Pietrasanta Bronze Casting Residency 2010

New Clay Piece – Pantograph enlargement

I’ve not had a chance to blog recently as I’ve been working long hours on my new piece and have been totally absorbed. It is going really well.

Using the pantograph was great, but it does have its limitations and is not that accurate at times. At one point I thought that either my maquette had moved, or the clay was subsidding, but it turned out that the needle on different settings won’t always point to the same point – especially when fully extended as the weight of it bends it.

A few people have said interesting things to me that I’ve been thinking about:

I had a chat with Nigel Boonham at the Yves Dana private view on saturday – He asked me how I was keeping the freshness of the original. At the time I didn’t think this was a problem as I’d been working quite loosely with the clay, quickly sketching the forms.

But as I am working back in on the piece to refine it, I’m finding this is a big problem. The movement and vitality of the initial form has a tendency to get lost. But I can’t just leave it as is, as it has a few ackwardnesses and really could benefit from being pushed further.

I also showed it to a few of the people who come to the life class on tuesday evenings that Roberta runs. In particular Julia Knight the american sculptor I’ve become friends with. She asked me how the piece had changed for me as it was being enlarged.

I started to tell her how I felt I’d been learning about these amazing, strange and subtle forms that were in the molten wax. I was a bit put out as she didn’t seem that interested in that instead saying – “ah, so it is still just forms at the moment”.

However since, I’ve realised that it has to be more than the sum of its parts and perhaps I was shying away from the whole piece’s meaning as it is a bit daunting. Now that I have the model down from its perch under the pantograph, and can look at it, and my developing clay together, I am thinking more of the whole piece and what I have there.

I had also been thinking earlier in the week about what it is and what I am trying to say with it. I don’t really understand the piece, it isn’t how I normally work, but it intrigues me and I am loving the process. I can’t help thinking these are good signs.

I remembered reading about some artists who equate their practice with being a shamen – that you are tuning in to something greater than yourself to bring out a universal truth. In many ways my bird like apparition is similar to ritualistic artifacts from past civilisations – african masks, south american gods… but I think it also has elements of the things that have been concerning me lately: the untameable powers of nature, and yet its fragility in the face of man’s abuse (in the context of climate change and the many ecological disasters we inflict on this poor planet) Perhaps the vulture like qualities of the bird is a representation of death and chaos that could ensue if we get run-away global temperature rises, our 6 degrees of global warming.

It seems weird that I have brought out all my concerns in a very intuitive piece, when I normally work in a very conceptual intellectual way. I somehow worry that I am reading in to an accident things that aren’t there, but when I look at the presence and power of the piece I don’t think this is the case.

In some ways I also feel like I do with most of my best pieces, that I seem to have accidently found it, not that I had all that great a part in creating it.

Ok – better stop now, I hadn’t intended to write so much as I want to get back in to the studio to continue, but in the quiet of the apartment with sleeping mother and son I can think more clearly than at the end of the day, after my son’s asleep, when I’m exhausted and just want to hit my bed myself.

Preparing my first wax for Casting

As it is a complex piece it needs to be separated into 3 bits, and to have all the wax sprues added. Once the piece has been covered in ceramic shell and baked so the wax melts away, these sprues become the tubes that deliver the molten bronze to the space which will be the sculpture.

(These shots were all taken on the 24th Feb)

The Pantograph

I am absolutely loving doing my enlargment using the pantograph. The first day and a half was a bit frustrating as it takes a while to set everything up and get the armature sorted, but I started putting on the clay yesterday afternoon and it is so absorbing.

Its fascinating enlarging and reproducing the forms of my maquette and as it is a process of really looking and understanding, and with the help of the pantograph it can be a really faithful reproduction.

I’m also enjoying working loosely in clay, after the precision of the wax, and I’m excited about the piece and how it is developing.

I have my lunch in front of me and a toddler trying to climb on my knee, so I’ll have to write more later, however as i’m out tonight I just wanted to capture the moment and the feelings I’m having…

Foundry Artists

I have been enjoying watching some of the work going through the foundry, and have started getting to know the different artists works.

One in particular I really like is the work of Dana – in fact, Yves Dana, a swiss sculptor:

www.yvesdana.ch

Today as I was in the metal workshop he game in to work on one of his pieces, and I was brave enough to introduce myself. My piece was nearly finished, so he looked at it and said he thought it was really interesting. It was very exciting. Tonight I googled him, and saw some even more interesting work on his website, and I’m even more excited to see he has a show in Pietrasanta opening on Saturday. I wonder how done it is here to just turn up to a private view…

Another one that has some interesting work is Vangi – there is currently an amazingly exciting piece of a motobiker, in which he has stretched, enlarged and doubled up the right hand to show it moving – something which could be crass maybe – but which has been amazingly executed.

