I found tis drawing on my way home. I wish I had made it. I didn’t know that cast away fluids had pathos. Evaporating ghosts of a river people. Ones who have since made passage from this world.
Drawing
Testing for Exhibition /
Fast and loose. If your reading this before the MA show then your in on a wee secret. I’m not sure what I’m doing is going to work. In theory in my head it sounds and looks great. However the idea is still in development and testing. I don’t normally work like this but the MA has got me approaching things differently.
I have mentioned before that I want to work larger so this is me testing mark making with river clay. It could all go oh so wrong and I need to return to the studio to see how it dries…it’s likely that it wants to shrink crack and fall off the wall.
I’ve collected some clay from the banks of a stream, which feels appropriate to my focus of being in passage and navigation. I’ve found a location where traditionally there were clay works. I like the feel of the authenticity of the material the land and it’s history - they are all important to the spirit of the work - even if no one else knows - I do.
I have some bags made up from canvas and more crafted for performance - I’m not entirely sure how practical they will be. In addition for the test I just used disposable plastic icing bags which felt a little ‘off’.
The test worked well and softening the clay to a looser ‘slip’ consistency gave a satisfying result, which I was able to apply to the wall. I will need to render the slip and remove some of the small sticks and stones as they clog the nozzle and make for less clean marks.
I really liked the clean lines which feels important, something about the rawness of the material giving a fine result feels right. I need to consider scale and the marks felt a little too large and I want the minor to coalesce in community to make the larger. Scale is a key word for me at the moment as a number of people have raised it about my work at a time when I too have been seriously considering. It seems like an important progression and part of the voice of the work.
I also need to collet more clay as I used all the sample up.
As a footnote I love the sound from the video - something I am trying to be more active in - the film and sound side of my practice.
solute summoning /
Made in planning for the show. The format is wrong - I won’t have the space to fit this exact drawing, but I hope to make something close. There has become a deep satisfaction in the repetitive marks and fro what the summon. A variant of the paddle but more evolved, I could almost draw these all day, completely indulgent but who know what it would inspire.
I just don’t have the time in the day to make everything I would like, there’s the rub, to be selective in what I pursue, what feels most potent and alive?
This form that is suggested by the multiple marks is almost incidental but yet equal, the coming together of elementals, community expression. the larger form is empty yet present because of the others. The paddle form is modified - as I mentioned earlier evolving, to move not upon water but upon other. ‘To move upon other’ - I like that.
In the liminal, in passage, what has been ‘known’ is now fragemented, solute. I return to ideas of decomposition, autolysis, not as an end but as a translation of materials, of passing.
Fluid tools of passage /
Having indulged in making clay drawings for the sake of it I realised that I should animate them as I have with some of the ink drawings, the ‘passage’ created feels close to what I have been pursuing. There is a strange tension of pursuing what I feel is so elusive. Yet I need to continue.
Again I am making work in a very loose fashion, just getting it made - so it can exist, if feels right to have a growing number of works that I can focus down on in the future. I imagine this work being animated much more beautifully, the current format of Giffs is perhaps the most accessible but also the crudest. And I do wonder what software would be best I doubt I need powerful software but one that can blend between drawings well. In addition I suspect that I can move the animations further on conceptually to make the work more engaging, I don’t feel like I have to add a lot more narrative - more let the work evolve as I have with the sculpture.
There is scope to experiment more with the drawing, what. and how I render. I do enjoy the gentled looping of it, the constant transitioning and translating, perhaps a peace in the constant changing, that for it to resolve would actual feel uncomfortable.
More a fluid tool of passage, which intuitively makes sense.
It’s not about the work /
I've been learning how to work when time isn’t abundant, where and when are my most fertile times.
How to document them. Drawing works, it gives me pleasure and genuinely gives a few for what it might look like.
It’s not about the work, but how I work.
I wrestle, I contemplate, Inscrutinise, I intuit. Sometimes I just make.
Distracting myself or being sat on the tube and just writing. Ways to distract and lighten the process, seem to help my brain.
Also considering names, following a chat with Jonathan around the show, that in the naming can help lead viewers into the work.
