A near-daily exercise, the rules gradually refined and occasionally broken over the month.

April has been a quiet month of slow and gentle rebuilding, with more making than thinking.
Last post (22-Mar-2021) I showed examples of 3D writing, resin bangles, and coiled vessels using fabrics worn by my mother. This month’s variations:
Feeling that some of the character of the prints was lost in the wrapping and coiling process, I experimented with embedding swatches in resin. All of this series so far start with a circle of fabric around 19 cm diameter.
In March I did an evening class in making silicon moulds (yay Sydney Community College!). The plan is to make my own bangle designs that better showcase fabrics. The tutor suggested I make my initial form in polymer clay, use it to create a silicon mould, so I can then cast the resin.
I haven’t got to that yet. Instead I wondered if I could use polymer clay elements to neaten up the beginning and ending of a coiled vessel.
I continue to be absorbed in the intersection of language, sound, image, text, and ways to transform and mix between different modes. 29-Aug-2020 showed some related work.
In The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard writes of “‘… galleries of words’. which describes extremely well this fibered space traversed by the simple impetus of words that have been experienced.” This set me playing with writing in space – plastic filament text using a 3D pen, quotes from recent reading, and the mobile form to emphasise space.
I like the shadows and movement of this. The text is still quite flat and linear.
I wanted to work with text and ideas very literally, but not illustrating. Emphasising the thingness of text. Perhaps bring in other crafts – basketry is a good fit for creating space. A Tower of Bable or a Trajan Tower of text? The plastic text is quite brittle. Perhaps writing on insect mesh would give stability and flexibility.
Initial tests were promising. A form from 2016 suggested itself.
I tried other bases and forms to write around, other ways of presentation. The text below comes from Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy.
Looking for another transformation – filtered, distorted and merged photos in gimp.
I was less happy with a sideways step in materiality. This next sample’s text is from The Botticellian Trees by William Carlos Williams (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=19139). A very appropriate text. I’d really like to work more with this poem, but this wasn’t the right application.
At this point I returned to the earlier idea around flyscreen. This time I wrote out the full text of Part for the Whole by Robert Francis (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/24187/part-for-the-whole). I think the idea of fragments, distortion, reflection, reconstruction sits very well with this treatment.
The weaving was awkward. The initial idea was to plain weave the text strips and support them with twining in a thin yarn – similar to the 2016 sample. Given the poem is about views of a sunset I was thinking of painting yarn in an appropriate colour progression – the light being overtaken by the dark mesh of night.
However in 2016 I used aluminium screen that responded well to shaping. This fibreglass mesh was obstreperous. I used pins at each crossing of strips to keep it together as I worked. The outcome was lumpen.
It went onto my “thinking table” – a place where I display items of inspiration, work that is part of an ongoing investigation, in this instance a work in progress where the next step is unclear. All together, a chance for a conversation. I can see it all from my work table and often find myself looking in an abstracted muse.
I started seeing this
and this
The vessel fell on what I thought was its side, and the text became more legible, the form less inert. The shadows became more interesting. How would it look with a different background?
This is an unedited photo, and I like the series of transformations involved. A poem made into a physical object – mesh and plastic filament. Then made into an even more dimensional form using basketry. A sunset some years ago in Canberra was photographed, printed out, carefully positioned behind the woven form; together they were lit and photographed. In and out of different modes of being. I’m happy with this result.
Back in March this year – it seems a long time – I did a one day class in Body Casting with Kassandra Bossell. I’ve done a couple of classes trying out figure sculpting with her (1-Apr-2017); she’s a great teacher and I was keen to try something new.
We started with a ladling of plaster in our cupped hands. Weight, gradual warmth, and then some gentle wriggling to free ourselves. The detail captured is beautiful.
For the main part of the day we worked in pairs, selecting which of our body parts we wanted to mold and taking turns to plaster each other. Hands and feet were popular. One couple were casting the woman’s breasts as part of a Masters piece. I wanted my hand and lower arm, but emerging from a lump of material, not fully rounded.
