I am enjoying working on the stick sculptures very much. The physicality of the wood and its increasing resistance as it gets thicker and older is really useful in producing a shape that is not quite the shape that I intended. It forces me relax to my intention and allows the wood to impose its own self into the work. This is quite freeing for me, not a lack of responsibility but a way of working with what I am producing that feels like a bit like a two way process, I am constructing but also having to respond to the wood. I think a glimmer of this idea was beginning when, having constructed the perspex blue box I realised how rigid and ‘tight’ it felt to make. All the time I wanted some flexibility but wasn’t getting it. It will be interesting to see how far I can take this, and a pity that there isn’t much green wood around at this time of year.
Constructing is so different to the 2D work I have been doing that I find it quite hard to reconcile the two, both are enjoyable and constructive but feel quite different.
Although …….. this is a thought……. or a period of thinking……..
I have spent some time enquiring around the notion of meaning, the development of symbolic meaning particularly. But the abstract work I have been doing has no intrinsic meaning, it is all about balance, control, dominance, power even. (Within the constricted environment of limited colour and shape)
Ah, well, so I have some potential for further thinking on this.
This piece of writing has been somewhat inspired by reading an interview with Tomma Abts she says:
‘I don’t feel comfortable with the word spirituality in connection with my work. It immediately evokes a notion of spiritual kitsch and makes me think of work that takes itself too seriously in its tackling of grand themes. For me, painting is a concrete experiment that is anchored in the material I am handling. Metaphysical concerns – in the sense of examining the properties and possibilities of an object – sounds better.1
There were two phrases that jumped out at me here, the first was her relationship with spiritual interpretations of her work.
I have been struggling against the idea that the Blue Box may have a spiritual/meditational aspect to it – there may be, but I don’t think that was my intent originally (this was a long time ago) it was to introduce the idea of another space (a heterotopia goddammit) I did think of naming it Church for the Atheist but that brings too much religion and sounded a little facetious.
(It is a space with no meaning. A void. but one into which meaning can be built by a person)
The other was the material handling as a concrete thing. This sentence reminds me of the way I was treating the hazel twigs, choosing something that demands recognition, and respect, for its own condition.
1. Christopher Bedford, Dear painter…, Frieze N 145, London, March 2012 pp 100-101