Mar 17, 2013
Not that I didn’t want to put pictures in today, somehow I don’t seem to be able to upload them …qualities of materials and how they can change through the influence of temperature/time/pressure etc. Why am I drawn to some materials more than others? How can I use their qualities in my work?
Water can turn into ice over a period of time, the ice builds up and forms with gravity hanging forms. I see some of my carvings as fluid forms that have turned solid. Wax has much the same quality when it turns from liquid to solid but wax has such a different history and quality to water.Stone has gone through so many changes from liquid to solid. Cloth/string/leather a skin can be build over a form (Tottery patcher image to follow), stretching over a form showing tension and the underlying form in it’s purity, wrapping something over a form is like a ritual for me, being aware of pain and trying to bring some healing…
I am itching to get making, thoughts are flying around in my mind it is time to get them on paper and into the materials mentioned.
Mar 2, 2013
So here am I thinking about materials and their meaning, thinking about processes in materials. The question for me now is how to apply my work visually to my thoughts and research. I have plans to use wax in stone, why? Stone is a ancient material, a material we all walk on, solid and fragile simultaneously. Stone has been used as one of the first materials to give way to the impulse of humans to communicate form…Beeswax is a young material, it is soft, warm, can melt. Made with a huge amount of effort and applied in mind blowing precision it creates and protects the home and livestock of the bees. Beeswax as art material is versatile, it can be melted, shaped into a form, can create it’s own form and make gravity visible, I am only starting to understand this material. I am drawn to stone and beeswax as they are both natural materials and they come from polar opposites, which has a fascination for me. Something came to my mind over the years of working with stone and visiting quarries, human’s ripping the earth open and using the gut of it, material millions of years old, a symbol of human attitude towards nature. Bees are suffering from the exploitation we are displaying and bees are essential to our survival. Using beeswax in carved stone, the hope of a visual bridge of contradicting actions.
