Chalice
Claire Beausein was recently awarded the $25,000 2022 Mandorla Art Prize in Western Australia. Her work, Chalice, is a breathtaking piece created from wild silkworm cocoons stitched together with silk thread and suspended by pins from the backing board. Claire's ancestors were lace makers and this influence is evident in her work. As Claire says:
"The golden cocoons suggested to me light refracting from the surface of a chalice or an ancient celestial map of the starry night sky, of stars burning bright, transmuting and creating new elements, of the Universe bubbling with energy."
I was lucky enough to photograph this extraordinary work. I travelled to her studio in the bush and we shot the work for submission to the Mandorla competition. This included close ups, details of the making of Chalice and of course the official works submission image itself.
The still photography was done with a Fujifilm GFX100s and the 45-100 f4 lens. Because the work needed to be kept horizontal at this stage we fixed the entire camera rig to a custom bracket attached to the roof truss of her studio. The camera was tethered to a laptop below and the shutter and lights were triggered wirelessly. Now, it goes without saying this was all done very carefully. Having several thousand dollars worth of heavy equipment suspended above an irreplaceable artwork is not a situation to be undertaken lightly. But it all went off without a hitch.
Claire wanted the work to appear like it was hanging on the wall so I placed the lights in a way to simulate this with a visible shadow appearing at the bottom edge of the work. The images were used in the official program for the Mandola Awards.
While there we decided we would also produce an artist's profile video; her history, her methodology, her surroundings and motivations. I drafted up a series of questions and we recorded her answers on a zoom portable recorder in her studio and some birdsong on the property. I then shot B roll in the studio and about the property using a Panasonic G9 and from above with a DJI drone. This was all finally edited together in Davinci Resolve. The video itself was featured at the awards night and I hope it helped people there gain an insight into Claire's work. You can view the video below.
Artist's Profile Video