Blog Notes.
This work was one of the last pieces that I have made in my old studio at Martelsham Suffolk. It is now in the Exhibition at Pretty’s in Ipswich .This piece is made on the whole from found objects mainly steel off cuts found in scrap yards and on old farm premises. The inspiration for this came from a number of sources, but mainly from books and films that I have seen over the years. When working on these kind of pieces I nearly always find that the materials dictate the finished object.
ere by the art of any structure must come from a combination of materials, feelings, and of course inspiration, the latter being in my opinion the major force, without it, all is just work.
Looking back on this period of my own work I, am minded to refer to artist that are always in my mind when working, these are the likes of Gormley, Caro and Smith to name just three of the movers of my internal engine of thought. I always think it would be splendid to have a few workers available to expand the work and take it to it next level. The picture below is of A Mayan God of War. And is the kind of influence I mentioned earlier.
Some of the other works in this series are pretty diverse and I will introduce them as we go through the blog.
But for a short while we will digress from the ,me, me, approach and revert to how this change in working materials and practice has come about and where the new found interest in reconstructing old materials is moving me.
Firstly it would be a good place to state that none of this metamorphism would have come about without the help and advice of my Tutors at UCS .There are times when working on a piece you have a feeling that perhaps you are heading in the wrong direction and this has happened a number of times both in found object sculpture and plaster and wood mediums .Some of the earlier work did get away from me completely and without the encouragement of those around me I really think that I would have abandoned sculpture altogether. There is an awful lot on the different ways artist approach there work and I, am afraid that mine seems to come in manic spurts of energy, first there is the collecting of the constituent parts the” scrap” and recycled materials, these I lay on the floor of the studio and leave there doing drawing and taking pictures of the bits I think will fit together in the finished work.
Example of laying out.
When the moment comes for construction it comes none stop I do not seem to be able to leave work until it takes on the persona of the original thought, only then do I take the time to re-construct the piece, and then paginate it if possible or add some paint, but mainly I leave the piece outside to weather and then brush and polish the parts that need it.
This second work is called Viking and as with all the work in this series it is made from reclaimed materials polished and welded together. This process is not quite as easy as it looks and needed two
of us to wield the piece together.
I am lucky in having a friend who helps me on the bigger metal work and is a much better welder than I am, he doesn’t profess to understand what I am trying to do with the steel and is always asking what it is? We are making but without him there really would be very little work accomplished and I am for ever in his dept. for his understand and patience.
Time that could be spent in better pursuits than hanging around my studio.
The Mayan Worrier.
16/2/16.
Interesting day today, Tutorial with Robin Warne we discussed the end of year show, He had some good ideas on the direction I should consider. He also had some comments on the latest work. He seemed to think it put him in mind of Telfer Stokes, in some ways I agree with him Stokes has had an influence on my work and the similarities are interesting, but his work involves more colour and he takes found readymade objects as a vocal point for his pieces were as mine are more taken from off cuts and work discarded pieces, but I do see where he is coming from, as always with Robin there is a sort of cut and thrust of discussion and that leads to thinking about points that would normally pass me by. It is strange that he likes the idea of painting the wall hanging pieces and Dr Jane Watt thinks that they should be left in their rusted state. On advice from Robin I have decided to make the Mayan God wall hanging piece free standing and will work on that tomorrow.
20/2/2016
Now that time is getting on and things are more demanding, it is now time to start putting together the body of work that I have been planning and thinking about for the last two months. But what seemed like good ideas at the beginning now seem pretty tame. The lack of studio space and materials is now an issue, so much so that I am thinking of going back to plaster and clay instead of my first love steel. I am doing drawings and reading through the many art books that I have but I must confess that ideas do not seem to be as plentiful as they were in years one and two. I was made aware of this when reading Jenny Butchers blog the other day, she says that unless you are working all the time on projects you will not do much work of any note and she is right.
There is also the printing that Jane Watt mentioned in our last tutorial I have a number of ideas for this but must make my limited time pay dividends and get on with this work instead of reading and making excuses.
Camera Dancer. Still trying to work out if this piece is finished or not, it makes you wonder if other artist have these problems, sometimes I just want to throw the whole lot in a skip.
25/2/2016
I am sitting in my study thinking about what to write in my blog and all I can think of is how did the likes of Giacometti, Brancusi and all the rest of the boys in the band make money in the early years of their careers. They had to eat and they did not always have agents and benefactors .How did they get materials and places to work? It makes you wonder. I think I have the same problem not that I am putting myself in that class, but I could do with a benefactor. There is a definite feeling that there is a bigger, better work hiding in the wings, I hope there is I’ll need it for the degree show.
1/3/2016 Tuesday.
Yesterday was interesting, starting with a lecture in the waterfront building at UCS.This was given by two students from RCA and it was great to get there input to meet and listen to artist that have been through the process at the highest level, and to hear them say how they felt, including their worries that other artist/student Paula on sculpture was very interesting
March 2016.
The Fascination of the Trivial
Pop Art and Nouveau Realism.
No other designation of a stream in 20th-century art has entered common usage to the extent that Pop Art has. Daily experience seldom offers a chance to describe something or someone as “expressionistic “or “cubistic”. True, a situation or joke might be called “surrealist,” but this is rare and tends to be an in-group usage. The term “Pop, “in contrast, has become a byword. It is applied to anything from music to hairstyles, from fashion to appliance design, from film to advertising, all of which owe a great deal to Pop Art.
The above statement is taken from page 303.Art of the 20th Century, volume 1.Taschen London.2005.
I use it here to show how this age of reason is all about explanations and intellectual waffle and gives credence to the old adage, that with enough monkeys and enough type-writers you will eventually get a passable rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I know that in my own writing I come across as an out of touch shallow minded sort of artist but believe me when I say that time turns the mind like nothing else. Things I thought were truly great in the sixties are redundant nonsense to me in the eighties and things from that time to now are almost totally irrelevant today. As I sit here in my study in Broadstairs I look around me and find I am surround by Art books and pamphlets, so many words, so many pictures, but where is the art? It is not the self-patronising, egotistical, millions of words crammed into this large collection of regurgitated so called knowledge. As always at these moments
I, am reminded of this statement by Bernard Reynolds.
