After the excitement of the workshop with Matthew Bromhead (10-Jul-2018) I felt inspired and keen to start working.
I wanted to combine lots of the ideas from Matthew’s class with techniques and materials I’ve worked with in the past. For a start, from Ruth Hadlow – not knowing where you will finish, be very clear on where you start.
A few weeks have passed since I started writing this post, there’s been some activity, but at the moment it feels like a tangle of threads and I can’t find a loose end to start work on.
Ideas percolating:

a shared weight
Elyssa Sykes-Smith
What’s happened so far:

Plaster, wire, mouse mesh
I don’t like the proportions. The plaster is a bit squat. The mouse mesh is too orderly, too fixed. But there’s some movement and shimmer in the wires.

Plaster, wire. Cast in rough clay, wood on one side, wire inserted through clay sides
I used these together with one of the experiments from Matt’s class to try some joining methods.

Sample From Matt Bromhead Class


Another variation, this time a larger, square piece of looping.
I had great hopes of this. A hole drilled through the thick brass rod, rebar wire threaded through, a bit like an incomplete rivet.
Drilling the hole was slow and awkward. The end result is effective as a join of two wires, but doesn’t really contribute anything else. It might be useful in some circumstances, but hardly exciting.
Holes drilled in a shard of resin and wires threaded through. Great introduction of colour and shine. Possibilities.
Two lengths of rebar wire were connected by weaving across them with florist’s wire. An extra length of rebar wire was added in. Lots of movement and form-building potential.
I like the level of detail that can be achieved.
A simpler variation of weave also works quite nicely.
Unhappy with the mouse wire used in the earlier plaster cast, I took a couple of photos with a wrapped wire sample from a class with Marion Gaemers (26-Dec-2017).

Sample from Marion Gaemer’s class, posed with plaster cast
Now that gets the blood moving. I’d want to wrap the wire after it is cast in the plaster. I also like the way the wrapped wire goes to the side, below the top of the plaster. How much manipulation could be done after casting?
I wondered about making my own variant of a larger grid.
Some lengths of rebar wire, quickly joined with simple wrapping of florist’s wire. The sample has a unfortunate suggestion of a trussed chicken ready for roasting.
Still feel like I’m groping around the room wearing a blindfold. I might spend some time drawing, or I might take some of my favourite things from above and throw them together…
love this post & ideas Judy. love the drilling of holes for the joins – a way of moving through the materials/surfaces
“Moving through” – love that thought. The structure is direct from Matt – he called them platforms and used pieces of wood. The transparency and reflection of the resin changes the impact, scale and weight. It also fits with my interest in the warp and weft of weaving passing through the plane, plus the transgression of breaking through the surface. Lots of possibilities.