THE ART OF VOX
VOX Cape Town’s principal musical vision is to create immersive, multisensory experiences for its audiences. Typically, these projects extend much further than the music and usually require accompanying visual motifs. This has often given rise to unique works of art and these commissions demonstrate VOX’s commitment to the broader creative community.
Plantable Programmes for “Tree of Life”
In keeping with the theme of environmental sustainability and awareness that infused our 2024 performances under of the banner of “Tree of Life”, our concert programmes at both the Hermanus FynArts Festival and the Olympia Bakery were printed on handmade, plantable paper embedded with indigenous flower seeds (vygies and African daisies) courtesy of Growing Paper. This was another way in which we try to unify all the aspects of our performances – helping also to keep the memories and the message of the music alive long after the final sounds have ebbed away.
A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
Casey Driver was commissioned to design a motif for our annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Casey, also one of our singers, writes:
VOX Cape Town’s Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols features traditional Christmas music with a local flavour. This offered a great starting point in the conception of the album art. Cape Town’s pride, Table Mountain, features prominently in the centre of the motif. It is shrouded by a dense, inky black sky with stars glowing warmly overhead.
Summer nights in Cape Town are balmy and, on the hottest nights, without any wind, the air hangs heavily over the city and mountain. I chose ink – with its thick, impenetrable opacity when used neat – to capture this heavy feeling. And in washes, it lends a dream-like nostalgia to the scene; a feeling of Christmas.
We wanted to incorporate the Southern Cross into the design too. It is our prominent “local” cross and a lovely natural symbol that harks back to the reason Christmas is celebrated. It stands out brightly against the darkness, watching over the mountain.
Origami Disas
For its performance at the UCT Irma Stern Museum in July 2019, entitled “Flower Songs”, VOX Cape Town commissioned origami artist Tim Povall to create a unique motif to reflect the special floral heritage of the Cape. Tim writes:
The disa is a genus of orchid found in Southern Africa. For me, encounters with disas usually took place on Table Mountain. The species I would see were either the red disa (Disa uniflora) or the blue disa (Disa graminifolia).
The first step in the design of the origami disas involved allocating areas of the paper to parts of the disa. This was done using a mathematical theory of folding called tree theory. The accompanying images show the labelled sketch of a disa and the allocation of the regions of paper using tree theory. Although tree theory is a useful tool for obtaining the basic shape, the further refinement of the shape of the piece is a more intuitive process.
The level of detail in the model is dictated by the thickness and size of the paper used. In this case the paper I used for the disa flowers was made by Richard Alexander and me at the Origamido Studio in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The paper is made from abaca, which is a relative of the banana plant. Abaca fibre makes for excellent origami paper, as it is extremely durable. Along with colourfast pigment, mica was also added to the pulp. This creates an iridescent effect on the paper.
The disas were folded using an origami technique called wet-folding, in which the paper is kept damp while folding. When compared to dry folding, the wet-folding technique allowed for more detail to be imparted to the piece. Wet-folded pieces, once dry, also hold their shape very well. The leaves in the piece are each wet-folded from a rectangle of abaca paper.
The stems are made by winding strips of paper around a wire. The pot in which the disa plants sit is also folded paper. The crease pattern for the pot, which includes curved creases, was designed algorithmically. The crease pattern was scored into the paper using a laser.
When designing the disas, it was important to me to accurately recreate the unique shape of each species. To verify the accuracy, I consulted with the world-renowned botanist Dr Stuart Hall. I am grateful that VOX invited me to make this piece. I am very fond of these orchids and designing them brought back wonderful memories of hot summer hikes on Table Mountain.
Commemorative Magnets
Jennifer Matlock, a singer in VOX, has created a very special tradition at the end of every year. She writes:
2025: VOX Turns Ten
The process each year that resulted in a batch of 36-odd magnets usually started with Kyle reminding me that they were due, followed by a few weeks of design and production before they were presented at one of the last rehearsals of the year in early December. Our tenth anniversary had to be a bit different, so three weeks before our birthday party I received Kyle’s request for 85 of them. After a brief moment of panic, I took the opportunity to try out my new laser cutter, producing a direct copy of the logo for our birthday celebrations in crisp detail rather than by the usual hand-sculpted approach. A few nights of serious batch casting plus a can of gold spray paint later, I handed over 86 magnets for distribution to the choir and our special guests at our party at the Youngblood Gallery.
