Starting to think about how I will develop my work through knowledge. I am aware that this is the moment to review my skills, processes and connections, as the benefit will be a well-developed Body of Work as well as the draft Practice Plan.
Exploring contexts – an exploration and investigation into a wide range of ways that artists practice as well as being a context for making and the view on the bigger art market.
Audiences and artist– I need to consider this relationship and how to develop an audience, maybe consider a local gallery or other wider spaces for showing work.
Sustaining my practice – how do I connect with the artist community, and how does a successful practice look like?
Developing a Practice Plan – identifying goals from realist and congruent viewpoints
Associated Materials – statements, CV’s, proposals, visual documentation, writing, insurance.
Studio Practice – continuing research and development of work as started in earlier Level 6 units
I ask myself daily why I work with the materials and make what I make. At the moment, I think a lot about predictability and outcomes – what I desire and what the end product is. I always go back to think about ideas for making. The fact that it is primarily a temporary idea/thing. Things/life constantly change; they transform into something new over time, and with it, they are carrying layers of past lives. I like to look at my work not as finished constructions but as looking into an ungraspable moment of transformation. I feel I explore in this space a still very blurred part where meaning and the work/ concept are at a meeting point.
I am thinking again of mycelium within ideas around interconnectivity – mycelium is like my thinking and holding on to memories; it expands and erodes in a simultaneous live act. This happens constantly revolving/evolving through degradation and regeneration. My work will continue to explore through chance, but it also implies a search to connect about being part of a living and interconnected system. My wire and woven objects are about beauty and continuity – they talk about human artistry, which seeks to connect with the non-human with whom I share this life.
I do enjoy the SYP Resource Padlet, and the pages run on OCA Learn. However, my thoughts about a practice plan feel very scattered, and I hope they will develop alongside this first part of the SYP unit.
Thougts to consider: Thinking about re-enchantment: , re-enchantment involves an act of repairing the world through wonder and suggests a new ethic that reconnects with a sense of mystery. To me, re-enchantment is to be understood in the magical sense and political and ecological sense. The philosopher Silvia Federici shares that re-enchanting the world implies ‘reconstructing our lives around and with others including animals, waters, plants’. Magic is a tool that defamiliarises the everyday. By moving away from a linear perspective and focusing on a multidimensional viewpoint, one can strive to reinvent our relationship with the reality surrounding us. Some artists invert the hierarchy between landscape and figure; others merge human figures with the animal. Some artists give free rein to the transformative power of their materials which constantly evolve. Through images and processes (art making), one counter a view that blurs the boundaries between human and non-human.
There is also a need to consider fragility and loss, but how to accept this without allowing these things, be it our history or our perception of things, that ‘thing’ to destroy us? I looked at Kintsugi, joining with gold. I did a short workshop. All things have shape – even our lives, ideas, and communities. You cannot understand kintsugi unless you understand that the spiritual permeates the physical. When a vase breaks, it is not just a ceramic object that shatters: it is our perception of it, our history with it, our relationship to it. The philosophy of wabi-sabi, an essential concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics, teaches us that beauty is found in the imperfect, the asymmetrical, and the transient. When we practise kintsugi, we do not seek to erase imperfection. Instead, we seek to cultivate it. ‘Flaws’ reveal an internal essence, a point of differentiation, an aesthetic experience that is deeper and more sublime than it once was.
There is another philosophical question in my work. It asks of me, as the human observer, from an anthropocentric gaze: How do I construct (scientific) knowledge around the deeply ingrained beliefs about the human place in nature that value the human self and devalue the surrounding contingency of (natural) objects, beings and spaces as the ‘Other.’
Research into artists I could consider
Mary Merkel Hess:
She calls her sculptural basket-like forms “landscape reports,” inspired by Iowa’s natural surroundings, dominated by billowing grass and corn fields. She uses reeds and paper to capture images of slender grasses and cultivated fields. Her continual use of the basket form symbolises nature and life as it carries and stores the earth’s bounty. I liked this idea as it links with my contextual ideas about stories and the work becoming a container for them. I looked at her artist’s statement earlier and decided to return to it for my current practice.
artist statement taken from the IOWA women artist website at: http://www.lucidplanet.com/iwa/ArtistPages/merkelhessm.php
“I make baskets using a technique that I developed, a combination of three-dimensional collage and papier mache. The vessels are made over molds. Small pieces of paper are applied with glue to the mold and allowed to dry, thus creating a paper form that is removed from its mold and further manipulated. Over the years, I have discovered many variations of this technique. I have used thin and thick papers, varied the shapes, and included paper cord, reed, or fiber in the body of the vessels. I have made interior forms for the baskets and then covered them with a “skin” of transparent paper. I make vessels because I am fascinated with form and structure. I look for inspiration in the natural world, and then allow technique to mesh with these visual ideas to create something new. I enjoy all aspects of this process: the appreciation of the world around me that suggests ideas and the search for a method of construction that allows my ideas to take shape.”
Wire works of Fiona Morley
Tininha Silva
I took the following as a screenshot from her website:
‘Her approach to weaving is instinctive and organic with no pre-plan or sketches beforehand with the hope to eliminate feelings of restriction or containment. Through her creations, Tininha manifests and recreates ecological harmony scenes as a way to address the instability of our ecosystem. She likes to work with natural materials like raffia, paper and wool to compose woven tapestries with lush textures of malleable chunks of woven sculptures that might resemble ramifications of roots, sandstone, coral reefs, barnacles, seaweed, and sea anemones. More recently, Tininha has been exploring and experimenting with creating three-dimensional multi-part pieces that allow her to work more sculpturally… and it all requires a lot of trust in the process. ‘(https://www.tininhasilva.com/profile)
Porky Hefer a local designer
First designed For Southern Guild 2009 collection.
Nests are copying the genius of the Weaver Birds. The result is a human nest to be used outside hung in a tree or inside. It is an attempt at bio mimicry but my skills are no match for the delicate touch of a master. I have explored different materials from Port Jackson alien vegetation to Kubu cane to waste materials, looking for the most sustainable and effective solution. I collaborate with experts in the various weaving techniques to achieve what I dream. Sizes vary and nests can be ordered to suit your needs. They can accommodate from 1 to 4 people.
Nests woven with recycled plastic packaging straps. developed with Leonie Vlaar and Lois Stolwijk, 2 design students from School of Arts Uitrecht that have been interning with me.
Plant fibre – such an palm fiber
Craft stalls catering to the tourist trade in Tongaland (KZN north of St Lucia and east of the Lebombo) sell a wide variety of baskets, mats and other items made of lala palm fibres. The purchase of these souvenirs is to be encouraged, as the raw material from which they are made is eminently renewable, at rates documented by Moll (1972). Moll reports that his study of lala palm in Tongaland was precipitated by a proposal to harvest the leaves commercially. This proposal foundered, evidently for a number of reasons including the prior claims of traditional users to the resource, the widely scattered trees and the then generally poor communications in the area.
The methods used should be sustainable. The young pliable leaves are harvested, with only one third of the leaf taken, so the remainder can devlop fully. They are boiled and then dried in the sun to soften them for weaving and may be coloured using natural dyes (Van Wyk & Gericke 2000).
Here one has to consider sustainablitily (https://www.fiberjournal.com/palm-based-fiber-provides-a-truly-sustainable-alternative-for-various-applications/)
Giuseppe Penone
When you work with any material, the material is leading. It is the artist’s mission to coax out the vitality and show it. I want to make you understand what creation is, the chain of thoughts and actions.
—Giuseppe Penone
In 1969 Penone created the first of his Alberi (Trees): “stripped” trees made by carving into mature timbers and removing the wood along the outer growth rings to reveal the memory of a sapling at the core of the trunk. This ongoing series has taken on various permutations as Penone refines his techniques and experiments with different sizes and installations. In 1970 he even carved an Albero in the presence of an audience, merging sculpture and performance. This same year he made the Rovesciare i propri occhi (Reversing One’s Eyes) works, in which he wore custom-made mirrored contact lenses and had himself photographed. The lenses, though they deprived the artist of his own gaze, allowed him to objectively record images, literally reflecting his surroundings.
During this period Penone also began to explore different ways of documenting his work, as well as his body’s interactions with sculpture. In the Svolgere la propria pelle (To Unroll One’s Skin) series (1970–71), he captured the intricate patterns of rock and bark, skin and hair, through frottage (taking rubbings on sheets of paper), imprints (pressing his body into surfaces), and photography. Then, with the Soffi (Breath) works (1977–), Penone attempted to translate into sculpture the ephemeral phenomenon of breath. He took photographs of light powder that he had blown into the air and translated the cloud-like forms into bronze sculptures, drawings, and vase-like constructions.
Essere fiume (To be a River, 1981) marked an important turning point in Penone’s practice. Extracting chunks of stone or marble from the source of a river, he carved them so that they resembled the smaller, smoother stones at the bottom of the riverbed, mimicking the effects of water on the rocks’ shape and size. Then, returning to an investigation of the figure, Penone began the Gesti vegetali (Vegetal Gestures) works (1982–), hollow anthropomorphic sculptures whose forms were based on single gestures or movements.