This week I have been working with a large quantity of cardboard tubes obtained from carpet retailers. The plan is to make some objects that will resemble manufactured items, or items which have some familiarity. The work has gone slowly because I have had to have help in the workshops to slice the sections at predetermined angles. I am combining the tubes variously with bolts or with galvanised steel. Some of the tubes have colour printed lines and shreds of paper stuck on them, which I like and will preserve.
My studio space is now filled with constructions so I have had to make some drawings at home. These have followed two directions of interest. First, some three dimensional paper structures combined with graphite coated elements and rivets. Second, using spray paint through grid structures onto paper which are then superimposed by drawn objects. I have also made some drawings that explore layers of different materials over illusory spheres.
Do the sculptures and drawings relate to each other? The approach to using material is similar in each case. There is a crossover use of metal fastenings and also a contrast of two materials that suggest opposites. Both are involved in the unintended invention of nearly familiar objects.
I spent some time drawing axe heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and then found an interesting essay by Herbert Read in The Origins of Form in Art. He talks about early human artefacts such as these passing through three stages of evolution towards the creation of art. First, the conception of the object as a tool. Second, the making and refinement of the tool to a point of maximum efficiency. Third, the refinement of the tool beyond the point of maximum efficiency towards a conception of form-in-itself, i.e. aesthetic form. Axe heads started to respond to a spiritual need.
This interests me because I am still thinking about the development of form. I like the idea that form hits peaks or troughs of efficiency during the course of its evolution and how much chance plays its part. I also like the idea that objects exist as a variation on a theme and that they have lineage. I’m thinking of natural or utilitarian objects such as boats, hammers, snail shells, etc. where there are many variations in design. The results are modified by material and structure.
I try to think about this system of selection and development in order to make the ultimate refinement to whatever I am working on. Thinking in this way helped me to rationalise my latest studio work proposal and form the basis for the objects that I intend to make in the next few weeks.
I went to see Thomas Heatherwick’s exhibition at the V & A because I wanted to continue my investigation into form and function and the boundaries between art and craft. I had recently read Tony Cragg’s essay on material. I expected that Heatherwick would have something interesting to say about materials. I thought I would also find out about how he uses ‘process’.
His functional designs are developed through the process of making. He takes simple geometric form and submits it to repetition and change of scale and pushes materials by cutting, folding or stacking. He looks at how material behaves under different conditions and produces what he calls ‘test pieces’. For example, in his Christmas card series, postage stamps are stuck together along their perforated edges to form a 3D object similar to a tree decoration. In another piece he tests very long zips, obtained on a roll, to make an un-zippable form which has been developed into an expanding handbag.
He talks about a ‘purposeful aimlessness’ in his approach to making. Through experimentation he gains more insight into the possibilities of the materials he is using. The creative process relies on choices being made at decision points. These decision points become apparent during testing rather than being set in a pre-determined design. An action or a single moment can then be the creative potential needed to produce the emerging forms.
Heatherwick is making functional architecture and other utilitarian constructions that involve craftsmanship. However, it his method of purposeful aimlessness that can be carried over into making sculpture.
I think our relationship to the world is tied to our relationship with objects. We are surrounded by things we make, modify and throw away in a continuous cycle. The form of these objects depends on their function, and function is always in a state of continuous evolution.
I have been reading Origins of Form by Christopher Williams to give insight into some of the natural and man-made forms that I have been drawing. He asks whether there can ever be a perfect form that matches function. He concludes that there never can be, hence the continuous reinvention that we see all around us both in nature and in industrial objects. Some forms are more successful because they have a greater economy of design and others hardly survive for any length of time at all.
A sculptor can make a perfect form because there is no function. The form cannot be criticised in terms of its efficacy, nor its craftsmanship. But the materials used have to be doing something that they were never intended to do and the object produced has to have crossed the line from a formless, meaningless mass into something that means art.
As a result of reading this really good book I now want to start thinking about species of forms and peaks of development with relation to sculpture.
I need to think about where the line is between craft and art. This has been prompted after a discussion with my tutor.
There is an enjoyment and a compulsion in the act of making things which could be described as craftmanship. Some objects are highly crafted like the work of Richard Deacon and others objects are sucessful with very little craftsmanship. Even painting has an element of craft. Somewhere in the making process the work crosses the line into becoming art.
The difficulty is being able to recognise and then understand what has been created. I think this happens a good while after the event. In order to understand the process a bit better I spent the whole day drawing man-made and natural objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum and the University Museum in Oxford. I needed to re-focus on forms that are not art objects in order to refresh. Everything I drew was functional. I then went to the Ashmolean to see objects created for a different, more artistic purpose.
Then I went back to reading The Language of Sculpture by William Tucker where he talks about Duchamp’s Bottle Rack. It is a crafted, functional object which cannot now be recognised as anything except sculpture, especially in the formal terms of structure, composition, and material. It is a question of recognising it as sculpture and not anything else. This leads me to ask whether there has to be a conscious attempt to make an object as sculpture.
