Let there be life

       

The sculpture based on the sketch I posted two days ago has begun to show the first signs of life. By making the figure quarter life-size I can work rapidly. I began work after breakfast and by mid-day the clay was already taking shape. Now that I have created life the challenge will be keep the figure alive. The secret is to suggest rather than define detail. 

My second challenge, due to the current Corona Virus restrictions, will be to complete the figure without reference to a live model. The human figure is the most complex structure in all creation - and the most beautiful. Without the model I cannot second guess the subtle changes that occur from one position to the next.

Below is the aluminium wire armature on which I formed the clay. To give you an idea of scale, the base plate measures 7" x 9".

My followers are increasing by leaps and bounds

Up to the advent of the Corona Virus my regular followers were artists and art students. Now my audience has increased dramatically in terms of general interest, indicating that art has therapeutic role to play in these difficult times. Some newcomers are catching up by delving back into the archives of this blog and others are content to follow my daily updates. Whichever way, welcome to my way of seeing and depicting beauty that many never give a second glance to.

Today's opening picture is a case in point. It shows the odds and ends of handmade paper left over from my recent sculptures. These I have now recycled into more paper for more sculptures. With sculpture in mind, rather than drawing or print making, I have left the sheets to dry without restraint and to curl just as leaves do when they fall from the tree.

I started notesforartstudents.blogspot.com years ago specifically for CXC Visual Art students in Dominica. At that time my followers were few and far between. But thanks to the Corona Virus it is also beginning to attract a world-wide audience. Hence, its present resurrection.

My models are in lock-down

Corona Virus restrictions mean that all of my models, whether here in Dominica or elsewhere in the world, are currently in lock-down. However, having spent a lifetime working from the live model and having the results of my labours preserved in thousands of paintings and sketches, I can carry on regardless. 

This painting is one that I made recently as a preliminary sketch for a piece of sculpture. Along with other sketches on a similar theme - some dating back over thirty years - I am now prepared the clay in readiness for putting the idea into practice.

With the nude figure there's nothing new under the sun. The sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) found inspiration for the nude in dance. Had yoga been more widely practiced in his day I am sure many of the poses, such as the one shown in my sketch, would have featured in his work.

Kneeling Nude. Auguste Rodin

Take the kinks out of your mind, not your hair!

Take the kinks out of your mind, not your hair. (Marcus Garvey).

Dominica is doing quite well in battling with the Corona Virus and it seems that under our current State of Emergency some restrictions may soon be relaxed. But just when I thought the Afro might make a comeback it seems that we may soon see the re-opening of hair salons, manicure and pedicure parlors and barbershops.

As a reminder to the fashion conscious, the Afro epitomized the 1960's black is beautiful movement. It represented a celebration of black beauty and a repudiation of foreign beauty standards. The style is unique to those of African descent and complements the facial features far better than shaved heads and straightened hair.

As a painter and sculptor, I remain committed to depicting the all-natural God given beauty of the Afro-Caribbean...Afro, Cane/Corn-row, Braids, Bantu knots and all.

The end of one love affair and the beginning of another.

From the 1970's and through the 1980's my love affair was with the islands. But my lover was soon seduced by others who saw her beaches, landscapes and townscapes as Caribbean real estate ripe for development. 

The Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman (1958 -1991) expresses the impending change in her poem To Virgin Gorda.

They will come
with tools and machines.
They will bring to light your secret places,
They will demand your mysteries,
They will destroy,
Build up.
They will dilute your treasures
and rob you of your chastity.
They will adorn you like ancient Jezebel. 

In those days my studio was wooden shack alongside an idyllic cove. The above painting was made from the beach below my studio. The ruined house on the headland was my retreat and the painting below was made in its overgrown grounds.

The house is now a palatial residence and I no longer have the freedom to wander through its grounds, nor can my boat lie in the secluded anchorage, for the idyllic cove is now a crowded marina.

But as one love affair ended, another began. 

The hundreds of paintings and scores of sculptures in my series " Daughters of the Caribbean Sun" owe their origin to another of Sheila's poems, which begins:

I am a daughter of the Caribbean Sun
Grown out of the soil of the Virgin Isles.
Molded by the salt of coral filled seas
and smoothed by the touch of the Trade Winds.

Thank you Sheila for being my mentor, muse and true friend. 

   

Set me free!

It's not me that's begging to be set free - I accomplished that sixty years ago - but the medium I am working with. The life-size sculptures that I am creating from fiber-rich handmade paper are not meant to imitate those made from bronze, plaster or marble. The material has an identity of its own and it would be pointless trying to make it conform to something it is not. It can best expressive its uniqueness when allowed to be itself.

