A new year has arrived and its my final year at college. It has gone so quickly! Ideas are spinning around my head and my dissertation is well underway – I am exploring the emerging ‘Third Culture’ of bio-art, fascinating stuff. The works of Nina Sellars, Stelarc and Marc Quinn are a huge source of inspiration and they all illustrate a strong co-dependency between art and science. There is plenty of information out there and I am really enjoying finding out more about it.
My trip to the foundry was a huge success with the team being so helpful and informative. I thoroughly recommend them – Barrett and Jarvis in Staplehurst, Kent. Louise, who has been working there since leaving university, relished the opportunity to try out some new patinas on my piece to great effect. The sculpture is also musical! When the fronds are plucked they sing which is magical and a little other worldly too.
Obviously Christmas and all its trimmings has managed to get in the way of creativity for the past few weeks, but I did manage to give my studio a bit of a tidy up. It had a couple of dirty old beds and spare mattresses in it – where do the mattresses come from? We seem to have collected them over the years. Anyway, they went off to the tip and now I have some extra room to make a mess!
Tomorrow is the day I take my work ‘Cellular Conversa’ up to the Cork Street Open Exhibition. Having made it through the first heat, the judges take a look at the works ‘in the flesh’ and decide whether to hang it or not. Lets hope it doesn’t snow and I can get there to submit it.
For the rest of this year I will be exploring viruses and slime-moulds that take over their hosts leaving a recognizable, yet not quite right shell. I am thinking about everyday objects that hold some symbolic meaning that can be taken over by a natural force. I would like to accompany any work with a series of drawings as I feel that this aspect of my skill set has been lacking of late. Ideas change quickly in my head but this one seems to have been around for some time.