The mold was painted with shellac before being used to cast the postitive. It’s a bit broken up due to a number of undercuts which made removal of the final cast difficult.
So difficult that the cast was broken into three parts, plus some anonymous lumps and powder. I knew that invisible repair is not my aesthetic, and immediately thought of kintsugi-inspired scars (7-Oct-2018). Which meant waiting until I got home.
Time passed.
I see some interesting possibilities using the techniques to make the base or a component for an object/sculpture.
Some more time passed. I tried using some plaster bandage, left over from the class, at home. A vessel form, extended by some netted wire.
Can you tell the body part?
A change of orientation, lighting, and an addition, makes it clear.
The knotted net was a nod to fishnet stockings.
The plaster bandage is light and moderately strong. Lots of potential.
This is basically an update from my Components and Sampling post a few weeks ago (1-Oct-2018). Little bits of this and that, hopefully not signifying nothing. I’ve decided to go with what’s exciting me most first, rather than chronological.
Leno
The Anni Albers book (20-Oct-2018) has me buzzing. I had to put the book down and get something into my hands. How’s this for a potential component?
This was done off-loom, held in my hands for ultimate flexibility. That worked quite well for the twined sections, but the leno got a bit wild.
The detail shot below is on a 1 cm grid, to give an idea of scale. Most of the wire is 28 gauge, with a heavier wire used in the header and the actual cross of the leno.
Yesterday for the first time in a long time, I dressed a loom. Well… I’m using the 4 shaft Robinson loom as a frame, not involving a reed or shafts, not putting great tension on the 28 gauge wire. So far the wire is looped on (a variant of a technique I saw long ago on quick dressing a rigid heddle loom), and held in order with a couple of rows of twining at each end. I carried two wires together, bare copper and silver-coated, with ideas of some colour and weave experimenting. The plan is to do everything using pick-up techniques.
Can I get the structure, the variation and interest I want, with tension sufficient to help me working and keep from tangles while loose enough to keep it dynamic and flowing?
It’s on a brief pause at the moment while I make space on my work table, to move the loom from the side bench which doesn’t have great light (there used to be enough there, but something’s changed over the years 🙂 ).
Looping experiments
Different gauges of wire.
The red is 12 gauge aluminium from Apack. The heavier brass colour 20 gauge (anonymous, from the stash). The finer one is actually brass, 0.5 mm (about 24 gauge), A&E metals. The fine “silver” is 28 gauge coated copper wire from Over the Rainbow (polymerclay.com.au/).
All of these were very easy to use, with no complaints from the joints (although keeping in mind these are small samples, each using one wingspan of wire).
The resulting “fabric” is quite easy to form and manipulate, and holds shape well in most directions.
Going dimensional.
Beautiful, bouncy, like unintelligible handwriting. In fact this is looping, with each loop upwards pulled through a little, twisted and bent 90 degrees to make it thoroughly three dimensional. The wire is 24 gauge “black reel wire” from Apack. I think it’s annealed steel (from the person who told me about the supplier), but can’t be sure. No signs of rust. Soft and easy to use. The fabric created holds shape very well, and all those projecting loops look full of potential for building further or embellishing.
Crochet
This is more of the 0.5 mm brass, using crochet. It’s a denser fabric. There’s a sort of dimensional corrugation with the rows worked back and forward, but overall it looks a little heavy and stable – not dynamic and lively. The killer is that I got some thumb joint pain even in this small piece. Not something I’m likely return to – certainly not with this gauge wire.
Twining
In wire.
The beginning of some twining, working in 28 gauge wire.
In structure and in technique (the thumb flip) just what Mary Hettmansperger taught using waxed linen (17-Sep-2018). This is much more open, and of course holds shape well without reinforcement with mod podge.
It’s meant to be semi-mindless work to cope with TV-watching (I’m no good with tension – if the music changes to a buildup, I dutifully get scared). However I’m finding it a little fine for that – I need good light (hmm… a connection with earlier comments???).
For painting.
The first of these little pots was seen 1-Oct-2018. My technique has definitely improved with the second, larger pot. The lid is domed because I made it a bit big 🙂 . It’s been languishing a few weeks now. I’m hoping the alteration of proportions will let me do more of a slice down the height of the inspiration painting.
Folding
Pretty much on a whim, I recently bought The Art of the Fold: How to make innovative books and paper structures by Hedi Kyle and Ulla Warchol. I have lots of paper around, sketches and prints and experiments that have piled up. Perhaps I could fold them, transform them into something more satisfactory. Lovely book – good instructions and diagrams, techniques and structures that get reused, elaborated, extended, as the projects progress. Lots of great inspiration photographs.
My first attempt (apart from familiarisation bits on plain paper): a pocket accordion with separate cover.
So small and pretty! About 10 cm high, 5.5 or so wide. Very satisfying. While not apparent to others, I particularly like the refreshing and encapsulating of memories. The cover is leftovers from a class with Adele Outteridge (25-Jul-2014). The inside pages are from a large sheet of cartridge paper. I went back through months of photos to identify it – from a printmaking session back in 2016 (24-Jul-2016). That detective side excursion on a side excursion was a pleasure and revelation in itself – so many exhibitions, and travels, and classes, and so, so much making! Even the little inserts capture memory. I don’t know if you can see in the photo the inserts are paint cards, and one colour has been selected for the bathroom wall – but not my bathroom. In a class with Keith Lo Bue last year (23-Apr-2017), there was an exercise where we each put three things we’d brought onto a table, and we each selected three things from other people to use as raw material. My final choice, with not much left on the table – the rather uninspiring paint cards. A fairly random moment resurfaced, memorialised, made special.
Encouraged by Claire at Tactual Textiles, I’ve been playing with some design exercises based on a book we both own. See Claire’s posts at https://tactualtextiles.wordpress.com/tag/design-experiments/. I see my approach as slightly different. Rather than building a resource to use directly, I’m hoping to train my eye to recognise and enhance potential, exciting things happening, when I am building sculpture in a playful and “instinctive” way. Muscle building exercises for instincts?
Rules are made to be broken, but so far I have two. First, use forms that have already captured my interest (particularly sculpturally) as a base. Second, make this primarily a physical exercise, not too computer-based (for muscle memory?).
So far my base forms have been sculpture play following the workshop with Matt Bromhead, incorporating a piece from Marion Gaemer’s class (4-Aug-2018), sketching based on that work (some seen 5-Aug-2018), and a painting by Rodchenko that excited me in the MoMA exhibition (15-Sep-2018).
Exercise 1 – splitting shapes
This started focused on one of the plaster bases, and only really came to life when I added vertical elements based on the wires in the sculpture. I had trouble getting enthused on this exercise, avoiding actual collage by moving the pieces around then taking a photo. I wanted to get my hands dirty.
Exercise 2 – Cutting stamps
This is meant to be 30 days of cutting stamps, with 30 stamps produced. I’ve made just three, and haven’t decided whether to continue.
First was in ezi carve, based on the black-covered wire form. Then string on cardboard for Rodchenko’s descending row of lines, and some looping in paper-covered wire mounted on cardboard from the sketch and my sculptural component making. They had been used before I thought to take a photo.
Attempts to print onto cartridge paper using acrylic ink were mixed. Some I used the stamps to stamp, some I used them more like a printing plate, putting cartridge paper on top and using a brayer.
Then I got out the gelatin plate I made for OCA (first post way back – 7-Dec-2015! that thing has lasted well). Below is a selection of my favourites. The dark|light ones had the plate inked on one half. The stamp went into the inked side, then was “cleaned” by pressing it into the un-inked side.
Have I learnt anything so far? I’ve been reminded of things I done and enjoyed in the past. I’ve played, explored, made.
Good.