Sculpture Studio: December 2020

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Subtleties

In this evening's fading light I captured today's image. It expresses better than words the subtlety I am searching for in my Bare Minimum designs: a fleeting veiled glance of the figure complimented with a touch of spontaneous decoration.

The material is cotton voile and the design is hand painted with fabric dyes. No polyesters, no computerized printing techniques or graphics are involved. It's all natural, all original and non-repetitive.

Saturday, December 26, 2020

“The nude alone is well dressed.”

Photograph by surrealistic photographer Josef Breitenbach (1896 - 1984)

The sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917) claimed that the nude alone is well dressed. After trolling through thousands of images of the work of today's fashion designers, I could not agree more. Today’s designers appear to be more concerned about the style of their dresses rather than in revealing the beauty that lies beneath. No wonder that their models look so miserable.

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Snow, ice, fog, floods and storm force winds.

Photo Credit innews

The naming of storms and hurricanes used to be limited to the tropical Atlantic but more recently England has taken up the device. Storm Caroline is expected to hurdle across England this weekend bringing with it snow, ice, flooding and storm force winds.

Although there are many who perhaps feel envious of my tropical location I doubt that there are many who would relocate if given the chance. One winter, many years ago, I put this to the test. My 16 ton gaff cutter was securely anchored in an idyllic cove in the Virgin Islands. I needed to spend two months in England and came up with the idea of a swap: my boat for your house. But you know what... my advertisements in the UK press didn't bring in a single solitary response!

While my UK followers have been battling with adverse weather, I've been adding the barest minimum to my Bare Minimum fashion label. This includes more designs in hand-tied cotton net and more...or should I say less! My experiments in one-off painted dye decorations have extended to designs for bikini bottoms in cotton voile. I consider tops superfluous.

Remember, my designs are for keeping cool in the tropics, rather than keeping warm in colder climates

Friday, December 18, 2020

A blank canvas

My recent purchase of a full bolt of 100% cotton voile has enabled me to add more designs to my Bare Minimum fashion label. I have also perfected a technique of painting with dye that ensures the colours stay subtle and permanent.

The three quarter sleeve cropped top in the opening picture began as a blank canvas. I then added designs to the front and back. Being reversible, you can alternate between the two.

The semi-sheer nature of cotton voile allows the beauty of the female form to be subtlety revealed rather than shamefully concealed. If given freedom, painting with dye has the suggestive qualities of painting with watercolour.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

I was about to give up

After the disastrous Tropical Storm Erica five years ago, and then Maria, the worst Caribbean hurricane on record, three years ago, and now the Corona Pandemic, I was about to give up.

One way or the other these trials and tribulations have done their upmost to put a stop to my work. First, they deprived me of models and now, due to suppliers and shipping companies grinding to a halt, I am deprived of the fabrics I need for my fashion designs.

But yesterday, amidst the ruined and overgrown pavilion that once was the teaching studio for my life classes, a white hibiscus blossomed alongside an abandoned sculpture. I took it as a good omen. And low and behold, this morning when I begged my local fabric shop to search their warehouse yet again for white cotton voile the assistant returned clutching an entire bolt of the material. I can now go back to my sewing machine and continue my foray into fashion.

This evening, while re-reading D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow, I came across this reference to a sewing machine:

She was triumphant and happy as the darting needle danced ecstatically down a hem, drawing the stuff along under its vivid stabbing...

Surely the guardians of morality cannot have had that sentence in mind when they ordered all copies of the one of the most beautiful books in the English language to be seized and burnt at the 1915 obscenity trial.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

A small act of resistance

Focusing on the parts of women's bodies that are supposed to be hidden feels like a small act of resistance. It is part of this strange dichotomy that culture has been created for women: reveal and conceal. On one hand we are supposed to reveal enough of ourselves to be sexually attractive, but simultaneously we're expected to conceal our bodies.

(Jacqueline Secor)

The anomaly is all the more applicable when it comes to dress.

The nude figure is less sexually provocative than one that is scantily dressed. After the initial shock of the nude, the eye takes in the beauty of the body as a whole rather than being drawn to the parts tantalisingly hidden in the name of decency. If I wanted my models to look sexy, I'd dress them in a bikini and have them pose seductively, hand on hip.