The opening picture shows the front view of my most recent sculpture. It was molded on the plaster life-cast shown at the end my recent post Growing Old and Working My Way Up From The Bottom. 

The picture below shows the reverse side of the finished sculpture. This illustrates the possibilities of "two sides to the coin", something that cannot be achieved in other sculptural media.

If we now look in detail at the colours and textures the dramatic possibilities become apparent.

The finished sculpture measures 22" x 12" x 5" and weighs less than two ounces. In places it is almost transparent but its apparent fragility belies its strength and permanence. Remember, the fibers within the stem of a banana plant are also used to reinforce car tires! 

I now need to begin making paper specifically with sculpture in mind. For fine art papers I strive for sheets of an even thickness and for them dry flat. If left alone my handmade paper curls as it dries, just as an autumn leaf curls when it has fallen from the tree.

Perhaps the paper is also begging to be set free. 

Yesterdays

This sketch of Alice dates back to the early 1990's and the year that she spent as my model and studio assistant. Good studio assistants are as rare as good models and Alice excelled in both roles. As a model she had classical Afro-Caribbean features and as my assistant she had exceptional eye to hand coordination. The photograph shows her preparing the mold division of the portrait bust that I made of her. She was my very first Daughter of the Caribbean Sun. 

The chances are that this evocative recording of Yesterdays by Billy Holiday was playing softly in the background when the photograph was taken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVKyUJVjZf8

Mission Accomplished

Perhaps the title of today's post should read "Missions Accomplished" with emphasis on the plural. 

Three years ago when I began my experiments in making handmade paper from Dominica's abundant natural resources my objective was distinctive art papers. I now have hundreds of different papers in all sizes, colours and textures. Using the same paper for sculpture never entered my mind until by chance I used it as the surface finish on a dress maker's mannequin.

The pictures below are taken from my blog and follow the story from there. All the pieces are life-size.

My first attempt at applying different papers to a plaster mold. (2nd February)

Banana paper cast into a silicon rubber mold. (15th February)

A fine textured banana paper built up on a clay mold. (28th February)

Dark banana paper using a plaster life-cast as the mold. (3rd March)

My first attempt at a paper sculpture in the round from a clay mold. (9th April)

My second torso in the round nearing completion. (18th April)

What you are seeing is something very different to paper mache, modeling in paper pulp, collage or cut and paste paper assemblies. The technique come closer to the processes involved in casting a sculpture in plaster and bronze. Similar skills are involved with the advantage that the raw material grows for free just outside my studio door. Furthermore, I am in control of the work in progress, from start to finish. In terms of permanence, the resulting sculpture is as permanent as any other art work on paper - and more so, as the surface can be protected against damp and humidity. The key ingredient is the amazing strength of handmade paper. The banana plant stem contains one of strongest natural fibers known to man. Incidentally, my second life-size torso weighs in at 8 ounces (227 grams). 

The possibilities are endless, so it is not so much mission accomplished but rather a creative process that has only just begun. I now need to give the material full reign to its sculptural possibilities and in doing so to discover new ways of depicting the beauty of the nude figure. 

Working to within a hair's breadth

Here she is...my second torso ready to be released from its clay form. This time around I have given her the benefit of two different shades of banana paper. I was tempted to add a third but as a painter I have learnt, to add more is to say less. 

My first torso involved piecing together a ten piece jigsaw puzzle. With my second torso I have to reduce the pieces to four and kept the front as one piece. In doing so the clay original is destroyed, just the same as it would be in making a plaster waste mold. The advantage is that once I have carefully removed one section I can then release the remaining segments by excavating the clay. This helps to prevent distortion. It also forces me move on and explore new subjects. 

I am now busy assembling the separate pieces.The fibers within the paper allow me to align one to the other, to within a hair's breadth. As in all art forms, considerable labour and skill goes into achieving what in the end appears to be the work of an inspirational moment.  

Growing old and working my way up from the bottom

It has been said that one of the first signs of old age is when you bend down to tie your lace and wonder what else you can do while you're down there.

I am now working on my second attempt of the torso and hoping to overcome the problems I encountered on first version. The clay was left intact after Mk 1 but I have now modified it to accentuate the contours. This time around I am building up the surface with thinner layers. On both torsos I have worked from the bottom up and getting down to work on the lower sections - layer by layer, piece by piece - involves the equivalent of hundreds of exercise squats. As when tying my shoe laces, I cannot think what else I can do while I'm down there.  

