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On the way back home I was so busy doing "travel writing" that I missed my stop - and found these interesting 1930s(?) wall panels in the next station along the line -
Got home to find my Domestic Assistant baking bread -
and making a big salad for lunch. Kinda sets you up for an intense afternoon in the studio. I'm aiming to do a few worksheets for the portfolio - time is running out.
The next talk was was by Natasha Daintry, who started out learning Japanese and got interested in Japanese ceramics, then went on to make white and celadon pieces, until colour grabbed and held her. She related the qualities of the elements - fire, air, water, earth - to the qualities and attributes of colours. Interesting to me, but much too theoretical for the ladies sitting behind me.
Nearby was a CraftCube - showing the mobius-based work of Merete Rasmussen -
A quick bite in the caf, and it was time for another demo, Robert Cooper's working process - and process it is; he likes to see what's happening to the clay and react to that, rather than starting out making something specific.
Which left a bit of time to see the exhibits, resist the temptation to buy "a nice pot", and head home. The venue was the Royal College of Art, seen fuzzily here behind the Albert Hall -
In the basement was an intriguing small exhibition by the RCA ceramics&glass MA students. A first-year project is to make a replica of an object in the V&A, and then "evolve" it. Melissa Gamwell turned a "mennecy jar" (for cosmetics in 1755) inside out - see how she did it here.
In class, a moment of jubilation when the plan to plant the legs of the rickety steps into holes in the cubes worked - the cube supported the step. But it's made of foamboard - the porcelain ones will be heavier. And there will be several steps on one cube.
The legs sink down through the holes, given a chance - perhaps little nests of thread will stop them - and be "subliminal" rather than obtrusive -
The cube will need reinforcing in some way. Will wire, at each end, be strong and invisible enough (white-coated wire perhaps? florists wire?) - well the wire on hand was strong enough but hard to bend accurately and it wouldn't stay where it was put -
Accurate bending will need a jig; I'll make one with wood and nails at home, but meanwhile this bit of improvisation helped -
A continuous wire to strengthen the cube -
And here it is supporting two steps (amid the paraphernalia of the sculpture room)
As to the matter of how many steps a cube can support - that will depend on the size of the porcelain pieces, and possibly their weight. They can be used to mark the position of the legs; it's helpful to splay the legs a little, so I've marked the corners of the rectangles and used a bradawl to punch the hole -
The wire shows through a little, adding that element of (literal!) tension -
It's interesting to solve these little problems along the way, in fact the "engineering challenges" are what I particularly enjoy about sculpture. And I love working with the translucent (and crackly) qualities of the tracing paper, not to mention the bamboo sticks, which are taken from a paper window-blind, and recently the embossed porcelain. I'm aiming to keep this pared down and hope that the final piece will ... what? ... "provide a space for contemplation" - ?
Could any of the stairs fit in with the mountain of translucent cubes...
One task is to set up the items I'm not going to use "as in an exhibition" and photograph them, then print the photos large for presentation in the portfolio. I had a go, but this will have to happen later, when the final project is further along -
For the final project, I'm rolling out porcelain very thin, making rectangles for the "rickety steps" that will climb up my translucent mountain on their skinny bamboo legs, and putting a subtle pattern on in various ways. I discovered that by wrinkling the bottom and top cloths when rolling out the clay, both sides get a pattern - here's the before -
and the after -
You can put nails or other small items on top of the cloth, and rolling will give you a pattern - without the nails becoming embedded in the clay.
If you put nails underneath as well, there will be holes where nails cross - I need to make some more of those (and to try out paper clay for this).
The stairs have been glazed - matte, shiny, tinglaze, and a combination - wonder what they'll look like. I haven't developed a sense of the effect of glazes yet, and until that happens, won't be able to really plan a piece. So far it's been about the shape or even the concept, rather than the finished piece itself.
Inspired by looking at the work of Sian Bowen when she was artist-in-residence at the V&A a couple of years ago, I am longing to immerse myself in this "slow" process and spend hours on a single drawing (perhaps this is a reaction to having to hurry to get the final project ready?).
Other translucent materials were to hand - tracing paper of various sizes and weights. I made a couple of large cubes from some crumpled paper that someone had thrown away, and others with fresh, smooth paper -- the crumpled stuff was much more sturdy. But oh so noisy to work with!
They can be used on their sides or on end -
The rolls of paper will be replaced by "rickety steps" - but what size will the piece be? Is this a maquette or the full-sized piece, with tiny steps, or will the steps I've already made be a suitable size to go with the larger cubes?
Will it be a scree slope of cubes, confined at the end of "tunnel" -- or will it be a small mountain, that people can walk around?
On my to-do list today was to figure out how the doorways and thresholds have morphed into this form. The emphasis is now definitely on the in-between, away from the inside and outside. We'll be writing a "supporting statement" for the final piece, to reflect these kinds of changes.
John Barbour is an Australian artist who uses embroidery in his work - as he says in the video on his piece Inherent Vice, his level of technical skill is not great. This work incorporates not only applique, but traces of stitches, as well as staining with inks. The museum that bought it sees it as a drawing, and its display and conservation needs are those of a drawing - low light, etc. (The term "inherent vice" refers to the extent of the tendency of materials to degrade.)
and Poor Box (2001)
and glimpses of the waxing moon along Charteris Road -
This by William Kentridge, "a storyteller" -
and this by Marco Maggi, who I've encountered before. In the work shown, piles of copy paper are laid on a floor of paper (visitors take their shoes off); the top sheet in each pile is drawn on with a scalpel -
Drawing, as it is practised now, is baffling; it rather eludes me as a concept. It seems to encompass everything that isn't painting or sculpture - and some things that might be. Categories are fluid ... artists work in several categories, several media ... sometimes their main category is drawing, their main medium a "traditional" one - pencil, charcoal, ink. And it's not always "works on paper"...
A Canadian writer, book partly set in Vancouver but mostly in WW2 North Borneo -
Two from my nephew's bookshelf, both worth reading from start to finish (one day...) -
Two from the library, again neither completely read. I'm a big fan of Visser's work - she looks at "the almost invisible ordinary", very eye-opening and thought-provoking -
And this one, still in progress, on the plane home, a biography of Joseph Needham, by a writer of other books on China -
When I was in Cambridge (mid-70s), some people I knew were working with Needham on his massive, complex, fascinating Science and Civilisation in China. Needham died in 1995 but volumes are still being produced.
