I’m planning to trial/make something I have been imagining for a while, and recently wrote a commission proposal for similar (which I didn’t get - )
Mixing antiquarian and newer items of metal, stone, plastic, and covering with plaster, then aluminium or silver leaf, and all into and over a frame, to achieve a balance of suggestion and abstraction - a sculptural painting.
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Making Day 31st March 2012
I started the making day having collected together some of the bits and artefacts I have and added to - antiquarian ring bits, unknown metal finds. Some of these things are precious and unique, others broken ephemera. All metal, stone, plastic.
I have been planning in my imagination to start this making for a while, so this was an ideal project. I started with one frame.
Covering all in PVA glue, I decided against plaster for the day because of time. Already the forms are abstracted.
Silver and aluminium leaf can be a messy job. I am aiming for more of a gleam than a shine. I will work more after today in plaster and try other materials and mediums until I get near to what I imagine.
The composition and arrangement of items somewhat matters. It's a planned spontaneity.
I have alot of work in making many versions to get exactly the right form of balance between showing the objects, hiding them, suggesting them, perhaps allowing a little colour or substance to show.
Something I thought lot about when I was making Vessels, the many different antique, vintage and contemporary bottles covered with aluminium leaf, was how covering them the same democratised them and evened out their value. The right layer of same elevated less valuable, interesting or unique items, because it all presents as abstract. The leaf is a layer of abstraction.
Similarly with this project, I will be aiming to present rings lost hundreds of years ago with broken jewellery of my own past, broken components from redundant technology, and street and country found objects. They will all be equalised, or rather equally abstracted.
Old stories, new stories, contemporary whispers, reclaimed rubbish. Making the past and the present coexist. I am searching for something, to extract the secrets of these treasures.
The making day was of course swift, but enjoyable.
I feel like I have let the genie out of the bottle - the genie I work so hard at regulating and allowing to see the light of day only in measured doses. In fact it is several genies, and giants. I mean of course the collecting urge and the making instinct. All at once, if I am to continue making these, I have allowed myself permission to collect even more, to keep even more, and to see everywhere I walk even more material for keeping. I do try to keep this in control.
My life seems to go between successive phases of fascinations and obsessions.
I do love the thought of continuing these frames, of getting them right, of making many of them, different sorts. I love the thought of pursuing this until I know it well, until I can grasp what it is that is driving me to resolve these artefacts from the past and present. It will not of course be a definitive resolution - its more of a psychological or emotional resolution. Solid memories, perhaps.
6th April 2012
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