Vessels in Progress 7

The irony of experimentation.

Since the date for my exhibition of Vessels had changed, I had delayed getting them all together until now, what with other distractions such as the MA, theViewergallery, getting married, and so on. However, I have been continually working away at them, experimenting and gathering imagery, materials and ideas, and further researching, and the time has now come to make Vessels, and commit to a definitive version.

After fiddling around, refamiliarising myself with all the nuance of tools and materials, and sorting everything out, I can only come to the conclusion that my initial idea, of having the image of a singular eye in each bottle, is far and away the most successful. I had gone away from this idea and tried faces, pairs of eyes, objects and abstract images, but wanted to make Vessels humanised. I was quite fixated with using pairs of eyes, and editing them so that they were as spare as possible, but have to admit that it just doesn't work.

The variance of the bottles, the curves and distortions, and also the fabrications and modifications I am adding, all create just one point of focus. Pairs of eyes becomes akin to fitting a panoramic landscape into a portrait shaped frame. I've tried, I've really tried, but it just won't fit. It doesn't work in the way the exhibit must.

I was trying to avoid a sense of the macabre with disembodied eyes. I know that will be there anyway, but hoped to mitigate that by padding more around it. The eye. It works. And I don't regret the months, in fact the year or so of experimentation which brings me back to the start. It's not the same start. I have been thinking and reading about this for a long time, and how I want to add as much animation as possible, as much personality as possible, into the eye and the Vessel. It's amazing how much can be conveyed in one eye.

And today for the first time I broke a bottle in fitting. A lovely unique little round thing. Always the quest for more bottles.

6th December 2011