Whether Poles
Deep Compass
Passage Sextant
Whenwhere
These don’t quiet feel right and I need to figure a name for each piece I think….although I like the idea of wrestling with evocative names
Imaginary Bundle for Passage /
This motif has been recurring, well several motifs have been recurring and I want to pay attention. I sometimes move on too quickly from one idea to the next, when actually I need to pause and contemplate what is occurring. The past two curated blog assessments have been really useful in taking stock of what is happening, seeing common threads and how there is continuity to my work, visually and conceptually.
This drawing isn’t my favourite… today but…that might change. However I do find it informative and encouraging. It’s a development form the ‘Imaginary bundle’ drawings I made last year, taking the more abstracted form of the paddle and thinking about the emptying out and filling. Following the idea fo the Kenotic and the Khora. Exploring the negative and positive spaces in connection to the role of Derrida’s ‘Differance’. The behaviour of the Liminal and passage through.
I want to go bigger is my first response, having finished it. It needs more mass, more presence. To go larger has been a growing feeling for some time and has been affirmed in my last discussion with Jonathan. All the cute little drawings I make in my sketchbook are impotant as they inform and help me to imagine. But the scale is now feeling more and more important. Presence and the tone of voice, seem to require a a different scale.
Things we can fit into our hands are intimate and dominatable, things we can put our arms around are relatabl,e close to human form and equal. Things that are larger than us are beyond us and our control they take on a different gravitas. I guess it’s this gravitas I am looking to engage with.
So I wonder what happens when I go up in scale to A00 or two stories high? How/where would I show this? and would it be worth the effort and resources? I often fall over on these questions and don’t make work because of these restrictions, so maybe I need to work harder to overcome them….
Anselm Kiefer: /
In thinking about large format drawings I remembered Anselm Kiefer. His work centres upon using natural media at large scale and at times drawings falls off the wall into sculpture. His use of straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac.
I’m jealous of how prolific some artists are, Keifer especially. Yet I feel at times my work moves too slowly along a concepts and motifs. But then this is me thinking too much - when I’ve learned that its better just to make as quickly as possible. Then think about it..
I am mindful of space and how to best occupy it with drawing and with sculpture, especially for the upcoming show. How do I best conclude what I have been doing and leave space for it to continue after?
It’s this scale thing again, I love drawing and somehow this feels like a rightful progression, to go bigger and offer some of the work more gravitas seemingly. I need to draw more - I wonder if I need to make more preparatory drawings or just have at it.
I’ looking at spaces differently - imagining drawing in it, what it might look like to fill it.
///
Currently listening to the sound track of people working with wood in the forest. It’s somehow pleasing and calming for me…weird.
Tools for drawing: Escillation. /
How do I go big? Following the tutorial discussion with Jonathan. I have been meditating on what drawing larger could look like. In addition I found the same topic coming up in the MA session this week. We were discussing challenges to our practice. And again one of the points that came though is how I want to find ways to facilitate working larger now and after the MA.
What practical steps can I take to make it happen? Point that came up was to make the opportunities if I don’s seee them available. To approach people/companies/bodies and propose the projects, using the momentum from the MA and the show. Find ways to escalate things.
I keep on returning to the clay drawings, I like how they are connected to the earth, the ground, the natural world. In addition the work has a lower impact on the environment - which I am becoming more and more concerned about.
Why big? Why does it matter? In discussion with JK part of it was just like it felt as though it was time, a natural progression and desire of the work, permitting it to evolve. Also my preoccupation of materials and the work speaking
I’ve had fun making the tool for drawing, basically a giant icing bag - although that doesn’t sound so cool. However in thinking about my practice its intrinsic to the process and expression. I’ve mentioned before about ‘ritualised tools of passage’ - The improvisation and creation in response to the environment or absence of environment in the ‘Difference’. The liminal almost demands the generation of such items. From nothing comes something doesn’t addiquately expression it but falls in the right direction. The’ fertile emptines’. In folklaw often the protagonist returns from passage with a sacred item a hard won yenta times terrifying tool of significance and assiatance. For exmple The folk story of Bluebeard.
Perhaps this could explain the repeated motif of the paddle and the abstraction of the paddle form. The difficult yet fundamental protagonist. Or a more elusive and fluid character both benign and baneful and neutral.
WORDS:
Antagonist
Protagonist
Irritant
Richard Long /
Following a discussion in the MA group I've begun looking at Richard Long again, as his work shares sensibilities with mine. the use of clay/ mud from origin and the use of natural materials, clustering, bundling.
