s his etsy shop). Sidenote: we love Kickstarter and what it has to offer artists, small business owners, everyone.

Not sure what we were actually going to find, we opened cautiously to find our own (er… Pete’s own) cluster, a complete set of pins and paper pieces made up of torn and cut Intaglio and Lithographic prints (I wouldn’t have known that myself, I found the description on his website, yo.)

RobRoy has produced many larger scale swarms, many of which are shown on his flickr page, and now we had the opportunity to make our own little fluid and dimensional and totally unique work of art.

You might notice that each piece of paper already has a pinhole in it; this helped me to identify which way the paper was going to hang as I began to organize different configurations (flat, on my dining room table).

The third configuration with that little loopdeloop was a winner, and it came to be because I decided on just the right spot for the little cluster: right on a wall outside my master bedroom, where it was out of the way from the dog’s tail, and still in a place where we could see and appreciate it every day. The design was constructed as it is shown here in this next photo because I wanted it to complement the two small frames that were already on the wall.

See? A little swarmy cluster.

It adds a really nice added dimension to the space, especially when your eye catches the produced shadows. See how the pins are (gently tapped) into the wall but the paper itself can be adjusted down the length of the pin to add depth and wonderful shadow?

In my presentation, the loop in the center is closer to the wall than the two ends, where I have the larger pieces of paper pulled further from the wall, closer to the ends of the pins.

Of course, the concept allows for the cluster to grow, morph, reconfigure itself over time, so perhaps we’ll shift it around the house if we find other places to appreciate it. For now, it’ll be enjoyed here.

P.S. Today’s the last day to enter the painting gear giveaway! Leave a comment over here if you want in on the drawing!