Sculpture, week 3

The day started well with a discussion about Jane's gloves while waiting for the elevator.In the sculpture room, the usual sculpture-materials smorgasbord -
and a book well worth looking at in terms of how to display work - Unmonumental, the Object in the 21st Century - the catalogue of an exhibition at The New Museum, New York -
My task for the day was to review the work so far - to lay out the pages of "my little books" - compilation of blog posts documenting the course - and "see what you have" -
It's good to see this through someone else's eyes. What struck her was this arrangement in its plaster mold -
the "village" put together out of the scraps of clay on a bit of hessian that happened to be lying around -
and the idea of the staircase -
especially this one -Thinking ahead to the exhibition space for the final project, I'd thought of a (mirrored) shelf of little objects (ceramic?) with a dark hole below holding models of "rooms under the staircase" - you'd have to bend down to look at that -By the end of the day my thinking about the conjunction of all these factors was down on a worksheet. The idea is to make a staircase of fabric as a walk-in space, and in this space to display a few small items.Lots of decisions needed, both aesthetic and practical - light or dark? how wide? how high? how to support it? And of course, what objects to display, and how - shelving, lighting, spacing.... But it's those "technical" aspects, the problem-solving, that I quite enjoy - choosing the best possibilities and getting them to work together.

To start, the bamboo slats in these tatty old blinds may become stair rods, and that intriguing torn paper might have a future too -
"Proper art" starts with the idea and finds the best way to realise it (form and materials) - but I'm still drawn by the materials themselves, starting with them and seeing an idea emerge. Nor am I willing to set aside that way of thinking - it does have its uses!