A stressful week battling with materials.

The progression of an artwork –  starts with the ephemeral conception of an idea but as that idea grows all the nitty gritty of how this will be realised comes into play. It is a messy time. I don’t like relying on other people for things but so often you have to – to get things cut to size, printed etc

I bought basic plywood for ‘Incidence’ as it was lighter than MDF but the surface took a lot of work to get it smooth & it is pretty warped so I have had to screw batons along the back to keep it straight for printing hopefully the frame that Pete is going to make will sort this problem. Oh to be able to ring John Jones and request a prepared surface.

Hamar Acrylic denied all knowledge of having cut a piece of perspex to size for me before from a drawing and now demanded vector line files.  I thought I had impressed myself on Monday – downloading the free software Inkscape and creating some .svg files which were duly despatched but I received a perfunctory email on Tuesday saying they were unable to use these files.  So a big Thank You to the guy at Ochre who gave me some tips on creating files in Illustrator which I hadn’t used before.  A new set of files were despatched on Wednesday & these were approved thank god – had already been reduced to waking at 4am thrashing about from a nightmare involving giant translucent spider-crabs. Felt sick with worry the perspex pieces were going to be the wrong size, shape, colour, thickness and £42 each. When I had ordered one piece it was £25 yet for 5 I had been quoted £42 – no explanation & I did query it but I collected them on Friday & they are fine. Not brave enough to check at the desk it wasn’t until I was on the tube back home I dared to get them out and measure up. Guess I paid for someone to convert the file to vector for me last time – & I just thought the perspex was v.expensive. Feel so at the mercy.

Getting paper stencils printed is also very stressful as only one guy at the print shop can get it right & until I see he is there it is very tense. I still have to go through the process of explaining to the other guy what I want who says I can’t have that until the guy who can print them to size takes over eventually. Anyway today I asked the guy who can if he is there every day because I worry if he isn’t & he said he would train the other guy to do it. We shall see.

First two background layers are now printed & I have the Perspex shards

I popped into A.P. Fitzpatrick on Friday & treated myself to some pearlescent mica and magic effect pigment & light interference pigment – some materials are pure indulgence..

The plan is to try them on the silhouettes of children amongst the forest in ‘Incidence’ but it may be too much. I want the shadows to be very subtle – hardly there.

‘Incidence’ – work reflecting on the loss of childhood is influenced by the discovery that the first burial recorded at the Crypt of St. Pancras was of a 12 year old girl in 1822. This was the same year that Charles Lamb, wistful for what might have been, wrote his essay ‘Dream Children’ which later inspired Elgar to write a musical work nostalgic for the lost wonder of youth.

Kevin seemed upset to hear that during the Robert Glaspar experiment at the Barbican Monday evening I had come up with some ideas for the imagery for ‘Syndrome’. He thought I couldn’t have been paying attention but I think it was the sort of music that lets your mind relax & open up. I’ve been rushing about so much dealing with practicalities that it’s hard to let ideas bubble up to the surface. So this was a good opportunity & I did like the band especially Robert himself.

I was thinking about the whole doppelgänger idea and phobia of mirrors. I could photograph myself in ordinary situations. at the supermarket, getting my hair cut, sleeping etc and there at my side is the supernatural sort of zombie me – fear constantly at my shoulder. Anyway it is an idea to think about some more. Mirrors seem to be a theme this week. The walk into the park on Wednesday for the event Babel had lots of mirrors placed amongst the trees. I liked this part – little tableau & the anticipation of something about to happen. It was an ambitious project. A lot of scaffolding.

Then the re-title email this week seemed apposite about “BLACK MIRROR” Dominic Shepherd & John Stark at AMBACHER CONTEMPORARY.

Lizzie Cannon being interviewed about her amazing pavement drawing with embroidery on Friday at the Private View of Topographic Translation: Iteration 2′.

The show is of four artists whose works emanate from the translation and interpretation of their physical environments. Poppy Pitt’s wonderful topographic cast bodyscapes can be seen on the right.

Saturday was spent on a basic woodwork course.  Learnt some good tips – just simple stuff but really useful & I also now  have a whole set of handtools that are sharp. I also learnt how feeble my muscles are,

and I have a shopping list of power tools I MUST have.

