making a space

I’ve been pontificating for far too long over what kind of space I want to work in and how I want to work, finally I’ve just spent 3 days in the space that I currently have and did some of the things I’ve been meaning to do. It was fun.

I cleared away my table and some of the many boxes of stuff that fill the studio. I knew I wanted to make a 3-dimensional response to a collage I’d done last year and that I’d also like to make some larger clay pieces of previous samples. I decided to keep things simple and only use what I could find in the room. I suppose I then cheated straight away as the sun came out and I spent half of the first day playing with the shadows it cast into the room.

Later on I used objects to displace the clay I’d thrown into blocks. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but it’s coming from looking at canal basins and locks…places where we have taken chunks out of the ground to channel water, effectively creating sunken vessels..this links to a post I never made last year about contained water, the photos never posted are now below the clay pieces.

The second day the sun didn’t come out to play so I got on with moving furniture about to reflect the space in the collage into the room…I used previous drawings to depict the foliage and made floor rubbings to mimic the strata of rock, the window was my door and the table my water channel. It’s not so easy to show in one picture….

A small space full of angles. The third day the sun returned and I spent time photographing the shadows that came around and making a drawing.

Drawing on paper of a drawing in a space from a collage/drawing. In spite of the cramped angles I’ve relished the process of working within a space and short block of time, only wishing I’d moved the desk and boxes earlier in my relationship with this present studio. Although it might make it harder to work with paper, next time I’d like to work outside so I can add water to the object, shadow,space, drawing equation.