The display issue
Trusting yourself or allowing others to help you grow…
So, over the past week or so I have been having a number of trials and tribulations over my first wax. The main part of the piece developed easily, in particular as it was the week that Helaine was here, and she was popping in to the foundry daily to discuss how it was going. On one day, she raided the issue of how I might mount it, as the piece is more of a surface fragment, and the exact angle of it is quite critical.
The next time she was in, I showed her a solution I was developing to this, which would extend the piece downwards. She was excited about what I was proposing, but I was having problems really making it work. I then worked further on it, and had one of those small ‘a-ha’ moments, when I saw it in another light, and came up with a totally different way of doing what I was trying to make work. Thus in my mind it was still the same solution, but resolved in a slightly different language.
Helaine was leaving the next day, and the last time I’d seen her she had said that she might come by the foundry on the friday afternoon, but wasn’t sure. Excited by my new solution, I sent her a text to let her know that I did have something to show her if she did come by.
It turned out she had been up a scaffold working on one of her amazing large marble works at Sem, so had not been able to make it. Instead she called me, and I made the mistake of trying to explain my work over the phone – which is fairly hard. She wasn’t convinced by what I told her, and encouraged me to be sure and explore all avenues.
The next week I played around with a number of small maquettes of various solutions, but kept coming back to my original small maquette that seemed to work. So I decided to pushed ahead with it on the main piece. It all worked a dream and came easily, developing and resolving itself in a really rewarding way. I always think this is a good sign.
So, I decided to trust myself. I talked to the foundry about getting it made into bronze and I fired off an email to Helaine with a photo of the finished wax. I had that wonderful sense of elation when a work is resolved, yet I was also full of anticipation as I was looking forward to talking it through the casting process and start learning all the other techniques new to me.
Then a couple of things happened that got me worried…
First I got a call from Shelley Robzen. She is a nice american sculptor who I had lunch with on the first day. She had come by the foundry to see my work. She said that she had been very taken by work piece and had been thinking about it a lot (very flattering), however that she wasn’t that keen of the lower half. She was quite apologetic and unsure whether to tell me this, but as she knew from what I’d said that I was keen for critical feedback/mentoring, she was happy for me to come by her studio to discuss if I wanted.
The other things was that I got an email from Helaine with the following:
“I love the new form itself but still am a bit concerned about how you plan to ‘present”it. Too simple a structure could trivialize the originality and toughness of the piece and its tension. I still see your original solution so clearly and want to put in a last minute word for you to reconsider it!!!”
Hmmm – as you can imagine this was perturbing. Was I too attached to the form of the base and not seeing clearly how it worked with the top.
William Faulkner said about deleting material he was fond of because it intruded on the story as a whole “sometime you have to kill the little darlings”
[From Film directing fundamentals: see your film before shooting By Nicholas T. Proferes]
As I’m out of time and space, I will have to tell you how this resolves tomorrow…
