Huddersfield, Barnsley campus

Missed my Friday deadline due to dissertation angst. Now on the cusp of completion, just bibliography and images to go….I am writing on Bill Viola’ The Passions series, particularly interested in the kind of spiritual transformation he seems to be wanting his work to give people. I have called these ‘sacramental experiences’ as people are more ready to experience the transcendent in an art gallery now than in churches. Discuss.

Have found a source of scaffolding for large body cast…the studio technician had some in his cupboard, now I am searching for clamps to hold them together safely so I can cast a man in wet cloth. Also the idea of ‘searching for the lost Garden of Eden’ has been percolating – and the thought that I might try to grow grass seed inside some of my body casts, as a link to that lost place. I think there is a feeling of searching everywhere we look today – combined with the promise of something better, esp in advertising which capitalises on it.

Also Husband and I much preoccupied with trying to establish a community smallholding in our area of Sheffield – crops, chickens, fruit trees, an outdoor classroom and most definitely a pizza oven, all in an acre of pasture….

Now…back to the grind.

Week 2 of blogging and just realising the importance of reading and commenting on others posts. Enjoyed getting feedback on my work, so will read and comment after this.

The week has been tinged with doubt and despondency, as an external processor I think I don’t work well in isolation. The final year here in Barnsley is characterised by the notable absence of most students, and the weather has compounded this recently. I am working on the maquettes for a 3-D fabric sculpture of the cloth/shroud in one of Reubens’ Deposition paintings. The lack of a fully posable small scale model frustrates me – Action Man just doesn’t cut it – too stiff. Artists wooden model covered in cling film ok but a bit light. Resorted to a mouldsil rubber female figure I made last year, held in impossible pose by strings.

I feel much encouraged today having talked it over with Steve West, the Sculpture tutor, and am resolved to go large as soon as I have ordered the scaffolding. Also thinking to crossfertilise this work with photography, using the same pose but with lights attached to the body – producing a “light sculpture” photo, if long exposures are used. My husband was obligingly covered with blue led lights and posed,l whilst wobbling about to get the trails of blue light…

Still no word on 2nd draft of dissertation on Bill Viola’s The Passions -anyone else studying him?

New to blogging. Will anyone read this? please click and let me know if you do, just write ‘yes, i hear you, sister’, or something.

Thinking this week about how my recent installation was recieved at St Thomas’ Church, Sheffield, a kind of marble-looking but glowing womb of the pregnant virgin. It was a bit harder to read than previous sculptures – see photo, as it was only the torso of a very pregnant woman, and displayed on a mirror to make it cave-like. Here is the accompanying text – comments welcome:

“Your entry was so quiet, the heavens hushed to watch you wrap yourself in a girl’s fragile clay. The jar filling slowly, fragrant infinity within human torso, limbs, head. Your descent through vermilion cushions ends in work hewn hands.You wore your first ruby crown, a gift from Mary’s crimson temple.You are a sweet, ripe apple, flesh hiding the Star of David.”

Preoccupations for the coming weeks: I want to translate the fabric from, amongst others, Rubens’ sublime “The Descent from the Cross” (1611-12) into a life sized 3-d fabric sculpture. I will use a method I am developing with fabric dipped into a a plaster of paris mix, and quickly draped over a body. The question is, hav I set myself an impossible task? I will need scaffolding and probably a circus performer as a model as the body is so distorted. Anyone bendy out there fancy a day being draped in wet plaster in Barnsley? The piece will be displayed (at Easter) without the body, of course, maybe with some scaffold still in place to suggest the cross. I mafe the first maquette this week, still a long way to go to get this loking like a renaissance furled marble sculpture….

Also need to start a new photography brief, somehow fitting in with the project above. I would like to investigat the poses of the other figures in Rubens’ painting- there is one man holding the cloth in his teeth, another supporting Christ from below, but how?

That’s enough for now, will try and update every Fri.