I haven’t found a good site of Vangi’s work but here is one in Italian that has a few interesting ones: Guiliano Vangi

http://www.scultura-italiana.com/Biografie/Vangi%20Giuliano.htm

Maria was telling me that there is a Vangi museum in Japan as he has a fan there who has set up a wonderful sculpture park dedicated just to Vangi.

So if you can read japanese:

http://www.vangi-museum.jp/

Dinner

I just had a nice dinner with Julia the american artist. Unfortunately her other 2 artist friends cancelled on her, but we had a nice pizza at a very quiet Il Vatican, and had long discussions about art, transformation of consciousness, states of flow, craft vs concept, material and others.

She told me her art bible (that she re-reads regularly) is Henri – the Art Spirit.

We also agreed to swap art books, she is reading Ansel Adams and Judy Chicago (a feminist artists who I’ve never heard of…) – and I have Raymond Mason to lend. I also found some other books I had brought with me to read, including Bouriault’s Relational Aesthetics which I’d forgotten about – might have to read that…

New Studio

Tomorrow I’m off to Marcello Giorgi’s studio to start my enlargement and learn how to use a Pantograph, so must go to bed so I’m fresh for it… I’m very excited. Will be very exciting understanding my little maquette as well. This afternoon I tidied up my place in the wax room as I’m probably not going to be at the foundry for about a week, was a bit sad. A slight foretaster of the fact that I’ll have to go for good in about 6 weeks

Yes – I’m already half way through! :(

Metal, Tea and Blogs

This evening Helaine invited me to tea along with Maria Gamundi and Shelley Robzen at her studio. It was so lovely and really interesting. I felt privileged being allowed into an inner sanctum with these 3 established sculptors, who are all so generous with their time to me and interested in what I have to say and think.

We also talked about my (this) blog! Johannes Von Stumm, President of the RBS, had told Helaine that she must read it (he has also sent me some lovely emails too including: “I am glued to the screen and enjoy it very much.”) so she looked it up and apparently was quite surprised and impressed with it. She thought the RBS should put it in their weekly ebulletin!

Shelley also mentioned that she had read what I had put about my visit to her studio, and was really touched. She even said she might want to quote it in a catalogue some day. She also said that the way I wrote it was great as it made her fell right there with me.

It is strange as, being a visual artist, and never being very strong at the humanities at school (I was always more of a scientist) I don’t really think that I’m any good at writing. However, the process of keeping this blog has been very interesting. I find myself thinking what I should write about and how to capture the various experiences I’m having. It seems to be a way of digesting and analysing the whole experience. At times I think about the audience, and how to interest them and draw them in. But most of the time I try to forget that anyone might actually be reading it (especially anyone I might know!)

It was great hearing them reminiscing about their early days in Pietrasanta, when there were only a few artists, and even fewer who were women. Tales of endless massive delicious meals; Of long discussions between artists in the marble workshops; and things they had learnt that are still relevant to the way they work today.

However it did remind me that one of the things I’d expected to be doing here on my residency, which as yet hasn’t materialise… I’d been told that Pietrasanta was such a mecca for Sculptors that I’d imagine I would be having long discussions about sculpture and art over meals or drinks – but it is hard to intergrate into a community just like that, so I think I need to make more efforts to invite myself into other people’s lives! That said, I have been invited out to dinner tomorrow evening with some of the artist from the life class, so maybe it is just one of those things that takes time.

I was actually a bit late for tea as I’d got so absorbed in my work in the metal workshop that I’d lost track of time. I must have missed the 5pm siren when we were re-sandblasting my first bronze, which is really very nearly finished. Massimo had been helping me with all the things I can’t do. The 2 small figures are soldered back into place, and it is attached to its purpose built new brass base.

It was fascinating how effortlessly and quickly Massimo sorted out the base. I probably took nearly as long to decide the exact positioning of the piece, he then marked of the 3 leg positions using a marker pen. With the sculpture upturned, he marked a small hole using a rotary tool in the the centre of each leg by eye, then used a drill to make a hole. He then took a hand tap (I just had to look that up online to find out what it was called) and cut the thread.

Again by eye he marked the centre of the marker pens circles left on the base (with a quick glance back at the holes in the sculpture base to cross check – particularly as one the the legs joined the base at an angle making more of an oval shape). It amazed me that he did it all by eye, and is probably far more acurate than I would be if I tried to measure it all accurately. 3 holes were drilled, 3 brass screws were cut down to the exact size required, the burs all tidied up, and the base was screwed into place – simple – when you have 37 years of experience :)