It has been slow going in the studio, the recent south westerly weather has brought flurries of snow to the frog ponds rock household and it has been cold, very cold. I don’t have any heating in my studio and you can imagine how cold it gets inside a tin shed in the middle of a Tasmanian winter.
The clay is icy cold and my hands start to ache after a while but I crank the music up and throw the clay around the room to the beat of an eclectic mix of classical violin concertos, old punk and newer rock. My current style of vigorous hand building where I throw the slabs of clay onto the floor and punch them into shape is a combination of my artistic expression as well as an attempt to warm myself up.
I am halfway through a sculpture class and we have just finished making a traditional clay bust from a life model. The level of finesse and patience needed to put in the delicate details like an eyelid were incredibly challenging for me to maintain, as my current working method is not delicate at all. I enjoyed getting the bones of the sculpture in place, the plane of the cheek bones and the angle of the jaw were satisfyingly easy to achieve. I can see some angular figurative sculptures in my near future.
There is balance in all things and I was completely at a loss as to know how to even begin to make the lips and as for the eyelids, wow what fiddly little fuckers they are. Surprisingly though, I thoroughly enjoyed making the ears, I think that is because even though the ears are very complex they are not quite as delicate as the eyes. I will make some more ears in the future. I don’t know what I will do with them or how they will work but I will make some.
Next week we move onto contemporary sculpture and we will be given the task of creating a site specific installation in a public space using only reclaimed cardboard. Did you see those four little words, “in a public space” It will be fun but it will also be nervewracking. I know that I am going to be pushed out of my comfort zone again because we will be making a model of the site and our work before we do the installation.
I HATE making models, I seriously dislike fiddling about with little fiddly fucking bits of paper. I dislike measuring stuff so it all fits together and I really dislike having to pay attention to small details.
So it will be good for me.
I will get the moaning and whining and the don’t wannas out of my head here and then next week I will knuckle down and glue little fiddly bits of paper together to make a scale model *shudder* of the site. I will pay attention to the small details and I will take notice of those extra millimetres on the ruler instead of going she’ll be right and just trying to bang it together haphazardly.
And it will be good for me.
And only you and I, my dear internet, will know how difficult it will be for me.
It has nearly warmed up enough for me to go up to the studio and do some more work.
Just to be completely perverse after I have been moaning about not wanting to have to fiddle about with tiny details, here are some photos of my newest works in progress.
And yes, this work is incredibly fiddly.