Historically I’ve not paid too much attention to Richard Long’s work. For various reasons I’ve felt distant from it. In all honesty I don’t have a lot of time for performance work or land based art. It felt like it kinda fell into a dated era in the 80’s and 90’s, one that I didn’t connect to. I preferred a greater level of narrative, even if only implied.
However on reflection of the work I’ve been making the past year or so I see a lot of commonality. His choice of materials being a key one, mud stone. The minimal and honest presentation of the work as a form of documentation or record keeping. It’s important to know what is and has been and contextualise my own research and outcomes.
In addition I also notice with his constructed a stone cross that it is very close aesthetically and follows similar rules to my drawing for imaginary bundles, the informal organic interlocking.
I do think we take separate paths when it comes to concept, he gravitated towards the natural, pattens, human presence in nature and it’s physicaldocumentation, where as I strive towards examining cultural passage through language, the unravelling of mystery, poetry.
Where as Long describes his work in this way.
‘you could say that my work is ... a balance between the patterns of nature and the formalism of human, abstract ideas like lines and circles. It is where my human characteristics meet the natural forces and patterns of the world, and that is really the kind of subject of my work’ (quoted in Richard Long: Walking in Circles, p.250)
I do like the scale of his mud drawing that is inspiring and looking at his larger drawings awakens deeper desires , and I do wonder how I too can get a chance to make on a similar scale. Again following the discussion with Jonathan my work needs to scale up.
Could I do that at the show? Fill a whole 6meters of board with a clay slip drawing? JK did say dream big…
Unexpected /
Something happened tonight, an unexpected flurry. I’ve been angsting about the final show. A little lost at sea with my work. I have ideas but didn’t feel convinced. The past week or so Ive been in the studio just making and doing a few drawings around concluding bits.
I sat down tonight to make some drawings, finalising some ideas and have instead generated a whole bunch more work to make. Too much to make for the show but that’s fine it’s work I can continue with after the MA.
The practice based research throws me at times, I feel like I should be in books and papers, which I do - and have too many! But the making and drawing is a valuable form of research and development not an end process - which I keep forgetting.
I now have a number of pages of sketches that I can work up into sculptures or more involved drawings.
But how that’s my question, what occurred to summon this? How do I keep it?
There’s some interesting bit happening for with the pot. (At the back of my head is the smoking pot from Abrams encounter with Yahweh and the question was that a Liminal Moment a generative moment?)
In addition I’ve been wondering about basic needs of the Liminal Personae.
I’ve begun to think about the passage - basic needs. Food, Water, Sleep, Movement.
The circular form a kind of navigational device, measuring the character for travel. I want to put metric markings down the rod.
More paddles just because I can’t leave them alone.
A travel bed - but more.
The cooking pot and stick.
///
Shopping
https://www.rapidmetals.co.uk/product/copper-1-4-dia/
Micro Post: Sometimes... /
Sometimes I just don’t know what I am doing and it’s better not to ask either.
Negative Passage /
More animated drawing. This worked well the last one I experimented with and I am keen to see where it might go. First is. a Gif then the second a rendered video - not sure if there is a significant difference.
Still mindful of translation, demonstrating a passage.
Silent poetry.
Looking for my poetic discoveries of the hidden.
The animation lacks a little finesse, I’d like smoother transitions and I think the drawings could be a little more on point. I’m still experimenting with the process of drawing and deciding what feels best. A lot of it seems to be me figuring after I’ve made the drawing. I do like the freedom of just making and not overthinking. I get surprised at times when I like the outcome a day later fo see something of value, yet its also infuriating as its so hard to reproduce the effects I especially like and want to capitalise on. I also made a mistake in the tweeting between frames (In passage) and the timing is out but I like it. I like getting lost in the frames, that it never quiet settles.
Basically I get fussy. When I can’t be.
Process Post. /
Nothing too deep or revelatory. More me just making sure I’m writing about my process.
Yet something feels right about this, somethings I make and am unsure, but this I’m ok with.
Materials lead me again and there is something provocative and pleasing about the natural canvas.
I’m making a large icing bag basically, but for clay. I’m making my own tools to work with and that to is satisfying. I’m tempted to get ealborate, but I should have learnt from previous lessons that it will slow me down, but it’s hard - I want to make pretty!
