My Application for the residency:
As not much is happening yet on the residency, I’m posting the images and text I sent in as part of my application for the residency. Here are the three main questions from the application form along with my responses:
Please describe your experience of modelling.
I discovered and fell in love with clay when I was 11, as a result this medium feels like safe ‘home’ for expressing form and ideas. Today I work across a variety of modelling materials, including modelling wax, clay, plaster and even experimenting with expanding foam for working on a large scale.
Please give a brief outline of what you hope to achieve during the three month residency and explain why it could only be realised in Pietrasanta.
I anticipate immersing myself totally in what sounds like an amazing sculpture focused town. I am interested in the effect on my work to be in a different critical context. I suspect that the strong carving tradition and skilled craftsmen coupled with a variety of international contemporary practitioners would provide different feedback to what we are used to in London with its strong focus on concept and ideas. Through 3 months cut off from the usual background distractions of developing my career and the responsibilities of personal life, I would be hoping for a ‘quantum leap’ in my practice. At the very least I would be looking to return from Italy with a new set of sculpture techniques and news ways of seeing my work.
Do you have a project in mind that you’d like to pursue during the
residency? If so, please describe it.
During the residency I would like to focus on 2 areas:
1. Experimenting with combining cast bronze with constructed bronze elements
This relates to work I have been doing using constructed geometric forms in copper and brass combined with cast figures and forms. I would be interested in seeing how best the lost wax techniques could be exploited, changed or played with to produce news ways for me to sculpt.
2. Exploring surface texture and colour and how this relates to form
I have been experimenting using tempera paint on textured plaster surfaces, and I’m beginning to understand some of the effects of colour and texture on perceptions of form, and how this works sculpturally. I would like to translate this work over into bronze and patinas. I had tried learning about different chemical patinas in the past, but was limited as I was trying to patina resin bronze, which is a very poor substitute for bronze.
The 5 images are those submitted with my application and are of recent work.
