Art in Ed

Its all in the process

2007-12-22T14:37:00.000+11:00

Here are some different threads that seem to have come together in that trembling space behind my eyes....

Thread 1....I have just been into an art gallery which is a co-op with a little exhibition of the members and I came across the work of Holly Webber . Her Mum was minding the shop and told me the story of how Holly creates her art. She takes photos of petals or leaves and then looks for the part of them that could be reconstructed into a pattern. Her patterns seem very geometric... when looking at them one could not pick that they came from organic images. So in a sense it is a secret inside waiting to be found....

Thread 2.... Meanwhile I have just been offered some work at a primary school - providing hands on science for gifted and talented students around the theme of sustainability, possibly integrated with some art experiences. Within that theme are some key big ideas that they want the students to experience/investigate.... connection, pattern, energy, systems.... etc...

So I have been busy on the net looking for hands on science in this enormous area... thinking about my own experiences and those experts who I can draw on.... for example, a scientist friend who is researching El Nino - looking for patterns in representational maps (temperature, water flow) of the Pacific as well as in the mathematics.... thinking of my own experiences as a research scientist in the paper industry and how the process from growing and harvesting trees to making paper to dealing with waste to recycling might be a microcosm of some key issues we are facing in thinking about sustainability.

So now I wondered about the notion of pattern...

How does a scientist think of patterns? Perhaps it is through looking for repetition, underlying principles, consistent properties across and within categories, trends, cycles, chaotic attractors....

How does an artist think of patterns? What does a viewer of the art think of the patterns that they see? Do we only see the result or do we understand the making of the pattern and where it comes from? What is the difference between a scientist observing the world and an art viewer? What might it mean to create patterns of life/industry/society from an artistic point of view and a scientist one?

Thread 3 .... Meanwhile on a forum on Integral Theory we were discussing the notion of seeing the world through a process lens versus a reductionistic (parts) lens. An example of this is how we might see a tree... say the gum tree outside your window.... do we see it captured in time - a tree.... or do we see the tree as a process of all its stages simultaneously in possibility? (eg. seed becoming tree becoming seed...) How might we act towards the tree if we are holding a different lens to it? So if we see a fallen log harvested for papermaking in the forest a reductionist lens might see it as a commodity... whereas a process lens might see it as life with a past, future and right to all parts of its life.

When I saw Holly's work these thoughts intersected .... it was a catalyst for me in making connections .... providing meaningful representation of my ideas (even if that is not what she intended) which then could enable new ones to emerge. I wondered then about how to orchestrate student experiences of pattern from different heads (science and art) and different lenses. How the use of science and art together might reveal exciting insights.

I imagined for the first lesson creating a transient art work.... hundreds of egg shells on the floor blocking the entrance to the room the students would be coming into for their sustainability studies. Brown egg shells which I carefully have put in spiral patterns with replication. Hard to see the pattern ... but once you do, you realise that there are consistent gaps to walk through without breaking them....

So now I offer some ethical choices.... to meet the barrier and plunge ahead, not caring if the egg shells break.... or caring but feeling one has no other choice and feeling that emotional turmoil.... or to stand back and do nothing in fear of creating damage.... or to study the situation and look for patterns and see if there is another way.....

Hmmm. So now I will be saving my egg shells...

And hopefully now some of these ideas will perculate into my own art!

When my art surprises me...

2007-12-21T17:52:00.000+11:00

I have just started painting a piece called " When life gets too rapid, XXX likes to bring along her canoe." (The picture looks yukky at this stage but it gives you an idea.) Given my sudden launch into paddling on a waveski you might think that is all that is about... but I actually created her before I even thought about buying one... so what is the meaning lying in wait for me to discover.... my future? Hmmm.

Anyway, I am painting the canoe background colours so I can add layers and layers to give a sense of rocks but I was feeling I wasn't getting the shades and ambience I wanted... something between canoing down a river and in the sea under cliffs... I really hadn't thought it through... so was feeling a little bemused about what was resulting. I decided to paint around the canoe so I could get a sense of contrast and stood back...

The canoe hit me.... it seemed aeons old... layers of time. Before time. I had a sense that stepping into the canoe would be stepping into the prehistory of the earth... far more than just a nice connecting to nature or stillness/serenity. I have a face in the canoe in ripples of water and as I looked at it I wondered was it my face... or the face of the archetypal goddess.... creator/destroyer?

