Directionless Direction

Directionless Direction

Another New Studio

 

A trip around the studio on Friday 17th November 2023. This shows the “redfilm” [link] video in its new projection, then moves out of the booth navigating the “three red trees” sculpture and briefly views the three red garden drawings that had been framed at this date before showing the different lighting settings for the NHS lemniscate. The video looks at the comfrey torus and ends on the trees.

Directionless Direction

I took delivery of the frames for the new work on the 17th November and started to frame the existing work. Red Garden One is above, Red Garden Two and Red Garden Three below.

Directionless Direction

On the 18th I decided that the new iteration of the Redfilm should have statistics about the climate crisis, centred around global warming. I spent the day making the slides and inserting them into the film. The facts were gleaned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report March 2023

Via World Resources Institute . The new film was entirely unconvincing and makes the whole concept somewhat patronising, so I dropped it.

On the 19th I found a review of Jewel Spears Brooker, T. S. Eliot’s Dialectical Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. 240 pages. ISBN 1421426528. [LINK]

In which the reviewer, Michelle A Taylor of Harvard University, comments that

“the “deception of the thrush” is that the “world of speculation” can be made real, that the objects of the mind could overcome physical objects, the reality of the body: so Eliot returns to idealism—…—and sees it for what it is. Like interpretation, speculation posits its own world, immaterial, with only some relationship to fact.”

I’ve ordered the book to more fully study this but the meat of it is what I’m exploring the edges of in this current set of work. The idea that the fact of making things as an artist removes from them the possibility of representation because they lack the contingency of design. I suspect that as I reach out for the chance to articulate this the art world itself has fully embraced the contingency of design as a necessary precursor to the creative act. When I was much younger and became a teacher I spent the first ten years of my career teaching design precisely because there are methods and, whilst you can make up the rules you follow, there have to be rules. In art, which I consider absolute, you can’t teach it you just have to do it. This is what I mean by Directionless Direction.

Directionless Direction

On the 20th I made some collages exploring the forms in the big red sculpture and the source for it, two of which are reproduced here. The one above was used as the basis of the bigger drawing discussed further on.

The next two photographs show the drawing “bigred” begun on the 22nd of November and made with inks and pastel.

Also on the 22nd I started Red Garden Four.

At the end of the 22nd it looked like this with the addition of the chainlink and the panel.

Directionless Direction

On the 24th November I added the fence posts and the bushes but decided the piece needed more definition. I added a wash of Indian ink and then painted the sky out with Titanium White oil paint.

I also continued to work on the “bigred” drawing.

Taking it through the stages illustrated above, becoming more like the collage as it progresses.

By the end of the 27th November the drawing looked like this, and the studio was beginning to be ready for the Open Weekend at the beginning of December.

Additionally on the 27th I published the first release of the “doncplatonic” app.

On the 29th I worked more on the “bigred” drawing and started another drawing based on a photograph by a local photographer  Jamie Bubb, with permission, that was posted to threads a day or two before.

I’ll post more of the open day in a separate post and also a more detailed accounting of the reason for it all.

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The November drawings can be seen here

and the October images here

There is a link to the previous month’s Gallery on each page.

The drawings are posted to Threads and Instagram each day.

Still in the Red

Still in the Red

Open Day

Another New Studio

Still in the Red

the studio in a convex mirror

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush?

TS Eliot ‘Burnt Norton’ 

Despite my best efforts the concerns I had when developing the geranium project  remain central to my practice and I feel as if I’m in a dialogue with the inherent nostalgia evoked, in particular, through the Four Quartets 

The work I started and discussed in my last post led to me making the space to build a large sculpture based on the three trees maquettes I’ve been making. The sculpture must have spaces inside its mass that are inaccessible to adults because that’s the truth of the actual location (I am working alongside on a VR project that will express this better). In order to clear apples from the garden I need to get on my knees and that act immediately changes my relationship with the earth. I am attached more strongly to the ground, limited in my ability to move and given a different view of things. It’s this feeling I carry in to making and essentially try to replicate in the process. The object is the manner of its making.

Still in the Red

The build process

In this case that starts with an external armature to which I can attach shapes based on those that have grown. Each of the stages is followed by a Polycam scan of the sculpture at that stage.

Still in the Red

with the armature removed

When I’ve got the basic form I remove the armature and make sure the structure can stand.

Still in the Red

with the armature removed

This, if you like, is the outline, and I can then build on this to fill out the form I envisage.

Still in the Red

adding form

I used cartridge paper to do this and I’d normally make this more rigid with resin but my current studio arrangements don’t allow for this. It’s always worth noting that the material determines the quality of the form.

Still in the Red

adding form

The form, once complete can be painted and in this case it will be red.

Still in the Red

First coat of Red

The piece is about seven feet tall and will intially be painted using two shades of red. I’ve managed to put the first one on so far.

First coat of Red

I’ve found time to work on some of the drawings and my sketchbook, this is the third red garden drawing

Red Garden Three

Still not finished.

Open Day

You’ll have noticed this at the top of the page, try to visit if you can, the other two are really good!

Lockdown Five (a continuing, if erratic, saga)

A bit of a mixed couple of weeks (12 days as I’m writing) doing a variety of different things.

Lots of gardening, lots of preparation for a series of small sculptures – nothing to show there yet – drawing, painting and so on.

Looking through Instagram, which I just rejoined, I came across #draweverydayinmay2020 run by ‘Marigold the Maker’ under the auspices of The Big Draw. Part of it is to use the additional hashtag #stillpointsketchingchallenge and place some creative limitations on your daily sketching. I decided to use Autodesk Sketchbook to produce all the drawings on my iPad, work between 9:00 am and 10:00 am each day and remain in my seat at the kitchen table.

painting of lemons

Teaching myself to paint

I also bought myself some boards, 5mm ply 25 cm square, to do some small paintings, just to keep my hand in. These lemons were started the same day I drew the two in the dish in the gallery.

I also applied for the Yorkshire Sculpture International Network 2020, which is a set of online meetings fortnightly from June until October where Each of the participating artists will be invited to contribute to developing the content of the network’s programme and to the research and development for the next Yorkshire Sculpture International festival. This programme will enable us to ensure we are building the future artists’ professional development in the most useful way for artists.” I should find out if I’m successful next week, I can’t imagine there will be many people my age applying.

ArtBomb Video  

Flickr Video

Art Bomb Video

I’m posting this again to remind myself, the arts group I did this with has done a zoom meeting with all the videos played, I wasn’t invited (or I missed the email?) I know it’s not great but it would have been nice to be asked.