Monday, 29 April 2019

Meditation (Part II)

Inspired by what I had read the day before (see previous post), I decided, yesterday, to set aside the next three consecutive Shed sessions to focus on a process of making one Möbius maquette at each session; to concentrate the mind and explore what different sculptural forms will/can emerge. (This plan has come about because of a forthcoming [enforced] absence from my Shed and I feel there is insufficient continuous time to complete one larger piece satisfactorily.)
The first step in the process is to form the Möbius plane: I begin by making a sphere (essentially the archetype of all form) - of a size that fits comfortably into the palm of my hands - simply by applying gentle steady pressure with the full palm of both hands onto an uneven lump of clay - a wonderful meditative process - which then very gradually transforms into a beautifully restful sphere. I then start gently pressing with my thumb into the centre from the two opposing sides, steadily alternating sides, forming two concaves, until the two concaves meet and a hole appears in the centre. I'm now holding a - somewhat mundane - ring-doughnut shape, or a torus in topology-speak.
From there the clay mass is gradually squeezed, constantly turning, and pressed into a rotation that flips it top to bottom, thus forming a Möbius - a MAGNIFICENT moving plane, and what makes it magnificent is that it is one continuous plane, moving round and round.
The first has become a very simple band with a slight thickening of the clay mass responding to/balancing the opposing 'crucible', the intersecting of the concave and the convex, i.e. the saddle plane or double-bent plane:



The 'crucible', where the concave and the convex intersect



The 'crucible' on the reverse side



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