More Birds

Another New Studio

Having thought a lot about how and why I make work I came up with a rudimentary explanation. The process can be contrasted with an everyday activity like walking to work. If you do it a lot it can fall into a category of activity that fades from your consciousness. You complete it automatically because you start with an aim, know how to get there and you’ve done it before. The more you do it the less remarkable it becomes. If you apply this to making work you end up with repetition and formula. It is not that it is not possible to use this approach to creative work, it’s just that if you use repetition you need to maximise your awareness throughout the process so that you don’t get bored. If anyone reads this they’ll think “10,000 hours!” and other such bullshit, if you do the same thing repetitively for ten thousand hours without thinking you’ll be exactly where you were skills wise just a couple of years older.

The way I work is to start without an end in sight so that the journey itself is always new. Not knowing where I’m going is fundamental to my practice and I’ve always found that when I explain it every word I utter narrows the concept. It strikes me that explanation becomes a form of prompt writing for an AI. That actually might be worth trying?

I also had a thought when I was in a crit session with Michael Petry through my CAA professional mentoring course which was that teaching is a delicate act akin to challenging tightrope walkers while they’re performing. Some require very small nudges, some require the rope being vigorously shaken and some just need continual encouragement from the sidelines. The point is obviously that the difficulty of any form of teaching is that it’s about the learner and not the teacher. I don’t know where the relevance of this is but I’ve written it down now!

From another CAA masterclass, this one with Rebekah Tolley  I’m trying to think about not finishing things and why I prefer things to be unfinished. What I feel about the work changes minute to minute never mind over longer times so it’s difficult to be sure that the direction I’m going in is a direction at all. I refuse to articulate intention is as close as I can get to answer to one of her questions, “[what do] you refuse to explain in the work”. The agency of the work should be inherent in the encounter with it.

Scaffold Birds

I’m making more birds.

The first thing to say about the sculpture is that it doesn’t work entirely the way I want it to. I like the flowering of the birds at the top of the structure but the tower itself is a bit too decorative – maybe paint it black?

I signed on to the ‘Willow’ AR platform and tried out a couple of options.

I also tried out a forest of ‘Scaffold Trees’ in VR with a maze.

while that was my focus I used time in the studio to look a little more closely at the things I didn’t like on some of the drawings, adding the leaves to the scaffold trees drawing and tidying up the wings on the drawings of crows.

Scaffold Drawing 230126

Three Crows 300126

Single Crow 300126

Into February I made more birds.

Bird Wash armature 040226

Bird Wash covered 040226

I looked at the canopy of ‘Scaffold Trees’ and drew the form as if it were the wash created by the birds as they move through the air. This also references the scan of the Scaffold Tree that tends to solidify the bird forms as it can’t differentiate that well when scanned from the floor. The more abstract the forms become the more they give the impression of flight rather than bird.

I built a tower for the new wash and mounted it but decided to change the position at the top.

Bird Wash 090226

Bird Wash drawing 1102026

Then last week I had my second Shingles vaccine! For some reason I’ve not reacted well to these so I was a bit off the pace for a couple of days. I started to make some drawings loosely based around the works in the studio, so even more birds.

Paint Drying 130226

This particular piece interprets the birds above the Scaffold Tree as forms in space and has led to a series of drawings as they seem to be more accurately what I’ve been chasing.

The shapes birds make in the air 2 160226

The shapes birds make in the air 160226

I worked on the first drawing using Photoshop and then took those developments into physical drawing.

The shape of a bird in the air 160226

The shape of a bird in the air 2 160226

I also painted the Bird Wash ready for mounting on the tower. No doubt next month there will be even more birds.

Bird Wash painted 180226

Drawing

I’ve continued to draw every day;

The January drawings can be seen here

…and the December images here

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

Or you can go the Galleries page on the top menu

The drawings are posted to  Instagram each day.