Clarifying the beginning

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:

Chance, intuition, intelligent and thoughtful play

Elegance, decorum

Precipice, counter balance, leverage, impetus, precarious, shimmer, shiver

Glide, hesitate, teeter, catch (of breath), instant of focus, moment of coherence and balance, the space between – spark, pivot point, point of balance (mobiles!), tipping point

Would like a build | draw cycle – keep responding

Maintain the energy & excitement of the class

Blocks of time. Make space to work in the moment.

Mine my history of materials & techniques. Remind myself of what I know

Joins. Matt showed us air drying clay for joins. I did a whole project on joins for Mixed Media for Texiles (see link). Surely there’s something there I can bring forward. Plus on reflection I’ve been searching for joins – welding, soldering, rivets…

a shared weight
Elyssa Sykes-Smith

Scale. Personal, domestic. I thought of Elyssa Sykes-Smith – I seem to recall a video in which she talked about measuring things with her own body. Then Luke Sciberras talking about the scale of a painting absorbing him bodily (27-Jul-2018). Which doesn’t quite fit where I’m going…

What’s happened so far:

Casting plaster using a clay mould (demonstrated by Matt Bromhead).

Plaster, wire, mouse mesh

Sample p5-11

The clay was lined with ribbed plastic, thinking of sample p5-11 from the Mixed Media course (23-Feb-2016).
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

The second cast tried a couple of ideas – different surface textures, different angles for wire insertion. An ugly lump.

I used these together with one of the experiments from Matt’s class to try some joining methods.

Sample From Matt Bromhead Class

Joins

Small lengths and pieces made by looping with florist’s wire. This version the larger wires were threaded through, in another a slightly longer, thinner looping was twisted around, almost like a bow. Stays in place fairly well. Brings a level of detail and interest that I like. It also works on a single wire, not a join, as a small focal point.

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…