I have fish moving up the canoe and they seemed like they were on a journey through time.... were they seeds of evolution? Potentials realised or to be realised.

I was reminded of Future Studies, which I have been delving into... a particular technique for helping us to make decisions for the future is to consider the 200 year present - 100 years back in time and 100 years into the future. We can only understand where we are going if we understand who we are now and how that came about. But I am also interested in cultural models of evolution - Spiral Dynamics (Beck and Cowan) and The Narrative Universe (Bocchi and Ceruti). To really understand where we are we need long term sense of the evolution of humanity... considering the 10,000 year past?

So now I wonder about my title.... can we can only negotiate the rapids of the future because of a sense of historic connection... to evolution of the earth, evolution of species and evolution of humanity.

This lady also represents a dialectic - a contradiction - how to live sanely in an insane world.... and the solution initially seems to be to find a space for peace and serenity to make her busy life sane. But with dialectics when we enter deeper into the cultural/historical/environmental aspects we can see there are deeper questions, deeper contradictions... and we need to go deep into understanding humanity to negotiate the rapids of the future.

So rather than looking for simple solutions to climate change, poverty, materialistic world... perhaps we need to look for complexity... excavate the depth... and this allows us to reinterpret our current reality so we can make a new one.

Sydney, here I come!!!

2007-11-30T20:22:00.000+11:00

So, earlier this year, after the mammoth effort of getting my succesful exhibition underway, I am wondering where my art is heading... should I change direction... try somthing new... and I did for awhile... playing around with machinima and cartoon videos ... and then the offer came out of the blue to do an exhibition in a new art gallery PromenArt in Balmain in Sydney.

So after being incredibly slack with production of my ceramic ladies it was suddenly all go. Had I any creativity left? Had I anything to say? Well I was engaged on a forum looking at postformal thinking - vision plus logic, dealing with contradictions through dialectics - and this seemed to permeate my brain.... possible titles kept forming.... and then...

The significant and sometimes contradictory moments of Darlene Winterspoon...

So I sat down and wondered about different contradictions we have.... how we deal with them... and came up with a number of ideas.... and then I was in the studio creating 6 new pieces.... whoosh....

And then all sorts of things started speaking to me - even a magazine entitled Ethical Investor - the piece is called Material Girl can now buy Carbon Offsets - and yes you can imagine her in her Gucci shoes and flamboyant earings holding a delux shopping bag - perhaps called poocci?

My friends need to now watch out because anything now is fair game for creating a piece!!!

Finally, the ladies will go on the plinths!

2007-03-18T07:30:00.000+11:00

Exhibition go, go go!

Today in about 2 hours I will be running a military operation. 4 cars at intervals will be invading Salamanca Place, my crew will be commanding parking places. Then with precision, they will be unloading precious sculptures from each car. Taking them up a flight of steps to Off Centre Gallery with no tripping, or dropping the sculptures out of the bottom of boxes, or knocking pieces off.

That is how I have planned it in my head. But anything can go wrong! Not least of all there will be no parking with the morning breakfast crowd taking all the spots!

I set up plinths on Friday ready to take my beautiful ladies but there are too many ladies and I suspect the plinths are just not wide enough for some of them. Yes, I have been dreaming musical sculptures... how on earth am I going to arrange them all?

But in 4 or 5 hours it will be over. I will have an exhibition set up and ready for the public to enjoy. A sigh of relief before the next task... media releases and presentations.... organizing the opening... and I am dreaming hors d'oeuvres.

I really wish I was on a tropical island somewhere under a palm tree.

Everyone keeps saying to me, "I bet you must be excited", "Art is fun" but at this stage, after months of hard work, I am numb, and tired. I must remember to have time to enjoy it, smell the roses of the process... but really it is hard to do that when you are trying to load cars with ladies who are just a little bit too big and have too many bits to knock off... like the fat lady which is nearly 1 m tall and 0.55m wide and 20 kg. She has a tropical island with palm trees on her head, and I just hope it will stay there by the time we manouver her into the gallery and onto the plinth I have organized just for her.

Reclining women

2007-02-07T10:37:00.000+11:00

What does it feel like to be a woman photographed or painted?

