sharon liu pays tribute to the macintosh building fire with sketches made of ash

illustrator sharon liu presents a series of monochrome drawings executed with ash salvaged from the mackintosh building fire at the glasgow school of art. later on, she combined her sketches into a 1.5 minute long animation, as part of the ‘ash to art’ project which transforms the ‘worthless by-product of the fire into 25 priceless works of art’. 

‘ash to art’ was commissioned by JWT to promote the auction of artworks created by 25 british artists, among them sharon liu. ultimately, this would raise money towards the rebuild of the iconic charles rennie mackintosh library at the glasgow school of art which was destroyed in a fire in 2014.  the 1.5 min animated film was made to describe the process leading up to the event and concludes with the actual amount raised. 

ASH TO ART – animation
video from sharon liu

the artworks were all created using charcoal from the remains of the mackintosh furniture.  the auction raised nearly ¾ million pounds with the works by UK’s top artists including grayson perry, jake & dinos chapman, jim lambie, nathan coley, martin boyce, ishbel myerscough, chantal joffe, jenny saville, sir antony gormley, david shrigley, joseph kosuth, simon starling, paula rego, anish kapoor, idris khan, tacita dean, alison watt, cornelia parker, rachel whiteread, miroslaw balka, douglas gordon, julie mehretu, richard long, conrad shawcross and sir peter blake.

ASH TO ART – making of animation
video from sharon liu

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: lea zeitoun | designboom