celandine designblog

Julian Beever - 'Push the Boat Out'

A serious fan of visual quirkiness will quite likely be charmed by Julian Beever’s sidewalk illusions. They are pavement chalk drawings with a 3D twist, pulling the concrete open to reveal hidden underground swimming pools, giant lobsters or butterflies, or precarious plummeting city scapes. The drawings are done in perspective, so they only ‘work’ from one viewpoint – looked at from another angle they appear strangely distorted. But their full effect is stunning – I would love to see one live.

You can see a number of the images here, at the artist’s website, and youtube provides a bunch of videos showing the working process. Some of these were commissioned as advertising work, and they feature names of companies or products – an ephemeral commercial, perhaps, but one your potential clients are unlikely to ever forget.

There are a few more artists out there that make amazing 3D illusions – Edgar Mueller, for one, works at an amazing scale – but there is something about Beever’s pieces that works for me in a very intimate way. It isn’t just the ‘cleverness’ of the trick – it’s an image that seems to say something, there is a little story in there that isn’t always simply visual, or simply commercial. On the imaginary scales of artistic judgment in terms of ‘vapid’ versus ‘deep’, I’d vote ‘deep’ on Beever’s entire approach – I realise this is a difficult position to defend, one way or another, but in the end it comes down to a personal choice. Most of the time I’m too cynical anyway.

Julian Beever - Feeding the Fish

Speaking of dimensions, I went to the movies recently and was ushered into a 6D Theatre. Yup, six. Now I know that string theory is currently allowing for the possibility of up to 11 spatial dimensions, but I thought this stuff was still under construction, as it were – never realised that movie theatres have moved so far away from the traditional dimensional norms of 3 + 1….. Still, in essence I applaud this brave breach of the ‘fourth wall‘ – the more directions we have to move in, the more scope for our creativity to go crazy. One reason why I always loved swimming – it gives you an additional direction to move in.

We seem to have strong positive reactions towards a sense of depth and space emulated in two dimensions – after all, the discovery of linear perspective was probably the greatest single leap art ever made. And web design that incorporates 3D elements smoothly into itself is undoubtedly visually effective. (Here is a link to The Eco Zoo – a radical example of how magical 3D can really be). Now, you don’t necessarily need to build your own 3D engine like ROXIK did, but if you do you can make mega-cool things like this too!!! But even if you’re working on a perfectly ordinary webpage, and using nothing fancier than good old CSS, try to make something float above your main sheet – give it a little depth, go beyond a regular bevel and put in something that looks…. grabable. It will draw the eye.

Julian Beever - Butterfly

I’ve made a little three-dimensional navigation thingy (you can look at it here) which I still haven’t found a practical application for, but had a great time writing and assembling. It isn’t the most SEO-friendly thing you’ve ever seen in your life, but as long as it came with an alternative navigation bar and a proper site map, I think it could make a pretty focal point for a charming little website. If I ever make a whole site around it I’ll be sure to let you all know! I’m also hoping that the new version of the Celandine website will be up soon, as I’m slowly running out of tweaks.

Until then I’ll go gaze at a few more Julian Beever drawings, marvel at the skill, wonder what it would be like to walk into one on my local street, and hope it isn’t raining wherever he decides to conjure up his next creation. I guess in art, just like in life, it’s all about the Point of View.