The most striking thing about Einstein on the Beach is how brightly the stage is lit. Luckily all the performers have perfect skin. There is a recurring spoken motif ‘fresh and clean’ which sums it up. The movements, diction and articulation of the performers is extraordinary – perfectly fresh & clean. The voices are haunting, weaving a texture of sound from repeated phrases.

Lucinda Childs – the choreographer talks about experiencing time in a different way – expanding the moment. This means you are left with a strong visual memory of each tableau – freeze framing each moment and repeating it.

You could see Robert Wilson’s stamp on the production, the startled expression to audience hands raised mouth open that were seen a lot in The Life and Death of Marina Abromovich. Maybe the wonderful and surprising little moments of humour were his too. Many references were baffling but memorable so maybe one day the light will be shed on these too.

angle of incidence. n. The angle formed by a ray incident on a surface and a perpendicular to the surface at the point of incidence.

Spent most part of the day deciding on the angles and positioning for the shafts of light (live edge Perspex) that will protrude from the plywood base in ‘Incidence’

Pete has very kindly routed the slots for me and has also offered to help with making the frame – could I have better neighbours.

Every spare moment this week has been spent on the images for the screen stencils for the forest scene.

‘Subluminal’  – ( which I interpret as under the sun) actually means light waves travelling slightly slower than the speed of light due to interference of some kind

I like this – the interference – something unseen

So ‘Incidence’ is looking again at that god moment – when the light suddenly breaks through the cloud and pierces some dark corner

A spiritual moment.

Ideas for ‘Syndrome’

I have been reading about Phobias but the book I chose by Heather Buchanan and Neil Coulson hasn’t been very illuminating. There is a lot of very dry stuff about diagnosis, classification and treatment but doesn’t offer much insight into the really interesting stuff about why such irrational fears occur. No mention of hypnotherapy either.

Spectrophobia & Catoptrophobia – the fear of mirrors & one’s own reflection. The fear may be of seeing something supernatural in the mirror – an apparition or not having a reflection or of the mirror being a gateway to another world & something coming out of the mirror or feeling watched by something from the mirror. To me this idea connects with the fear of seeing one’s own doppelgänger (supernatural double) as an omen of death.

New work planned in the series about overlaying reality with aspiration for the exotic inspired by the evocative names given to the prosaic caravan.

An image is printed with sublimation dyes onto polyester and I then cut a line drawing into it with a soldering iron as in ‘Calypso Wanderer’ which is going to be shown at Bearspace in August 2012.

I went out in search of caravans all around Berrylands which I thought would be prime caravan hunting ground but I only found one.

  The make is Avondale and the model is Rialto so I am planning to use these locations to source the imagery for this piece.

Unfortunately not by actually going to Avondale Arizona & The Rialto Bridge.

Other Studio work in progress

I have invested in an A3 scanner – it hasn’t arrived yet. It was a used one for £80 so I hope it does work. I want to scan some of my collographs and transfer them to polyester to cut into.

Added some more layers of ink to this piece, sanding and wiping off along the way also printed onto paper with sublimation dyes and transferred onto organza as a final layer to be cut on top

Also transferred some onto polyester

  In this process the image is reversed so these I will cut this over a new image.

That was the end of playtime at Ochre as I have worked out how much I have to do to create work for Surface and Illumini and how long I have to do it. Taking into account the available open access days for making screens and the upcoming Open Studio Exhibition in June things suddenly look very tight.

I am now into serious making mode. Firstly I have to get all the stencils made for ‘Incidence’ and get the plywood cut and the slots for the Perspex sunbeams routed.

My wonderful neighbours are test cutting a slot for me.

Back from a week in Cirali where I took multiple photos around the sun dappled ruins of Olympos with a view to using these when constructing my images for ‘Incidence’ the new work I am planning for Surface II at The Crypt Gallery in July.