The plan is to locate naturally occurring clay and use it as a medium to draw with, although I am now having to research and figure where I might find it. This could involve a number of exploratory walks and scrambling but then I like that kinda thing.
I feel drawn to the process of engaging with the land, gently moving an element and decontextualising it into a medium and meaning - a form of translation.
This too I’ve been looking at ‘Translation’ what does it really mean to translate language and other things? What and how does it happen? It’s connected to the Liminal.
Also please note it took me a ridiculously long time to figure the pattern out, when it shouldn’t.
Liminal Landscapes /
Bodies without flesh or bone
Partially present
Dead Quiet in their slow overwhelming absence
Insubstantial
Far off the light might be fading
Or resisting
The map has bled into the earth
The colours and key, now clay
Navigation a vapour
A whisp
That briefly curls in the air
We stand on the shore
thresholds
We are Unable to cross
Boundaries
We are unable to comprehend
The mist
A veil
The land
Sleeps
I
Wander
Follow on from post: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time' /
There are a few experiments that I’d like to follow up on, from the past year. One of which is the mud paddle drawn on a tree. It’s been busy season and hopefully I’m moving into one where I can give a little more time to expanding upon my practice and research, and upon previous experiments. A season of development following on from season of generation.
If the Liminal is generative then ideally following is growth and development. Perhaps a sign that one is exiting the liminal.
The drawings are sketches that I am keen to collate as I tend to deposit them all over the place and loose the thread of my thinking.
I’m still interested in boundaries and borders and translation which carries us across. Another form of transformation from change.
These drawings I plan to make at my next opportunity. Another chance to spend time in the woods. The rhythmic lines articulating an absence. Clay taken from the nearby earth. A passing. A passage. An emptying? And then what comes to rightfully occupy?
Why the tree? Because it feels like. partnership. There may be other reasons but I’ll figure those in the making.
Also could I cast the whole trunk of the tree?
Something about these drawing as I look at them feels like a form of positive agency, ’ assistance in the liminal’. For what guidance do we have in disruption?
Foot note could I use an icing bag to apply the lines? Must visit a cook shop… or can I make a heavy duty one out of waxed cotton and thread?
Can that become a part of the work?
///
On another note.
A key element to this course is finding rhythms of researching and making to support and augment our practice. Initially I had understood this to be a regular repetitive rhythm, however I am now beginning to realise that it’s much more complex, that the rhythm is ‘seasonal’ and follows a more organic structure. Perhaps closer to the rhythmic cycle of of a bear, hibernate when it’s cold, eat fish when they are in season, eat berries when they are not, rest when your tired, fight when under threat.
“Biological rhythms, such as rhythms in activity and body temperature, are usually highly synchronized and entrained by environmental conditions, such as photoperiod. However, how the expression of these rhythms changes during hibernation, when the perception of environmental cues is limited, has not yet been fully understood for all hibernators, especially in the wild. The brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Scandinavia lives in a highly seasonal environment and adapts to harsh winter conditions by exhibiting hibernation, characterized by reduced metabolism and activity. In this study, we aimed to explore the expression of biological rhythms in activity, body temperature and heart rate of free-ranging brown bears over the annual cycle, including active, hibernation and the transition states around den entry and exit. We found that rhythms in physiology and activity are mostly synchronized and entrained by the light-dark cycle during the bears’ active state with predominantly diel and ultradian rhythms for body temperature, activity and heart rate. However, during hibernation, rhythms in body temperature and heart rate were considerably slowed down to infradian rhythms, influenced by the amount of snow in the denning area, whereas rhythms in activity remained diel. Rhythms in the transition states when bears prepared for entering or coming out of hibernation state displayed a combination of infradian and diel rhythms, indicating the preparation of the body for the change in environmental conditions.” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2022.785706/full
Diel Rythmn: involving a 24-hour period that usually includes a day and the adjoining night.
Day and night. Night and day.
Ultradian rhythms: are your body's biological cycles that take place within 24 hours, which can include everything from a human heartbeat, to blinking, to digestion. While the more commonly known term “circadian rhythm” occurs over a 24-hour period, ultradian rhythms are shorter and are repeated during that time.
