Diary of a residency…

‘recycle with michael’ seems to be popular,

it is interesting how they’ve automatically thought of recycling and community and ‘population’

they sound to me like buzz words from some government education programme

The theme around my copper sculpture is the idea of the power that nature has even over the man-made environment. the plan is for the courtyard area with the dragon to become a mini sculpture park around the theme of earth, air, fire and water. The Dragon (breathing fire) represents fire, the copper piece represents earth. Air and water are yet to be designed and will probably be left as a project for the next artist or the school to tackle.

To get some of the kids engaged in my work on the sculpture i’ve got a small group to write down their ideas of what the words nature and environment mean to them…

I then got them to draw pictures that represented what they had written and then produce monoprints from their drawings…

I am planning to continue with this and use some of the monoprints to incorporate into the sculpture by transfering them onto the copper using the gum litho process.

i’ve got ideas of the drawings being like grafitti on the buildings in my drawing

bits of sculpture on ohp projector… lots of the etching shows the light through it, i think i am going to try backing it onto a piece of clear perspex so hopefully the effect will happen outside too, although i am planning to leave ink in the marks so they show up so they might block up the holes.

I’ve been getting enthusiastic about using ohp projectors in an exhibition i really like the ‘old school’ nature of them, i think it would be great fun to play with a space and lots of ohp projectors.

I’ve been playing with layering work on the light box of the projector and making shadows.

i think the work looks more interesting than the shadow but it is opening up ideas of using light in my work- a theme i’ve had running through my head for a few years now.

a lot of my prints are made up of subtle layers and they really show when you put a light behind them, i think it would be really interesting to make prints with the plan of having a light shine through them so the idea of light is part of the creative process when making the work, not just an after thought..

after i felt happy with the drawing i then chopped i down into six sections so could etch it in ferric chloride, the sections just fitted in gently folded in half- some areas have etched almost all the way through and look really nice with light shining through, i was after a kind of lace effect which i’ve almost got when the light is there, although i don’t know how long the piece would last if it wasn’t held together by tape at the back.

Some really nice marks and textures have happened where the copper has etched for a long time i am looking forward to seeing it as a sculpture i think it is going to turn out well..