I have a lovely book of reclining nudes by famous artists from across 200 years or so. Last year I decided to sculpt Lhote's Bacchante. I moved into the pose and a strange thing happened. I connected in a completely different way to what I might have experienced if I was just looking at a painting.

I wondered then what responses other women might have to moving into a pose depicted in a famous painting. I am a member of "The Arts Group" - a local group consisting of women interested in the arts and literature, some of whom are artists and writers. I wondered if they were interested to be guinea pigs. So I gave them a brief at our recent meeting - to choose a "reclining nude" pose, to move into it (clothed), be photographed and then to write about the experience.

The women started hesitantly and then became quite engaged in the project... gathering props, helping the model to find the right position and right feel, being very exacting about the angle of the neck, foot or hands. It became clear to us all that many of these poses were not only just uncomfortable and unnatural, but the painted bodies were not normal women... some with impossibly long and flexible necks, elongated torsos and double jointed wrists.

Oh the image of ourselves as women cannot live up to the artists love of exaggeration as they try to express the essence of form!

Did the women connect at a different level? Some started wondering about the emotions of the women in the paintings... what were they feeling and thinking... some seemed to connect across space and time… some questioned what it was like being a woman. Can a pose enable access to aspects of womanhood that we haven’t experienced before?

For some women the whole experience of being photographed as art was challenging and thought provoking. Because yes, after all we are all women between 45 and 70 years… not usually regarded as models. Not usually the centre of attention as an audience looks at us and moves us “just so.”

Can we now ever look at a nude painting in the same way again? Can we look at ourselves in the same way?

You might like to try it. What does it feel like for you?

Exhibition looming... breathe in... and remember art is fun!

2007-01-16T07:27:00.000+11:00

My next exhibition is only 2 months away and I am doing the calculations in my head... that means I have to paint 3 - 4 pieces per week, start my brochures, signage, catalogue, have marketing plan.... aaaagh!

I have to say for someone preparing for an exhibition I have been a bit slack over the last year in output, even though I gave myself plenty of time between exhibitions (2 years). But I have an excuse... some 100,000 words I wrote this year for my thesis and another 120,000 last year (sadly I had to delete a fair bit of that to get it down to size!). In november I finally sent off my thesis to my examiners. A sigh of relief. A week or so to sit back, and relax.

Then I went into my studio, lined up all my bisqued (fired but unpainted) pieces, moved them around, scatched my head. As you will have read earlier my intention was to create pieces around the theme of evolution and transformation. Many were stand alone pieces. By putting them altogether I got a sense that "this one" related to "that one", that I needed another one to tie a couple of pieces together, and maybe these two over here could be part of a series.

So now a time for sitting on the sofa doodling images and forms. Suddenly with a clear head (removed of all epistemological methodological and editorial considerations) I could see the big picture with my art. I think it is really important for an artist to be able to zoom in and zoom out like this. I often find I have a very creative generative period capturing lots of ideas in an "ideas page" in my visual diary, which is really handy to go back to on days when I have little original creativity.

Within a day I had ideas for seven new pieces which I put into clay over a period of three weeks. I was on a roll... got started on the painting end (which is not my forte) building up slowly until it was realitively easy and actually enjoyable and exciting watching the personality of the pieces emerging.

But then burn out. I don't think I am cut out for being a full time artist.

Yesterday I took these new pieces out of the kiln... there they are sitting on my living room table. I am off on holiday up the east coast of Tassie for a week. With laptop. We go with a friend and usually immerse ourselves in literature and poetry. My friend is bringing some poems by emerging Australian women poets which hopefully should inspire me in the creation of the poems, little booklets and the catalogue stories which go with each piece and give them that extra dimension.

Hopefully the sea air will transport me to a place where I can see the meaning of my evolution theme with wisdom, insight and intriguing perspectives. Ha ha! And pigs might fly (in another parallel universe where evolution has taken a quite different turn!)

An Integral Artist?

2006-04-29T17:48:00.000+10:00

I have been head down writing my thesis and so my art blog has gone by the wayside. Ooops!

My thesis is about integrating soul and science in education... and I am using Integral Theory as a model to help me see how that might be possible. What is strange is that in the very writing of it I am creating an experience for the reader as artistically as I might be creating a sculpture. I don't want to create something that is cut and dried; but which has many layers, some ambiguity and enables a creative emergence of meaning. I am using pictures, metaphors, poetry and dialogue as well as a narrative and analytical voice. I am even going to include pictures and poetry of my own art as well... because I realise that I have certainly been living my thesis in my art... and maybe the art is part of the whole dialogue.

