The weekend's weather was glorious but now we are under a cloud. All the debris of the show has been put away and it is time to go back to work: finish decorating the flock of birds, finish working on the cube, do some experimental work on the monument, tighten the design of an architectural perspective wall piece. And of course there is real life as well...
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Congratulations to Jennie Merriman for a really stunning new body of work. We have all been wowed by it and it is really exciting to see how her talent has been unfolding these marvellous kinetic pieces. Derbyshire Open Arts Holymoorside is indeed lucky this year in having so much remarkable talent showing there (and me, of course!). Still time to come and see all day today! At one end, the embrace of a sheltering headland; at your feet, sprawling, the compact sand, riven with channels and grooves; the pebbles of all colours, and even steps. Ahead, the mouth of a water course disgorging slowly and spreading. The North Sea lacks the airy recklessness of the Atlantic of my home, but it does have a cultured look, in the sense of much walked and used and managed; in the sense that the fight has always been on and the sea, though inevitably the winner, is not left to its leisure. So many momentous comings and goings have been seen from these headlands, and yet it all passes as if nothing mattered. Runswick, Whitby, Staithes, are all dots on a wondrous map. The sea comes and goes and returns and retreats and I see that as the folding of a petal on another. The marches of fishing and playing, running, boating and swimming leave their trail in the sand and the rains and weather scour the place of debris and oily pools. The clouds reflect on the calm surface and the sun glints diamonds on the rough surf. And the sea beckons and calls and leaves behind jewels and cloaks of mysterious purity. Boxes are the current work; Resolving to make boxes comes from the need to hide and offer seclusion, but that, in itself is a superficial aim. The fact that these objects are boxes is becoming more and more incidental. It is becoming more about the surfaces and the silhouettes. The surface of these boxes interests me very much. Some are textured with a particular pattern and that texture can be ignored because it explains itself: you can see the geometry of it; others are textured randomly and on those I want to impose a narrative by means of colour areas. The meaning in these is retrospective, in that it becomes apparent as I go and is not resolved beforehand. The cube on the right was a different plan: the surface was untextured except for a rough black slip. Only after applying glaze did I roam and seek the possibilities of the form. I wanted it not to suggest anything, but the glaze and slip reacted unevenly and in the end there was plenty of room for speculation. I thought of flight and sailing and wings but I also thought of darker, underlying, imprisoning squares... It is much more of a dialogue, a more even matching of forces, when a smooth, regular surface is inscribed or attacked in some way. The clay itself imposes a limit that has to be respected. Very different from texturing a plastic slab and later deciding how to interpret the random patterns. I am not clear whether layering enables meaning; I find the time lapse between concept and finishing a problem, because my intentions as well as my resources change and develop: feels like catching the river in your hand. |
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