On the subject of old age in relation to art, I have recently re-read two of my books on the subject: one by Kenneth Clark and the other by Philip Sohm. Both are titled The Artist Grows Old. What I consider to be the worth of a book can be judged by the sentences I have highlighted and the notes I have made in the margins. Philip Sohm's glossy 222 pages are devoid of both whereas Kenneth Clark's plain 30 pages has them in profusion. 

A quote from Kenneth Clark's book that I can well relate to reads:
I haven't long to wait. I shall say what I like, and as forcefully as possible.

Both authors have taken the great names in art as their subject matter. However, I believe it is often the lesser known artists that battle on and find their feet in old age. 

On the subject of bottoms, here is another from my collection that may lend itself to being translated from plaster to paper.

. 

How it all began

The "About the Artist" in the right sidebar of this blog doesn't say it all, there's just not the space. 

It all began in 1967 when I gave up the security of the engineer's drawing office and bought the Yorkshire Keel Barge shown in the photographs. After a year spent converting her from carrying cargoes of coal to carrying a family of three, we sailed to the French Canals. 

Having freed myself of a mortgage and nine to five job I declared myself an artist on the pavements of France. My wife Norma and two year old daughter Diana shared those precarious days. For all its hardships, it was an idyllic lifestyle. My sketches were the songs for our supper and when we had exhausted the possibilities of one location, we sailed on to the next.   

As in Luke Kelly's song Thirty-foot Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yX6Ci-rZck) the days of the traveler are alas over.

There's a by-law to say you must be on your way and another to say you can't wander.

Below is one of my paintings from those early days that nicely ties in with this theme.

Lessons learnt in piecing it all together

The three dimensional torso jigsaw puzzle that I left you with ten days ago has now been put together. From the beginning the object was not so much to create a work of art but to see if a paper sculpture could be created in the round from a clay master. It worked but many lessons have been learnt in the process. The key ones being:

1. To keep all the laminates thin rather than adding heavy laminates. A heavy laminate does not add strength but it does cause distortion.
2. To keep the overlaps on each layer as narrow as possible so as to keep the final form a constant thickness. 
3. To keep the joining tapes thin so as not to add noticeable thickness along the seams. Handmade paper depends on fibers for strength.
4. Use narrow strips for the concave areas and undercuts so as to avoid the paper pulling taught and bridging over the section as it dries.  

The completed torso is extremely strong - you can't break it - and yet it weighs only 1 lb (one pound). In comparison the same torso in plaster would weigh over 120 lbs and in bronze 350 lbs. I will have more to say about comparisons in terms of cost and permanence, etc. in a future post.

The challenge now is to explore the creative potential of handmade paper as a sculptural material: freedom of form, texture and colour, rather then try to make this unique material conform to something it is not.

I have used a slender aluminium rod as a support.

Too much green and literary linkages.

Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890. Her literary masterpiece Wild Sargasso Sea is set in Jamaica but the scenes relate directly to the countryside that surrounds my studio.

Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near.

Jean Rhys's award winning novel was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. As one critic wrote:

Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th century.

Whereas in recent years, from a painterly point of view, I have been surrounded by too much green, my earlier life was spent in the somber tones of Charlotte Bronte's countryside. 

My painting of Marsh Hall was made on a visit "home" from the Caribbean on a bleak November day in 1992. The hall is located in the village of Northowram. The Bronte's family's home was only a few miles away and Charlotte's sister, Emily Bronte, taught at Law Hill School in the nearby village of Southowram.

Although Charlotte Bronte never visited Dominica, Jean Rhys went to live in England at the age of 16. She began work as a chorus girl for a travelling theater company and one of the towns they played in was Halifax - just two miles away from the scenes of my childhood. 

In memory of Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

A hundred years ago the world was recovering from the Spanish Flue. Like the Corona Virus it was was a deadly pandemic that lasted from January 1918 to December 1920 and infected a quarter of the world's population. One of the victims was the twenty-eight year old Austrian painter Egon Schiele. Since his death no other artist has been able to equal his mastery of colour, brevity and foreshortening. He worked mainly in gouache and watercolour and his powerful female nudes are unashamedly erotic. Full recognition was not accorded to his work until the 1950's. 

Champagne corks and work in progress

The champagne corks are reminders of celebrations that marked the sale of the 1,500 copy of my book Virgin Island Sketches along with sales of my paintings.  That was twenty-five years ago aboard my gaff cutter Born Free anchored off Petit St. Vincent in the Grenadines. Today the corks are being used to temporary help pin together segments of my life-size paper torso.