I have just been writing a very reflective piece where I undo the layers of self and culture to understand what has informed who I am and what I believe... how that influences my teaching and the educational culture that I am in. I found myself sculpting another reclining nude... but rather than smoothing her off I started adding slivers of clay so it seems like she is peeling away... instead of a nude being looked at, she is looking at herself.... deeply, inward. It is strange creating an outer image of such an inward looking process. I am not sure that I manage to convey it, but audience was not on my mind at all as I was doing it. No, because in the process of doing it I was unpeeling myself, putting that emotion and experience into the clay.

Am I doing Integral Art?

According to emrgnc Integral Art holds that:

all perspectives are valid,
some viewpoints may transcend and include others
where you stand is what you see.

Integral art includes both the experiences of artist and reader/audience and each can bring many different eyes to it. Integral art may help in both transformation of the artist and the reader/audience. It may be an expression of transpersonal knowing which pulls the reader into a deeper connection with higher self.

Alex Grey is recognised as an Integral Artist. He recently had an exhibition in NY called Sacred Mirrors, consisting of life size pictures showing ourselves in all our physical, energetic and transpersonal aspects. This puts a whole new meaning to the notion unpeeling the layers.

Just looking at his pictures I found myself pulled to attention, recalling who I am, in the most profound way.

My unpeeling nude does not call me to attention... nor bring out the best in me, nor cause me to transform... I think it is a piece of compassion... a quietness of the process of becoming and disappearing. Is this a feminine aspect of self which the warrior like images of Alex Grey perhaps do not capture?

What is transpersonal for men and what is transpersonal for women? Is it different?

Earth as lover, earth as self

2006-02-19T19:00:00.000+11:00

This piece's title was inspired by Joanne Macey's book of the same name; Earth as Lover, earth as self.

We can be concerned for the environment because of a moral position, or an intellectual position. Or we can be concerned because the earth is intimately connected to our sense of self... an extension of ourselves ... or even a fundamental part of our being. Thus to hurt the earth is to hurt ourselves. To see parched earth and dying roots is to feel physical pain.

So with this in mind, what sort of piece might capture that sense of self as organically and spiritually intertwined with the earth? Is it a co-incidence that made from clay it is connecting at a fundamental level to earth itself anyway? It has to be globular, organic... a human figure transmuting into earth, into root. Or is it even Gaia... mother figure?

Technical Notes

Whenever I make a piece whose form is rotund like this I often find it easier to work in solid clay, rather than handbuilding with coils. So firstly I put one block of clay on the pottery wheel (which I use as a turntable) and then add bits to give a curve. Using my fingers I take away the excess.... yes those are finger marks you see in the clay. I turn it over and take away more clay on the bottom to get a rounded, earth globe feel to it.

Now I turn it right way up and add the torso and arms using handfuls of clay.

Next I make a pinch pot which becomes the face and I add clay to it till I get the full head (still with a hole in the back.) I check that the size is right. I work the features into this hollow round shell, using my thumbs to create the eye sockets and then needing to add more clay because the eyes are closed and therefore need to be slightly bulbous. Ooops.

Now I am ready to stick the head onto the neck. I play with the angle until I get the right feeling that a certain tilt to the chin gives. And now I can refine the lips to get an expression of serenity and connection. Even just doing this I find my breathing slowing and a sense of connection coming over me. A sense of being fully present.

The head is staying on OK, so I don't need to put a skewer through the top of her head down into the neck as is usual. Must be because of that thick neck.

Now I wait for a week before I hollow her out and add the headdress. I use a bag and a half of clay and recover about 3/4 a bag after hollowing out. I add a little water to all my bits of recovered clay and allow to soften in the bag. I will wedge that up next week after it has softened enough not to require surgical enhancements.

It is interesting how static the body looks without the head, and then as soon as the head is put on, with just a slight tilt, the whole piece is given some life and movement. Sometimes it only takes a slight movement or tilt in a chin or a shoulder and a piece is transformed. The trick is not being impatient in the earlier stages to put too much movement in. But even so, I couldn't help but make the legs and knees slightly assymetrical... one higher than the other, one more in front.

