When I was young I liked to collect crystals.
I was never too interested in their names, their properties, never sought to get one of every kind or display them proudly on my bookshelf. I kept them in my pockets, and took them out occasionally to admire the way the light reflects and refracts through the stone. Holding them up to the sun, and pressing my eyes so close that I became immersed in the coloured crystal world.
Firenze holds a spectacular crystal exhibition at the Specola Museum, and while it seems futile to try to capture the crystals aura and presence in a quick sketch, I can but make a few quick gestures and marks in honour of these little (and sometimes quite large) natural phenomena’s.
The introduction of colour into my work (pre-Firenze I drew only in mono- toned mono-print) seems to be leading me in quite a painterly direction? After four years of a Painting course is it finally time to take up the challenge of paint? Doubtful, I don’t think I’ve convinced myself of it yet. But what I am sure of is that these abstracted shapes, scribbles and smudges of colour are forming an important reference point for future work, wether that be a painting, a sculpture or something else.
These loose gestures that I’m filling my sketchbooks with are the start of something. Something I am going to delight in exploring when I return to British soil.
“If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?” Dr. Laurence J. Peter
In my final year the tutors would often remark that my studio space resembled something like a junk shop, as they gingerly stepped over drying ceramics, half finished collages and avoided the various hanging oddities; bones casts, horns, homemade musical instruments, light bulbs, drying prints… My desks pilled high with animal skins, skulls, bird’s nests, a multitude of plaster and latex test pieces, suitcases full of fabrics both exotic and tacky spilled out onto the floor mingling with the reclaimed wood I’d sourced off Glasgow’s streets.
It was often suggested that I bring the junkshop environment to my degree show installation, but for various reasons it never entirely came together that way.
This idea of exploring ‘junk shop as installation’ still rings true to me though, and I think it’s a concept certainly worth exploring now I have to time and ability to think with a clearer, more rested mind. Beginning to inquire into this idea again I’ve have conducted a few 35mm studies of the junk shops at Piazza die Ciompi.
My time here in Firenze is being wonderful for getting some breathing space after the degree show. It’s not only giving me time to deal with things I locked in a mental box in 4th year, time to morn, grieve, cry, laugh; it’s also giving me time to test out artistic endeavours without the pressure of a final grading.
And this is marvellous.
She was not breathing at all. She was dead. They lifted her up and looked for something poisonous. They undid her laces. They combed her hair. They washed her with water and wine. But nothing helped. The dear child was dead, and she remained dead. They laid her on a bier, and all seven sat next to her and mourned for her and cried for three days. They were going to bury her, but she still looked as fresh as a living person, and still had her beautiful red cheeks.
They said, “We cannot bury her in the black earth,” and they had a transparent glass coffin made, so she could be seen from all sides. They laid her inside, and with golden letters wrote on it her name, and that she was a princess. Then they put the coffin outside on a mountain, and one of them always stayed with it and watched over her. The animals too came and mourned for Snow-white, first an owl, then a raven, and a dove.
DEM BONES GONNA RISE AGAIN!
observations of animal bones at Specola, Firenze, September 2010