Friday, December 4, 2020

Creative garb

The opening picture beats the efforts of all the world's fashion designers and catwalk models hands down. The young lady has natural poise and her garb (meaning clothing, especially of a distinctive or special kind) has texture, colour and subtlety. It puts today's lackluster fashions in the shade.

It is what I am after for my Bare Minimum fashion label. My latest experiments along that route have involved collecting seed pods from a tree that I pass on my daily walk to the river and making netting from cotton twine.

My experiments with materials and textures include the hemp scrim that I use in sculpture for reinforcing plaster casts and allowing cotton twine to fray and tangle as it may.

The picture below shows work on a similar theme that I'm envious of. Both designer and model are unknown to me so alas I cannot credit, .

I'll leave you with a 1964 live recording of the incomparable Sarah Vaughan singing Baubles, Bangles and Beads from the 1953 musical Kismet. As most of my follows were not born in 1964 is serves as an introduction to the mastery jazz we had in those days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc0mL1ro0W4

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July 22nd 2000

With my family I arrived in England five years ago. The first two years were spent working on the building and applying for Arts Council lottery funding. Alas, the Council considered figurative sculpture elitist and of no interest to the general public.

After three years our savings were spent and in desperation I began doing what I came to England to do: to work as a sculptor. In our impoverished state the odds were against us. A year passed with not a single commission and not a penny of income. Then the tide turned. If two years ago it had been predicted that my studio would today be bursting at the seams with work, I would have dismissed the notion as a complete fallacy.

Sculpture for the City of Leeds

The end result for those of us working in the visual arts is something that is capable of being seen. In the long term the success of a piece of work is, to a large degree, measured by how many people look at it. But in the beginning the work cannot be seen by anyone on the outside. It exists only in the mind's eye of the artist. That is where the figures for Leeds have been for the last three months. During that period there hasn't been a day - or night - when I haven't worked upon them. I've moved them through every position imaginable: standing, sitting, leaning, squatting, huddled together, set apart. I've added figures and switched males for females. My couple - for that's what I finished up with - then gave birth to a child. The toddler peeps at the Frenchman playing boules from behind his/her mother's skirt. The work has been created and torn apart a hundred times. But as yet I haven't set down anything on paper or built up anything in clay. My successes and failures have gone unseen. And as much as I want to open up the creative process through these diary pages, the first stage is too elusive be put into words.

Trina's Portrait

"Have you nearly finished, my neck aches". After five minutes Trina, my youngest daughter, has had enough of modelling. Actually her impatience works to my advantage. I know I have to work fast, and working without a second to spare usually produces my best work. I started today's session started by wiping out half a day's work. I had previously added her hair but the result didn't please me. I had invented a head of hair and not paid close enough attention to the real head of hair. The first attempt looked like something out of a hairdresser's window. Maybe that is why Trina liked it the best!

So much to learn

In this day and age there is little in the way of guidance for aspiring sculptors. There are no schools that teach the disciplines as fully as they were taught a hundred years ago, there are few books and precious few masters alive to train the next generation. One must learn as best one can. Ton after ton of clay must pass through the sculptor's hands and hour upon hour must be spent working from the live model. It isn't easy and a lifetime isn't long enough to learn all that must be learnt. There is nothing more difficult to model convincingly than the human hand. If the hand is done well the observer doesn't stop to count the fingers.

Church Window Layout

In between modelling sessions I have been drawing the millennium church window full size. This will help me to come to terms with the daunting scale of depicting Christ Triumphant. My Christ Triumphant unleashing a flock of doves has been rejected. The church has requested that I keep to the more familiar vision of Christ with arms beckoning. At least my model will be pleased that he hasn't to contort himself into that pose anymore. Michelangelo had his fair share of rejections from Church Councils. Once, in an attempt to please, he went so far as to devise a statue that incorporated a barber's shop within the figure’s lower extremities and - as a master-stroke - put a chimney coming out of its head!

Mould Divisions

Three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles are nothing new: sculptors have been doing them for hundreds of years. But this is no game. The problem is mind boggling. Somehow, the three standing figures have to be divided into sections of a mould. The seams are made with lengths of brass shim that are pressed into the clay of the figures. Eventually the clay will be covered with plaster to form what is called a waste mould. At the moment this may sound very confusing but over the next couple of months you will learn a lot about the process. This is the most complex mould that I have ever made and one to test my ingenuity. I was awake thinking about it at three o'clock this morning. If I get it wrong the figures will be entombed like a mummy. As I work I imagine the skilled moulders of earlier times critically looking down on me and laying bets on the outcome of my work.