What's in a title?

2006-02-06T11:17:00.000+11:00

I am in the process of brainstorming the title for my next exhibition.

I thought I had it... Beware the surface dwellers... but it is a bit negative...

so I came up with Mrs Higgins underwater adventure... which is still on the theme of going deep... deep into consciousness (water is a great metaphor for that) and deep into otherness, earth and the cosmos. As a result of that title I came up with lots of ideas for some pieces.... lighter, more fanciful... as one might expect from such a title.

But perhaps, after all, this title is just another stepping stone. I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately. This blog writing helps me to step back from the doing into big picture questions... like what really are my intentions in putting together an exhibition... what is the sort of art I am interested in doing...

... perhaps one which transforms, inspires, elevates, perturbs?

I am remembering my previous exhibition of 10 months ago which went through a few name changes.

The final title was The Seduction of Agnes Scornethope which came to me after experiencing for myself the nature of seduction (and I don't mean in the physical sense). During this experience I was in a state of disequilibrium, anticipation, intrigue, excitement, playfulness. "Hmmm." I thought, "could I create a whole exhibition which might create this sense of being seduced in my viewers?" Pieces could use paradox, out of place parts, depth, layers etc... to entice people into a journey of delightful discovery. Well it seemed that it worked from the comments I received. And there was also a lot more which emerged.

So I am asking myself, for my next exhibition, what state of being would I like to create in my audience? Perhaps I have been focussing too much on asking how I could perturb my audience to see in new ways. There is a relationship between being and seeing. If we are in a certain state of being we might see things we might not ordinarily see. When we are invited to see in new ways it helps us move into a new state of being. A flux, flow, evolution perhaps. But really can I control or engineer a state of being in anyone? Perhaps all I can hope for is to hold a state of being in myself and allow that to flow into my work, without letting my brain get too much in the way.

What state of being am I in now? Well I would have to say it is a state of disequilibrium. I am going through big questions in my life about direction, letting go the old and allowing space to enable creation of the new... new opportunities as well as a new self. Yes, I am experiencing the disequilibrium of evolution.... could this be the theme of my next exhibition?

The disequilibrium of Mrs Higgins?

The evolution of Mrs Higgins is not going quite to plan...

Each new idea seems to paint images in my head of posssible pieces and I am quickly recording them in my visual diary. Who knows what the title might evolve to next, but the journey is interesting!

Where is the smell?

2006-02-05T08:19:00.000+11:00

I woke up this morning after a decent rain. There is something magical about the smell when it has been dry for a while. Eucalypt, freshness... and then all that this evokes... new possibilities... past memories of similar days.

Smell is such a powerful sense but so easily ignored. What might smell sculptures be like?

I have found some interesting sites which show the latest in sculptures...
Kinetic sculpture - a robot arm which follows a satellite as it orbits around the earth.
Water sculpture maze which changes as people try to walk through it.
A sound sculpture in a street which people can tune into using their iPods.

Clay really in comparison is so boring. The end result is so static. Yet the process of bringing it to life is not. Feel a piece of clay and you are rubbing together Earth and Water. Fire it and you bring in Fire and Air. Paint it and you bring in Metal. Voila! The five elements. Hmmm. But where is the smell?

My favorite water sculpture.... Denison Beach near Bicheno on a northeasterly... the waves are huge and changing, masterly and powerful. The white noise is filled with rhythm that pulses with the body's soul beat. The spray cuts through your skin into your very essence. The smell is one of new beginnings. As you walk along the beach you feel the sand sink below your feet ... the earth subsiding and embracing you. The incoming waves dance in a way that requires your attention as you move in and out of them. The various layers of water lines on the beach remind you that you are on a planet with a powerful satellite and the more you come to this place the more you feel the rhythm of the tides.... the pull of the moon.

I haven't got a photo. You have to be there.

What goes on the bottom?

2006-02-02T09:43:00.000+11:00

Technical Notes

So you have just spent $1100 on a sculpture weighing about 10kg. The last thing you want is to scratch your $2000 huon pine sidetable.

I put felt on the bottom of my pieces which I buy either in squares for the smaller ones, or by the metre for the larger ones. This protects the surfaces the sculptures are on as well as helping greater stability of the piece. Here I am putting felt on my piece Shit Happens.

