The Significance of Place

This 'new opening' (see previous post), this new exploration of the rectilinear and angular dovetails with an aspect of my work that is crucial; a guiding principle in my work: the significance of place - and material (as per my post of 27 July 2014 Fundamental Principles).

I am who I am as an artist because of who I am as a person, where I work, where I live, where I've lived and worked in the past, where I grew up, my upbringing, my education, my family and friends. 

All of these influence and affect what I make because they shape and have shaped who I am.

Hence the - temporary - change from 'organic, flowing curves' to the linear and angular; given my Art Residency at Tonbridge School, as I said in my previous post.

To illustrate, some images of some of the buildings that constituted my everyday surroundings - imposing linear, angular architecture:

And my outlook from the Tunnel Gallery - straight lines and angles:

Interestingly, I made the metal wire suspended sculpture early on in my Residency - before the rectilinear had got into my bones, clearly. 

And the Tunnel Gallery itself - white, minimal, rectilinear, angular:

I wrote about the significance of place in my post of 20 July 2014 The Importance of Material and Place

(Addendum: The first video is no longer available on YouTube, but here is a BBC link: Whalebone Sculptures on the Brazilian Coast ). MAGIC!

So I find myself in a new place sculpturally, with a need to explore straight lines and angles. 
And given what I have said above, this linear urge will probably prove to be transient (so must be enjoyed and made the most of): the angular will probably wane as I re-engage fully and properly with my surroundings here - on the forest - which I have failed to do as yet because of the AWFUL weather we've been having. COLD AND VERY WET.

From Flow to Angular

As I said in my previous post, new openings emerge with the new year, and this is particularly pertinent this year as I re-engage with my work here following my Art Residency at Tonbridge School last term (click on 'Artist in Residence' under Series/Themes for all related posts). 
Having spent three months surrounded by and looking out onto angular buildings - in complete contrast to my surroundings here on the edge of the forest (Ashdown Forest) - and having become aware of a growing inward change as the Residency progressed, the straight lines and angles slowly getting into my bones, I found myself, these past two weeks, needing to find a way to scratch that itch.
Not an easy transition to make; from organic, flowing curves to the linear/rectilinear and angular. Many problems to address, as always, but the solutions here are different of course, and less intuitive for me at this stage: the thickness of each element, the evenness of each plane, the angle of the joint (in both directions), parallelity, the relationship between the lines, the relationship between the angles, that point where two elements intersect, the proportions of and relationships between the elements  ...   
I decided I would stay with my trusted method of starting off with the saddle plane, which gets the three-dimensionality going straight away. For an image of a 'saddle plane' click here saddle plane
and an explanation - the saddle plane, which is a convex inside a concave, the convex moving in one direction and the concave moving at a right angle to it (like the saddle in horseriding, or a Pringle, but more accentuated) - as per my post of 14/10/2010  
And, of course, this form stems from the 'Form Finding' premise (click on 'Form Finding' under Series/Themes for all related posts).

This is the outcome of this morning's session. Obviously the whole thing will be turned upside down in the next session - it all needs to dry out a little more before that can happen - to extend the three-dimensionality in the other direction, i.e. the side that is sitting on the board now: 

New Openings Emerge

The Christmas wind-down

And a new opening emerges ...