My work has been slowly moving forwards
for about a week or so now, going towards an end point that is about to
overwhelm me.
Towards the end of last week I continued
to think about the name of the book, and changed it from Ageing Onwards to
Moving, as this encompasses the concept of the work a lot more than the
previous title. "Moving" allows one to think about traversing forwards
and backwards, rather than just onwards.
I then didn't do much with anything
(apart from watching a new T.V drama called "Narcos" which was very interesting,
detailing the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar) until Monday, where I went into
Butley to work. This was quite a surreal experience, as I hadn't been back to
work for nearly a month. So I felt a lot like how I did when I first began
working there, enjoying the manual labour rather than groaning when I had to
jet wash some sculptures or crush grog.
In the morning I had to open up a load
of moulds that had been poured on Friday, this is, as I've said in the past,
hard work. At the same time it's oddly satisfying to peel away the skins, revealing
the bronze inside. Using an axe is always a lot of fun too.
I then jet washed all of the bronze
pieces that I'd just opened up. This was fun, for the first ten minutes or so.
After that it does become quite dull and boring for the next two hours. I do
always have thought-provoking podcasts to listen to though. This week nothing
new, just This American Life and The Moth. Speaking of The Moth, I recently
booked tickets to go and see a live show in London sometime soon, which should
be a lot of fun
The rest of the day was spent using
grinders and hammers to remove all the unwanted bronze parts from a couple of
small scale sculptures. This was the first time I'd really done proper metal
finishing on a detailed sculpture, and it was quite tough. The whole process
was made a lot worse as I was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt with a slightly
loose neck, so all of the tiny bronze pieces were repeatedly sprayed into my
skin. Within the first five minutes I'd made a mental note to always wear a
long sleeved t-shirt whenever I thought I would be doing anything concerning
metal.
The next day I came in again to do some
work on my own bronze sculptures and to collect all of my waxes and work that I
had been doing for the past few months. I spent an hour or so working on a few
of my bronzes that had been cast, but eventually gave up on most of them, as
the majority were too messy already, and wouldn't have been improved upon with
any more metal finishing. I also put one of my first bronzes onto the metal scrap
heap (the larger of the two), as it was incredibly heavy (meaning it would be expensive)
and wasn't that good a piece anyway. I was fortunate enough to get two bronze
sculptures out of the process though, which are in my opinion, quite successful
in doing what I set out to achieve.
During the day I also set out all of my
work on a table, choosing which ones to bring home and which would be
destroyed/melted down. It was a relatively easy process as I knew what aspects
of my work I wanted in the different pieces. It was also necessary as I had to
pay the material cost for the work, which (after I weighed it all) came out to
about £150.
Before:
After:
Over the next day or so I started to
document the work, to put in my book and on my main website. It was really hard
to get a sense that the work was coming out of the wall with some of the
pieces, at times I overcame this problem but with a few of the images you can't
quite tell what you're looking at, which is really annoying. These are an
assortment of the edited images:
On Thursday evening I went to see a
performance called Antarctica at the New Wolsey Studio in Ipswich. It was
written and performed by a guy called Chris Dobrowolski, where he gave a
sort-of lecture where he talked about a trip he (supposedly) took to
Antarctica. I say supposedly as the entire performance may well be an entirely
fictitious affair, this is hinted at throughout, be it through his general
manner of being/mocking an art lecturer, brandishing a long stick to poke at
the different parts of his slide, or showing the audience the surreal image of
a scene not unlike his final works of art, but being made entirely within his
fridge freezer. Calling into question whether he actually went or not! This
was, of course, all a part of the theatrical performance and added to the ambiguous
nature of the thing. I found the whole performance utterly hilarious and
enthralling, especially parts where he mocked "corporate suits" and
their team building exercises.
On Friday I went to Butley again to
work for the final time before I go to uni, which was both sad and happy at the
same time. I feel that my summer has definitely been improved by working there,
learning new skills and meeting interesting people, and I would definitely like
to go back next summer to experience it all over again.
I began the day by cleaning out a bunch
of plaster moulds that hadn't been used since they had been made, so lumps of
clay and all sorts of crap was imbedded within the cracks and gullies of the
rubber.
After that was done I painted the
moulds with wax, which I've done many times in the past. After it was dry the moulds
were screwed together so that liquid wax could be poured into them and swished
around, connecting the two parts together. This is something that I'm yet to do
with a large scale mould, as it takes a lot of skill and strength.
Then the wax is cooled down in the bath
and eventually the moulds are carefully opened up, revealing different parts of
a sculpture.
During this time I also moved a load of
moulds to the kiln and crushed some grog.
By that point it was the end of the day
and I had officially finished my summer internship. It's very weird to look
back on my blog post talking about going to the foundry for the first time, and
to think about how I was then in comparison to how I am now, and how I will be
in six months time, and so on. It's something to think about...
Over the weekend I'm now focusing on
writing my book, talking about the different aspects of the project and the
general concept that started it all. It'll probably be completed in the short
time that I'll have when I get back from
Venice.
I do have a few regrets for this
project, mostly about time management and not being able to experiment with things
as much as I would have wanted to, for example colour. I do however think that
I've been successful in achieving what I wanted to in the beginning, which was
creating something that was entirely motivated by my own self, rather than
being told to do it by my school, college or uni, as well as learning new
skills and using them effectively to create something
aesthetically/conceptually interesting.
For the next week I'll be in Venice,
enjoying the Biennale and looking at as much art as I can hope to see. When I
get back I'll probably write one more blog post wrapping up my entire project
before going to uni to start something new!
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