It’s such a problem making big stuff.
- How do you afford the materials?
- Where do you store it?
- How do you transport it?
- What if nobody wants to show it anyway?
Image above: If only this was not a 6 inch cardboard cutout.
I guess for me q’s 2 and 3 are the most tricky because there are always alternative ways of approaching the other issues. But 2 and 3 are really long term problems to be seriously considered and inevitably involving costs.
One of the ways of approaching this problem for me has been to make installations composed of lots of small pieces of work which all add up to something a bit more substantial. This also suits my current way of working in my relatively small studio space – being able to pick up and put down, or even put away work depending on time constraints, and using repetitive processes which, once under way don’t demand too much thought.
In April last year I wrote about some of these small works: “a collection of found and made objects, images, drawings, prints and an artists book, all gathered over quite a long period of time – years, not months” which “never seemed to be “anything” but suddenly became “something” when brought together as a collection.” I’ve been building on this idea, and it’s been particularly helpful during times (like now) when frustrations have grown about always making small works.
A couple of weeks ago I cleared out all the furniture in a room in my house and experimented with some ideas about bringing the collection out of the display case I’ve shown it in before, and trying out combinations of objects and images in a more open space.
There were a few interesting results, but still I’m feeling the need to get large, and now a little more studio time is on the horizon, there are lots of new ideas to explore.
TO DO
- continue experiments with mould making and casting
- explore ways of animating clusters (motors, vibrators, stop motion animation)
- buy new video-editing software and explore projections
- drawing, drawing and more drawing (on paper, in books and on the wall)
Enjoying this drawing at the moment (work in progress)
Next time… Maybe there is no such thing as an inanimate object.
