This week I am re focusing on the experimental nature of the project – How, at every stage I still slip invisibly into new ideas and become too fixed on an end product/work defeats me but it happens all the time and if I wasn’t getting regular mentoring support it would continue undetected! So letting go of these sometimes limiting and perhaps unhelpfully fixed ideas and moving on reconnects me to how this is all about being uncomfortable in process not only in making but in logistical issues too. There are many ways this can happen for example using a new material in small scale in this case cane strips, becomes a totally new game when trying to increase scale. My idea of a rotational form is now much looser and breaking away from the starting point which was a drawing. These looser forms are not so easy to make in 3d and thus the problem solving evolves as I draw in 3 dimensions with a material that will work up to a scale of perhaps 30cm. How can I increase this scale to enable me to transition to bigger work?
I am also experiencing problems with the supplier who originally supplied the exact material I was planning to work with (6m and 10m lengths of finger jointed flat strip chestnut). Basically they can’t and won’t do it. Yes folks this is an opportunity not a threat. I am researching other forms of wood lengths and the project will reflect what I find. I am open to all this and know it will release new work in unexpected ways as well as increase my knowledge and experience as an artist and of the material. It is still annoying and difficult because we all like to have got something sorted without having to go back and remake or research again. So once I have gotten over my stroppy inner teen self I will happily get used to this better way forward, my organised self is just battling with the idea that dates fixed for construction onsite involving other parties will potentially have to be changed.
Wallpaper resonance.
Something else I want to make a note of is re directing my inner narrative to revert to a new setting that is, ‘how does this affect or support my practice’ as a default. You know that waking in the night moment when all things seem amazing and creatively possible? Well instead of getting bogged down with repetitive thoughts of what will I say to the builder next time I see him and when will the bathroom light be fixed ….I am aiming to re calibrate and to continue this into all parts of my life so that the wallpaper in my head resonates and re enforces my practice.