///Shopping notes
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Piping-Nozzles-Stainless-Decorating-Cookies/dp/B085DL7RSW/ref=sr_1_41?keywords=extra+large+piping+nozzles&qid=1679841459&sr=8-41
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tabiger-Oversized-Decorating-Stainless-Supplies/dp/B09VGHPJS2/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=extra+large+piping+nozzles&qid=1679842267&sr=8-5
Studio /
I don’t know what I’m doing to be honest. But It kinda feels ok or even right. I’ve constructed this monsterous stencil from collected disposed of card. Almost like what one would do when cast adrift on a desert island cobbling together some sort of improvised solution.
It’s growing into some large drawing, evolving. It’s not finished, I have more to do…when I figure it out.
I’m looking for the work to have ‘presence’ for the drawing to move in some way. I’m deliberating - what does it need want. How does it speak?
I stop the drawing for now and lay out more materials on my bench - various types of wood I’ve collected. This has now become part of my process, to collect and set out materials, give them space to breath and speak to me. I strip the laminated boards I found and break them down into slats constituent elements. I’m processing materials looking for dialogue.
It’s a mush mash of materials, I don’t know what I’m doing but its ok. I’m asking questions of the material and myself. I start sanding a fence panel and that feels ok or am I repeating everything? Am I genuinely experimenting? I want to develop more the initial trials that felt successful. The clay drawing. The looped animation, and where are the films I was promising to make?
And conclusions what can I conclude? Or do I just make…
Negative Lever II /
Exploring the Negative Lever in the studio, using the card frame as a template I took the outline and had begun to explore it looking at the boundaries and boards it makes.
It gives me the opportunity to work inside and outside, across positive and negative. I was tempted to fill the entire frame in black but something stopped me, something about the quality of the line - the fading and incompleteness…
…and there’s that word again incompleteness, I’m beginning to look at Homi Bhabha again: ‘Translation and Displacement’ and ‘How newness enters the world’. Engaging with boundaries and boarders.
Minor Posts /
I’m super busy at the moment with work and uncomfortably can feel I am loosing momentum. I am in the studio but in a different state, contemplating how my work can develop. I like the results of the fast studies but I do wonder how I conclude some of the work, not finish but draw to moment in the work that makes sense or is at least interesting.
I had a thought today and will try to make ‘Minor posts’ less writing more brief thoughts. I seem to do better when I am not labouring my ideas or work. Minor posts can be as simple as I like - the idea to be continually processing with out the burden of performance and can complment more considered posts. Well that’s the idea…
Negative Lever /
I’m in the studio processing materials I’ve collected. It’s been a week or so since I was in the forest and all I want to do is amass wood and bits. I think it’s because I am so led by my materials - the feel and presence and history. However I don’t feel comfortable just making cute little bundles. It feels like a ‘get out’ clause - just tie some bit’s together and it will pass as art. I really want more the presence of the artist upon the material leading to its transformation and meaning.
I’m trying to tie up unfinished/explored ideas, the wood I cut is for bundle and more pegs. I make another peg but split the wood nailing the leather into it, the wood is too thin the black tack butchers into it - clefting the slim peg I had cut - need to get some simmer tacks.
I then clear my bench and take a drawing from the card form I had made some time back from disgarded boxes. it’s been on my wall for a while, because I wasn’t entirely sure why I had made it. But I did feel potential to it and now it may lad to sculptural work.
The paper is so large it takes up all available space in the studio and I have to stand in my bench and the paper to work.
The drawing is interesting- nothing too dramatic but I still like it. I would like to make it in black ink and in negative with a watered black wash. It also occurs to me that it would be interesting to make the form in stacked found wood. And a version in negative in stacked found wood. I still have more fence panels and I imagine stacking and gluing it.
SO maybe potential. But also thinking realistically about where I take this all for the MA show…
And what is this piece about - I’ve called it a Negative Lever. More tools for navigation of uncertainty.
FFYAAT /
Kinda wanting to jump start my head, I feel it’s a little soupy right now - I know there is good thread of work to follow, if I could just unravel it from the birds nest of daily weft.
Still wanting to keep some level of animation to my work, not necessarily in any traditional sense but more an energy and activation. Movement/Differance.
Thinking about forest work, buoys to dwell amongst the trees, markers of the liminal, of differance.