While away I read The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale which was a very moving novel set between the first world war and present day. Amongst many other issues about morality, guilt & belief it discusses the idea of religious visions which I found fascinating and relevent to my thoughts on the new work ‘Syndrome’ I am planning for the Illumini exhibition in September. The central character’s belief is that a vision such as seeing an angel or apparition will be caused by some physical phenomenon, a visual aberration caused by light refraction or a hallucination caused under physical duress of some kind such as heat stroke and dehydration.  He is looking for a scientific explanation much as Charles Dickens’ Scrooge claims the ghost of Jacob Marley must be ‘an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato’.

The work ‘Syndrome’ will be an installation exploring the inner recesses of the mind. The theme this year for Illumini is Dickensian Hauntings and so I am looking at Dickens interest in hypnotherapy.

The box is often used as an analogy to explain a closed space in the mind where secrets and fears are stored. In hypnotherapy the box can be suggested as a place to contain and therefore control unwelcome thoughts and overwhelming emotions.

Dickens passion was the stimulation and nurturing of the imagination, to retain a childlike wonder in the world throughout life. As a small boy he experienced the frisson of fear from the grotesque and macabre tales his nursemaid delighted in telling him. Stories from the Arabian Nights with their supernatural imagery were also a big influence on his understanding of the power of the mind to create all sorts of fancies. He was naturally drawn to mesmerism (a precursor to hypnotherapy) when the craze arrived in Britain in the 19^th Century and learnt the technique himself. Dickens was able to alleviate the physical manifestations of his patients anxieties through mesmeric techniques and became interested in the underlying causes of his patients illness, focusing on the dreams, hallucinations and phantoms they described.  Dickens recognition of the power of the mind meant he remained sceptical to the fervent upsurge of belief in the paranormal, spiritualism and the occult prevalent at the time. He would attempt to explain such supernatural experiences as being a drama of the self, wholly invoked by an imagination stimulated by present sensations interwoven with past memories and future apprehensions.

Kevin passed on to me an article in Wired Magazine March 2012

The God Complex / by Chris Nashawaty / pg. 112

Each year, 50 to 100 visitors to Jerusalem are overcome by a psychiatric phenomenon so intense that in extreme cases, they become convinced they are Jesus Christ. Those affected by what’s known as Jerusalem syndrome believe they are setting the stage for the Messiah’s return; many deliver sermons proclaiming that redemption is at hand. Chris Nashawaty talks to one of the world’s leading experts on this peculiar form of madness to find out whether people are just nuts or if the city holds a strange power.

Other syndromes mentioned in this article are Stendhal syndrome in which visitors to Florence are overwhelmed by powerful works of art and Paris syndrome which is characterised by acute delusions.

The seduction of place, the interweaving of past and present, a collapse of time = psychological disorientation.

Visited the Brains Mind as Matter exhibition at The Wellcome Trust. Looking at the brain as an organ it is so extraordinary how this lump of grey stuff can do such amazing things.

Went to see Jeremy Deller at the Hayward. What a great guy, a gentle humour and a genuine interest in other people. A facilitator.

Reminded me a bit of Louis Theroux – searching out the slightly oddball character but then portraying them with love not cynicism.

Studio work in progress

‘Dream Pony’ lino cut done on master class workshop at Ochre Print Studios with Chris Pig. This is hand printed on japanese paper with a burin.

Loss of childhood – crossover from innocence into a more threatening environment

Collograph plates and prints – working title ‘No Ball Games’  I am thinking of transferring this image onto polyester with a view to incising into it.

Also of cutting a tree/plant or maybe a dream pony!  some fantasy anyway in polyester onto print itself.

Using screens from ‘Subluminal’ work I am testing layering print on plywood and sanding away to reveal colours underneath as these are techniques I may use when making ‘Incidence’ to give a more ethereal look to the woodland, the shadows within.

Hosepipe ban means printing at home makes me feel like a criminal  – hosing off my screens in the garden so am using the Ochre studio much more

Hoping to get a blue live edge perspex for an ‘under the moonlight’

I am also enjoying reading The genius of Dickens by Michael Slater

Dickens strongly believed that Fancy had the power to compensate for disappointment in life.

I am hoping to use this new space much like I use my sketchbook and visual diary. To try out and work through ideas about my work and make a note of influences .

I am feeling very positive about 2012 with some good shows lined up and the opportunity to make new work.