30th June 2000

I've managed to dodge colds all winter. Just my luck that I get one now! This I could have done without. Maybe if I worked in advertising or accountancy I'd have taken the day off and stayed in bed, but in this line of work you don't even think of it. The molds have to be at the foundry in two weeks and at the foundry they will be. The picture shows Denise - on her one day off from college - chipping away at the waste mould of Samantha. In the background Richard, my assistant, is working on the mold for the Bond Court figures.

4th July 2000

So much depends on the model, and with models I have always been fortunate. Elizabeth has dedicated herself to the task and that dedication shines through in the finished work. The pose has been painfully difficult but she's never complained. Furthermore, she's fitted the modelling in between moving house, looking after her family and driving the truck for her husband’s business. She always shown up on time and has never missed a session. Thanks Elizabeth. In turn I've given my best. It's all I can do.

Portrait Demonstration - Megan

For the Allen Gallery I did two demonstration portrait sessions before a live audience and television. Two models on consecutive days, starting at ten in the morning and finishing at four in the afternoon with an hour for lunch. The models, Megan and Jag, were the winners of a primary school art competition. Their prize was a portrait session. A portrait from start to finish in no more than five hours, before an inquisitive audience and the press, is a tall order. I doubt if there are many sculptors that would dare to take it on. I did and here are the results. Thanks Megan and Jag, for making it possible.

Patina

It seems that a successful patina, like a good watercolour, is the result of a happy accident. On my fourth attempt Xander's bust turned out to perfection. It in fact put Trina's in the shade and gave me a hard act to follow on the torso. I can well imagine that, if I keep at it, in twenty years I'll be experienced enough to understand every subtle shade of the business. Just like the episode of Pooter painting the bath in "The Diary of a Nobody" I got quite carried away with applying patinas. Switching from bronze to the plaster I gave Elizabeth’s figure a coat of burnt umber.

Henry Moor Institute

I got quite a shock today on visiting the current exhibition at the Henry Moor Institute in Leeds. The gallery was actually thronged with real people. By real people, I mean those you'd expect to see in everyday life. Usually the only sign of human life is the ever present black shirt attendants. The exhibition of portrait busts is aptly titled "Return to Life". I hope that the attendance figures don't scare off the institute from ever doing such a show again. Being popular to the masses is not exactly in their remit. It would have been nice to have included a photograph so as to encourage even more of the public at large to visit this excellent presentation. I asked a black-shirt but was told that photography is strictly forbidden.

A Ray of West Indian Sunshine

On Saturday I attended a Postgraduate Seminar on Portraiture at the Henry Moore Institute. Even at its most informal, events at the Institute are lodged at the higher end of the scholastic scale. As such its presentations are totally at odds with my premise that: with sculpture, as with sex, intellectual thought only screws things up. For this particular seminar it was even doubtful if I would be allowed in. As with many working sculptors, my academic education amounts to no more than secondary modern school. But Saturday turned out to be a rare and rewarding day. To find a West Indian in the audience is a rarity, even rarer to find that - my God - she's one of the presenters! Charmaine Nelson brought a wonderful ray of Jamaican sunshine into a lecture room that normally has the feel of an Icelandic family mausoleum. Her paper "White Marble, Black Bodies and the Fear of the Invisible Negro: Signifying Blackness in mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassical Sculpture" wonderfully linked with all that I have been working for over the years in my adopted Caribbean. Charmaine, for the first time in five years of lectures, you made me miss my train home. Thanks!

At a fleeting glance

Waldemar Januszczak, art critic for the Sunday Times, wrote recently about painting quickly. Both as painter and sculptor, the faster I work the better. What is seen at a glance has to be captured in a moment. A climax cannot be sustained forever. But as Januszczat says: "Painting quickly is still seen in academic circles as a threat to civilization. Those artists who appear to breeze in and do it without a proper amount of effort still seem to us to be breaking all the rules. With other art forms the ability to work quickly is recognised as a sign of genius but a quick painter remains (alas) a slap happy painter." Alas, a slap-happy painter and sculptor I remain. This little sketch was completed on the run in Grenada's market place.