The opening picture shows the torso still attached to the clay figure. In order to separate one from the other we go back to the age old techniques of plaster casting where the cast is divided and built up again in pieces. Hence the terms, "waste" and  "piece mold".  

I had hopes of keeping to just two pieces: front and back. But I hadn't bargained for the strong suction that the layers of paper create. To avoid distortion I finished up with ten pieces and a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

It is in assembling these pieces that my champagne corks came in useful. They help to hold the seams in place while I glue them together with strips of - you guessed - handmade paper.  

Corona Confinement

Due to being well passed the sell by date of seventy, the Corona Virus has me confined to my studio and workshops. But what better place for solitary confinement. I can work without the distraction of twice weekly shopping trips and engineering emergencies. My daily bathe and retreat to the river continues uninterrupted. 

Today's picture shows the third layer of handmade banana paper being applied to my life-size torso in the round. The forth and final layer will give an incredibly strong shell thickness of 1/16".

A different kettle of fish

For the last twenty years I've been saying that if sculptors of the past, from Michelangelo to Rodin, visited my studio they would recognized every process, from clay, to plaster, to wax to bronze: in 500 years nothing has changed. 

But what I am working on now is a different kettle of fish. My experiments of taking an impressing from the initial clay sketch in handmade paper have now progressed from high-relief to a torso in the round. The first photograph shows the life-size torso in clay and the second the thin film of polythene to which the paper will be applied. The tie from the sash clamp is to prevent the torso from leaning to far. The body weight in clay is far more than the body weight in life and the metal supporting armature has its work cut out to prevent it from toppling over. 

I have based this experimental torso on the full figure of Geneen that you can see in the background but simplified to prevent deep undercuts. 

Incidentally, this isn't the first time that my life-size clay figures, regardless of supporting metal armatures, have taken on more than the intended lean. Perhaps Rodin's controversial leaning figure of Balzac initially came about by accident rather than intent.

Rodin's monument to Balzac (1893) 

Social Distancing in the Arts

For those of us that toil upon the forge of art, physical social distancing has always been part and parcel of our work. It has been so for centuries before the corona virus and it will remain so for centuries after. We work in isolation. 

It is an aspect of the visual arts that art colleges overlook; the master/apprentice relationship came closer to the mark. While some artists yearn for an environment of like minds, art communes do not breed artists. Creative minds are not alike. The same applies to poets and writers.

Working as a painter and sculptor on a small island in the Caribbean adds to the isolation. With the exception of working from the model, I go days without seeing a soul. Even the occasional one and a half hour modelling session hardly qualifies as social intercourse. For the most part we work in silence and at a distance of eight feet between the model's turntable and the work in progress. 

So while the rest of the world struggles to adapt to social distancing, for me it is what I have always known. I am told that even as a child I always wanted the beach to myself. This is not to say that I don't welcome visitors. I do with open arms. But all the better if they've arranged their visit beforehand so that I can put time aside for them. 

The photographs were taken from my studio this morning: one looking towards the solitary Caribbean Sea and the other looking down to the river and my solitary bathing pool. 

A ray of hope

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Over the years I have become wary of art societies and associations, and especially group visits from such. Generally I have found that members are content in doing what they do and the last thing they want is a wake up call from outside their ranks. 

This "mutual admiration society" approach is all the more prevalent within the thousands of on-line groups. The feed back is usually couched in terms of:  Very Nice...Amazing...So Beautiful...How Lovely...Wonderful...So Sweet. My posts dated September 17th and 21st 2019 delve deeper into this "say something nice" approach.

https://sculpturestudiodominica.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-art.html
https://sculpturestudiodominica.blogspot.com/2019/09/state-of-art-part-two-photocopies.html

From the above you can understand that I was dubious about accepting a request for a studio visit from a local group of artists, even though I know some of their members as good friends. But I am so glad that I invited them along yesterday afternoon, for within their membership lies a ray of hope. They were ready to accept a "different way of seeing" and willing to break out of the painterly comfort zone. 

You can find out more about them at: Waitukubuli Artist Association

I have illustrated this post with the work of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Like many artists before and after, he had a different and controversial way of seeing. The opening pastel and the closing watercolour painting were made after the famous court trial - a case that he fought in defense of his work - had left him bankrupt. They illustrate to perfection how a little can say a lot: detail is superfluous.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler