04 / Materials

21/10/22

I think that really getting specific about the materiality of my work will ground my practice a lot. As right now the experimentation I’ve been doing has been concept-lead & (heavily) mixed media.

I made a mood board of all the natural materials that first came to mind. I’ve already been using cotton rag paper, which I really like due to the rough edges, but I’d like to get hold of some non-dyed sheets.

I placed an order on Etsy for hessian and cotton scrim & in the meantime decided to spend the afternoon in the ceramics studio to re-introduce myself to clay. I experimented with an idea I had for a key escutcheon: no edges, just free flowing and disappearing into tendrils climbing over whatever ancient door it belongs too. (Though I haven’t watched the secret garden for years, the idea was conjured from similar subconscious imagery… Perhaps actually from Studio Ghibli’s Howls Moving Castle which I’ve seen more recently.)

It was really nice to get back into the ceramics studio, there is something I find very grounding about working with clay. The tendrils of the escutcheon were very delicate and it was quite a fiddly piece to assemble. I couldn’t make it as thin/detailed as I was originally hoping, but I was happy with the final shape.

This week I also made a start on a second idea (one I’ve had since last year but never got round to making) to make an antler out of plaster. A red rope tied to it symbolising the Chinese ‘red thread of fate’ – playing with the notion of ecological uncertainty.

I was fairly happy with the outcome, although again, I feel like something is missing… I think due to the lack of context…