Sculpture week 11

First item was a talk on photography in relation to three-dimensional objects - based on the tutor's dissertation, written about (and in) pre-digital days. Two highlights for me were these photos of Brancusi's "Bird in Space" - the top one was taken by Brancusi himself. He was looking at how the light falls and how natural light changes objects, and said his photos were artworks in their own right, "roughness" and all. At bottom is the modern "official" version.
Now, of course, there are many images of this sculpture on the internet (some snapped in situ; note the plinths) - this one is unusual and intriguing, and looks to be another of Brancusi's own photos (note the plinth).

Before image manipulation software was commonplace, people used their ingenuity (and darkroom techniques). Graham Budgett built a "city" out of bottles and containers, and projected text on them, then photographed that - see more of these "visible cities" here. Sometimes "the old ways" are the best ways to do something - you can't do this with Photoshop, layers, all that clever stuff - the text won't flow around the shapes of the bottles -
Next in the day: installing more sculptures and getting more photos. The college's marketing department is interested in the exhibition (we decided later its title is "In Between" - because of the space it is set in).

After all our attention to weatherproofing, Marina's "eye" is as sturdy as such a fragile object can be -
The (accidental) juxtaposition of Juan's sportsman and Nod's readymade gives a whole new meaning to "football fan" -
Because of the false wall, the sculptures do take a bit of looking for -My "Welcome to the House of English" occupies the narrow niche near the entrance -
I added more stones - the visual balance is getting better -
We had to write "a short sentence" about our pieces, max 30 words. At first I couldn't say less than this (84 words): "The house walls hold words in three very different languages, Arabic, Mandarin and English. The spacing of the rungs of the ladder shows that it’s hard to communicate at first, but as you learn more about the language (and the culture), it gets easier. The house is high up to keep it safe from floods, both of the ecological sort that are in everyone’s minds and also from floods of miscommunication that can be equally destructive; this is where a “common language” is necessary."

But hey, I'm an editor ... so it boiled down to 29 words: "The house holds words in three languages: Arabic, Mandarin and English. Like climbing the ladder, it’s hard to communicate at first, but with effort and practice it gets easier."

And that is the end of The Outdoor Project (we are all a bit sick of it by now!). On to the next thing...

This "next thing" is woolly in my mind. What with the discovery of the herreos/horreos (granaries) and thoughts about "food security", it's tempting to switch my theme, but I'll try to stick with "inside, outside, in between" - contrasts (and moving between them). It was helpful to have the group's feedback on my display of work in progress -
Out of these ideas, the structure with the doors - with the addition of lighting/shadows - seems the way forward. It certainly fits with the interest in liminality and thresholds. So ... I added doors inside and outside this double-walled "room". Not sure if it works, or where it's going; I call this "thinking with my hands" -
What an action-packed day it turned out to be - it ended with moving some of the carved and cast pieces into the vitrine outside the library/learning resource centre (note the shadows) -
And this was the day of the pot sale - items left unclaimed in the ceramics room are glazed if need be, refired, and sold to raise money to buy more clay to make more pots -Remember this one, in its glazed-but-not-fired state?
Here it is, transformed -I managed to reunite the lid with the pot, but in the excitement of that, didn't think to buy it; wish I had; hope someone somewhere will enjoy it.