Materials: Smooth-Cast ONYX polyurethane resin, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, gold spray paint, flexible sheet magnets
2024
The design of the original 2016 magnet, the stylised tree, was revived for the programs of our Tree of Life concerts, so I recreated them in full leaf and added individually cast tiny colourful butterflies to their polymer clay canopies to commemorate one of the most memorable songs from the Tree of Life programme.
Materials: Smooth-Cast ONYX polyurethane resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, silver acrylic paint, flexible sheet magnets
2023
After assisting with the design and construction of the two massive segmented window props for our Rachmaninoff concert in the Bishops Chapel, Eternal Echoes, it felt like a natural move to make them the focus of the magnet design. Kyle’s surprise glow-in-the-dark sunflowers made a reappearance in miniature, hand painted on each magnet as part of six separate layers that went into them.
Materials: EpoxAcast 690 epoxy resin, Smooth-Cast ONYX polyurethane resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, gold acrylic paint, glow-in-the-dark paint, flexible sheet magnets
2022
2022 felt like a year spent regaining the cohesiveness that was lost over the time of lockdown. We had to get back together and remember why we started singing together in the first place. This reconnection inspired this year’s magnets, with line and hearts coming back together.
Materials: EpoxAcast 690 epoxy resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, mica powder, gold acrylic paint, glitter, flexible sheet magnets
2021
The sheer joy of being able to rehearse together towards the end of the year in person after so much time in isolation, plus the title of the final piece of our Christmas collaboration with Here Be Dragons, resulted in this year’s simple, bright, glittery magnets.
Materials: EpoxAcast 690 epoxy resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, mica powder, gold acrylic paint, glitter, flexible sheet magnets
2020
During a difficult year of global isolation, one weekly highlight was our VOX remote rehearsals via Zoom. Although the time delays for videoconferencing meant that we couldn’t sing together, the sense of community and togetherness was very much there. When the time came to create the next batch of magnets, I wanted to commemorate the time spent apart but very much still together with a Zoom-inspired layout and words of consolation around the edges.
Materials: Smooth-Cast 300 polyurethane resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, silver acrylic paint, flexible sheet magnets
2019
After three years of producing magnets for the choir, I was looking forward to creating the 2019 edition. This time, I went with a relief sculpture of a red Disa uniflora to tie in to our Flower Songs concert, and the beautiful origami disas we wore as brooches.
Materials: Smooth-Cast 300 polyurethane resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, acrylic paint, flexible sheet magnets
2018
The next year’s magnets featured part of the design from the promotional material for our performance of the Stabat Mater by Karl Jenkins in St George’s Cathedral. I wanted the design to float above the silver background, so I cast the magnet using multiple layers separated by clear resin.
Materials: Smooth-Cast 300 polyurethane resin, EpoxAcast 690 epoxy resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, imitation silver leaf, black acrylic paint, button magnets
2017
Towards the end of 2017 I asked John and Kyle if they would like me to make another magnet, and they agreed. I based the design of this one on one of the promotional images for our Northern Lights concert. The image showed a person silhouetted against the lights. My design once against included glow powder so that the aurora would shine in the dark.
Materials: Smooth-Cast 300 polyurethane resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, GlowWorm powder, black acrylic paint, button magnets
2016
I started producing a commemorative cast resin magnet for each singer at the end of VOX Cape Town’s first full year, 2016. We had performed our “Trust The Silences concert earlier that year and the image for the concert was a beautiful, partially fractured tree, designed by Emily Hallinan and adapted by James Rink. I was experimenting with polymer clay sculpture and resin casting at the time as a hobby, and decided to sculpt a relief version of the tree on a little medallion as a keepsake for John and Kyle to remind them of their achievement in putting together a great concert with a very newly-formed choir.
I created the initial sculpture in polymer clay, then decided to make a silicon mould of it so that I could cast some resin versions containing a little bit of glow-in-the-dark powder for some extra shine at night. On presenting the first casting to John, he suggested that I produce more as an end-of-year gift for the rest of the choir, so I created more moulds to increase my production rate, and produced another 35-odd little resin medallions, this time with a magnet embedded in the back. Each contained glow powder, and was hand finished with gold and silver paint to bring the design of the tree and lettering out. They were somewhat rough and lacked polish but making them was very satisfying and they were received well by the other choir members.
Materials: Smooth-Cast 300 polyurethane resin, SO-Strong pigments, Mold Max 30 silicone rubber, Sculpey polymer clay, GlowWorm powder, gold and silver acrylic paint, button magnets