1. Turn over the piece, placing it in a supportive environment (nice music and a psychiatrist on hand).
2. See with shock all the spots you didn't reach when previously painting. Paint.
3. Then apply PVA craft glue to the bottom and avoid dripping over your expensive cushions from Freedom Furniture.
4. Line up felt to cover all bits and stick down... good idea to test if it fits before you start.
5. Turn back over onto a flat surface and wait to settle in position and the glue to dry.
6. Cut out to the shape. (I use very sharp small scissors (which were quite expensive and therefore I treat them with care... no cutting with wet glue!) rather than a Stanley knife or scalpel as it doesn't cause fraying and tearing.)
7. Now place on top of the piano without fear of ruining the polish.

If you wanted to know what is inside my sculptures look closely at the piece lying down. This one is coil built up to the hips which requires a lot of pre-thinking about the intended shape and support structures. Because I wanted the legs showing, I needed a full length cape to support the piece.

reclining "nakedness" in clay

2006-02-01T16:32:00.000+11:00

Recipe: Take one Lhote painting (see previous post) and somehow turn it into a 3 dimensional object. Ooops, I better not use the word object in the same context as a reclining nude. No, this is a fully actualised woman, revealed to herself.

It takes 3 bags of clay. I decide to build solid and hollow out later. I quickly put blocks of clay together from the bags to make the torso using my fingers to drag excess away. I get a shape. Then quickly I stuff balls of clay together to build out the legs. I am still not sure where they are going and working with solid clay means I can change my mind as I go. Building a hollow form requires a lot more forethought. She is big and will just fit into the coffin kiln - about 80 cm long.... but I am not even thinking of those practicalities as I am in the flow of creation.

I let her dry for a few days and come back ready to adjust the shape. I decide even though she is still quite malleable to hollow her out using pin hole surgery... taking a strip of clay along the leg and then removing. Once hollowed, I add back the missing strip. I put in the deep caverns of calf lines as shown in the Lhote picture. I get down on the floor and get into the pose, feeling where my stomach muscles pull. Now my back is full of clay dust!

I also turn her gently and hollow from the back trying not to squash the detail. Hmmm, no such luck, but easily fixed. Now I let her dry again for another week. I am back smoothing, putting in the toe details, realising that the foot resting on the floor is not quite right - building up the heel and that wonderful curve. As I do so I realise how beautiful feet are when in stretched poses. I love the ways the toes hug the knees, crimping over. I emphasise with a turning tool the lines and the form. I start dreaming about feet and their possibilities. (more on that later)

Another week under loose plastic and voila! Here she is! Now I need to wait a few weeks until I can fire her.... then she will be painted with those wonderful voluptuous colours... then a poem... and maybe she will be ready for the Material Girl Exhibition in March. Do you think this is a woman for all seasons?

Oh yeah, after hollowing out, I have recovered about 1.5 bags of clay which I pummelt together and wedge up ready to be made into coils for my next piece.

Is nude rude?

2006-02-01T15:45:00.000+11:00

Just before Christmas I treated myself to a beautiful book Reclining Nude by Lidia Guibert Ferrara which has large colour pics of reclining nudes from 1844 to 2002.

I particularly loved the painting Bacchante by Andre Lhote and while on holiday decided to explore skin textures by creating a pastel copy of it. I have realised that there is nothing like copying another work to begin to get inside it. it is not something I normally do. I began to realise how different this reclining nude was to many of the others. She wasn't so much posed for an artist in an attractive position, but seemed to be natural and for herself. It brought back memories of my research into the nude in art and feminist art back in 2002 and the objectification of women.

John Berger from Ways of Seeing says:

To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.
Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is on display.

I felt that in this painting the woman was revealing herself rather than on display, unlike many of the other nudes in the book.

I then got into the pose... and please try it... not an easy one to relax in... you should feel extension through the waist and disequilibrium around the hips. There is something wonderful about the earthiness of the toes bent around the knee. As I lay in this pose I felt connected with this woman in the picture. Am I also a work of art? In this pose I am myself, yet connected through history with so many women also who have inadvertently taken this position. Does this pose reveal me as it reveals to me what being a woman is?

Does this mean for every physical position we take there is a greater memory connecting us to our species, or even other species? Hmmm. Are pictures of women in art immortalising for us this physical reality of being. Do we need them to see ourselves?

Anyway, I could feel a sculpture coming along....

Shit Happens

2006-01-31T18:08:00.000+11:00

I've just this minute finished painting a piece and I am still scraping glue off my fingers. It is called Shit Happens and you will notice that it continues with my black, white and red theme.... (except for the dog poo which is realistic poo brown... (which is a colour that is very easy to mix as my 4 year old neice can attest to... she loves seeing what happens when all the colours on her pallette mix together...))

Ok, not a very spiritual piece but it makes me laugh and I have to say I was really pleased when I saw how the whole thing came togther. She looks a little weird without the dog so when making her I held a virtual dog image in my head.

The image came to me after watching Reece Weatherspoon in Legally Blonde mincing along with those tight little skirts and her chihuahua. I was probably very annoyed with John Howard at the time because I fully intended to do a black and white stencil style drawing of him on the dog, intermingled with the spots. But there is no John Howard... couldn't do that to such a cute dog! But hold that thought!

If you want to see what she looked like before firing here is a pic. I am using Kean's Raku white clay which is very strong for building up, yet still much more manageable than terracota in terms of creating details. A lady just has to have eyelashes! I Bisque fire at 1000C and then paint with acrylics and use a matt varnish for the skin and a shiny one for the dress. I have been having some problems with some of the colours fading a bit more than others ( eg warm blue) after my pieces have sat in shop windows so now I am using up to 3 coats of varnish.

You will notice the expression on her face. It is that euw one that you might get after holding one doggie bag full of poo while watching your dog make another lot.

As I make my pieces I find my body and facial expressions mimick the piece. So for three hours while building the head I had that expression on my face... no doubt creating euw lines, rather than nice laughter ones. I kept thinking about what my mum always said when I was a kid.... watch out it will stick!

Then after all that hard work, when I came back the following session, I thought the head was too big and too ugly - a girl has to look pretty even when saying euw - so I took it off, collapsed it (pummelled it into a ball) and started again, so my poor face had to survive another few hours of different ways of euwing. From beginning to end it has taken me about 2 to 3 months. It will probably retail around $1100 + Australian.... but I am not wanting to put it out there until my next exhibition so I get to enjoy it for a while.

From my visual diary:

A cascade of ideas

2006-01-29T08:00:00.000+11:00

It is hard to imagine that this ceramic sculpture, Mae Be Baby, would lead to anything deep. Surely it is a floozy piece? I created her on commission for an egragrious lady who is a fan of Marilyn Monroe and Mae West. My client dresses flamboyantly, 'out there' with black clothing and feathers in her hair, sizable cleavage showing, layered hemlines. And a shoe fetish.

Perhaps I have now caught it, or at least a foot fetish... more on that later.

So how to create a piece that expressed the essence of the client but also showed her depth and generous nature. As usual I write accompanying poetry to go with my pieces and in writing this one a key phrase stayed with me... beware of the surface dwellers.

It now is the title of my next exhibition and the ideas are beginning to flow.... themes to do with climate change and the fragile nature of the surface of our planet.... how much of the problem is caused by humans living shallowly. When we live deeply connected to ourselves, the universe, and to others we live more lightly and responsibly. I am interested in future studies, integral theory and consciousness development theories at the moment and this is also informing my thinking. Not that I have really changed that much... my previous two exhibitions also had very spiritual themes with my pieces being women who appear complete and in the flow... that is if they are not being satiric.

So as usual my ideas get too big for the exhibition room and me to do in the time frame.... perhaps I need a sculpture garden... and then please I need a group of students to create it (with their own ideas of course) and once I get thinking on that road I suddenly see how the whole thing can be made into wonderful integrated learning curriculum that links maths, science, history, art, technology, literature togeher in a rich learning context. OK . More on that later.

Meanwhile, I also have got interested in black and white as colours, whereas previously all my work has been full blast with colour. Interesting.

Mae be Baby

Mae be baby
I’ll let you into
my deepest secret.

But,
unravel it slowly,
and savour
the unfolding revelations
of each layer,
exposed

delicately
revealingly …

Until,
with wonder and laughter,
generosity and sensitivity
you discover and hold
the very heart of me …

Will you dare
to begin
such a journey?

Or are you a surface dweller,
blinded by what you see?

Mae be baby,
another time,
another universe.

From my visual diary: