Hard to believe that i worked on this for seven hours today, the changes are so subtle. Quite a lot of time was spent experimenting with whether to leave tool marks in or not and how much to polish.
This was two weeks ago during Felix’s half term. It was doubly good to have the piece worked to a point where i didn’t need heavy duty tools and could get it to my studio at home where i do most of my finishing. The light at my home studio is fantastic and there is also the advantage of being able to see a sculpture from a bit of a distance whenever i am the kitchen.
I’ve been working out how to keep the structure looking active and strong without getting fiddly. I think the back of this hand lends itself to being very blocky.
IT crisis. Big panic as my trusty mac desktop starts to have hissy fits that seem to be more than computer temperament showing signs of impending doom.
Enlist Felix to help me do a comprehensive back up and then take the computer to the doctor to get checked out. Then a very deep breath and go for getting it rebooted back to to factory settings, ditch panther for snow leopard and add some ram.
Scary couple of days there but it all seems to work and my computer seems quite pleased about everything. phew!
Very satisfactory weekend with a sale (Gathering Clouds”) at the 20/21 exhibition at the Royal College of Art.
Spent most of what i made immediately, by buying two small judith bridgend paintings which i love more and more each time i look at them.
Actually miss having “Gathering Clouds” here at home quite a lot.
What a relief! No new disasters, relatively few interruptions, just many happy happy hours working away.
From now the decisions are going to be more about how to treat the surface of the sculpture in order to get the best out of the stone.
Went to see the Henry Moore retrospective at the Tate Britain a few days ago. Truly amazing!
not the best way to start the week
sometimes you’ve got to take the decision to either abandon ship or keep going, but the surgery is looking quite promising, so on we go.
time to get it back to my workshop at home where the light is great.
didn’t have my camera after yesterday’s session so started the day with a photo op.
five hours and two bags of stone rubble later…
I have chosen the stone and decided the subject and spent the afternoon getting the feel for the shapes by carving a pair of hands from a foam block.
The stone is chlorite, which i have not used before but is reckoned to be nicely behaved and polishes to a deep black.
A day later the rubble sacks are filling up.
Been away from my workbench for a bit too long.
Hope that when I get back to London next week that a new shipment of blue alabaster will be about to arrive.
This all feels a bit like the first time I held a chisel and a mallet in my hands and took a few tentative whacks at a new piece of stone!
Until a couple of weeks ago I viewed “blogging” with deep suspicion, and how interesting that typing the word now, I find that it is not recognised by Word! I was of the belief that blogging was the preserve of the web generations especially those who spent altogether too much time in front of their screens.
In the conversations with Al and then Chris who are the architects of my new website, I found my preconceptions challenged and exciting new possibilities opening up on how to communicate with anyone who was interested in my sculpture.
All the same, it is a bit like standing at the top of a ski run that is so steep you can’t actually see where your first few turns are going to be but here goes.
One of the things I hope to be able to do on this page is to post a largely pictorial commentary on the creation of new pieces from the raw block to the polished end. Another might be show some of the things that inspire ideas for new pieces like in the practice blogs that Al and Chris put together for me after one of our preliminary planning sessions.
Anyway, I hope that posting blogs will become as routine a task as tidying up my studio at the end of each work session and will be of interest to some of you out there and that I will eventually lose this terribly self conscious feeling I have now.
It always amazes me just how much the final polish can bring a work to life. It’s hard work, but it’s always worth it. There’s a wonderful sense of discovery to it. So, I thought I’d post a before and after example.
So, here’s me at marble/Marble, with a work in progress –
And here it is once it’s finished and polished. It’s quite the transformation!
When I began my training, I thought I would be a painter, I loved colour so much aa well as the smell and texture of oil paints. In fact, before I did my Diploma in Figurative Sculpture at Heatherley, I completed a Diploma in Portraiture. The first project we undertook on the course was a portrait head, sculpted in clay. I realised straight away that I wanted to work in three dimensions.
As I made more and more sculptures, I realised that I wasn’t interested in directly reproducing reality. After working in almost infinitely malleable clay, carving stone was a liberation from the dominance of reality. It was easier to stay focused on the essential elements of structure and design.
Now, I’m a purely abstract sculptor. My work is all about the twist, the wave and the loop. It doesn’t reproduce reality, but it does – for me, at least – represent it.
That’s quite a journey for someone who started by wanting to be a figurative portrait painter! But, you never know where the road’s going to take you until you start walking it…
