‘In My Dreams My Teeth Fall Out (Asymmetries)’ 2012. I’ve been a bit AWOL from Tumblr lately, maybe it’s because real life is kicking into a gear a little bit. Here’s a piece that is part of a larger series working with found objects. I have had the same dream for years where my teeth are quite literally the strength of shells and just flake off into my hands, so I thought I’d make life difficult for myself by making something a little bit fiddly. The other piece I’m working on, the wax ribcage, is gathering dust while I figure out how to be in love with it again. It’s great being able to conquer some personal demons through this, life’s been odd lately, and a real challenge, so committing myself to something, no matter how small, does wonders. 
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‘In My Dreams My Teeth Fall Out (Asymmetries)’ 2012.

I’ve been a bit AWOL from Tumblr lately, maybe it’s because real life is kicking into a gear a little bit. Here’s a piece that is part of a larger series working with found objects. I have had the same dream for years where my teeth are quite literally the strength of shells and just flake off into my hands, so I thought I’d make life difficult for myself by making something a little bit fiddly. The other piece I’m working on, the wax ribcage, is gathering dust while I figure out how to be in love with it again. It’s great being able to conquer some personal demons through this, life’s been odd lately, and a real challenge, so committing myself to something, no matter how small, does wonders. 

‘For St. Sebastian, Who Should Have Been Happier’ 2012, Coated Galvanised Iron Wire, Pallet Wood.

This is mainly in response to previous depictions of St Sebastian, most of which have their hands hidden, such as those by Il Sodoma, Botticelli and Mantegna, with the exception of Egon Schiele and a few other classical depictions. St Sebastian was adopted by the queer community as a figure of visibility, of dying for a cause, and therefore a theme I personally wanted to explore as a queer woman. I wanted to make such powerful deciphers of emotion, the hands, a visible, tangible object. This explanation is brought to you by exhaustion, apologies.

(Without being a whiny bitch, if you have reblogged this, thank you, but I REALLY appreciate that you don’t take the credits off, removes the context of the piece and that it’s by me. Number One Tumblr Hate is removing credit from images.)

In Progress

Wax dripping is successfully hypnotising the cat. It’s been great to work with messier materials for my current project, materials that are less prescribed and more prone to chaos and mishap. I’ve been feeling up the ribcages of the men I know, just for dimension, not organ harvesting. It’s interesting to note subtle differences in chest bones and curvature in comparison to the anatomical sketches I’ve been studying. 

My fingers are taped when I work as I’ve noticed chicken wire is not particularly kind to flesh, neither is burnt hair on the nose or wax as it cools slowly while the metal incubates the heat. It’s a more sensuous sculpture than anything I’ve worked on before, it’s more challenging, ritualistic and grotesque. I’m enjoying the negotiation between my obsessive compulsion for repetitive order and the random result that wax gives. I have only a certain amount of control, and for someone that avoids cracks in the pavement, uneven man hole covers and verbally checklists her departure from the house, it’s quite refreshing. The plan is to build up the wax, then when it becomes more solid, use a scalpel to create the curve and smoothness of bone. 

For now I am enjoying its raw stage, its earthiness and the feeling of the witch in me.

Makin’ hearts and breakin’ hearts.  Kidding. I’ve spent the last two days relentlessly sketching human hearts as the beginning of a new project. St Sebastian isn’t finished yet but he will be once I’ve made the base and found something which will accelerate the rusting of metal. I’m deliberately not opting for a natural rust, as I’d like to see what I can produce by creating it myself. I’m also planning a controlled fire. This could end up with the loss of my eyebrows.
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Makin’ hearts and breakin’ hearts. 

Kidding. I’ve spent the last two days relentlessly sketching human hearts as the beginning of a new project. St Sebastian isn’t finished yet but he will be once I’ve made the base and found something which will accelerate the rusting of metal. I’m deliberately not opting for a natural rust, as I’d like to see what I can produce by creating it myself. I’m also planning a controlled fire. This could end up with the loss of my eyebrows.

Joseph Havel, Drapes, 1999. I found a great book on Joseph Havel today in my favourite discounted book store (their selection of art books is PHENOMENAL and all around £5-£15) ‘Joseph Havel: A Decade of Sculpture 1996-2006’. I’d never heard of him until today, as I often wander around Sandpiper Books looking for nothing in particular and end up finding something new. I love how he captures the movement of fabric, the essence of a moment. There’s a wonderful sculpture called ‘Spine’ that I couldn’t find an online photo of, in which several white collars are arranged to look like the human spine. I love sculpture that tell of something else, of the making, and the process that produced the end. The sculpture becomes the ghost of the real thing, as when the piece if cast in bronze, or plaster, or iron, the real item is lost forever. ‘He has taken something limp - unable to support itself or to hold a shape - and hardened it, frozen in both time and space. Cotton sheets are usually given whatever passing form they may have by being draped horizontally over a bed or a recumberent body; curtains and men’s shirts that Havel has used as an image and a source since the mid-1990s might suggest a kind of verticality, but they are too far from self-supporting; they depend on a support- hangers, curtain rods, clotheslines, torsos- and are given form by pleating and placketing, perhaps, but mostly, again, by gravity. Against the flimsiness and transcience of their sources- the shirts and sheets…are destroyed in the casting process- the bronzes take on form, permanance, embodiement…from the quotidian and fleeting to the permanant and monumental.’ Joseph Havel’s White Collar Practice , Howard Singerman.
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Joseph Havel, Drapes, 1999.

I found a great book on Joseph Havel today in my favourite discounted book store (their selection of art books is PHENOMENAL and all around £5-£15) ‘Joseph Havel: A Decade of Sculpture 1996-2006’. I’d never heard of him until today, as I often wander around Sandpiper Books looking for nothing in particular and end up finding something new. I love how he captures the movement of fabric, the essence of a moment. There’s a wonderful sculpture called ‘Spine’ that I couldn’t find an online photo of, in which several white collars are arranged to look like the human spine. I love sculpture that tell of something else, of the making, and the process that produced the end. The sculpture becomes the ghost of the real thing, as when the piece if cast in bronze, or plaster, or iron, the real item is lost forever.

‘He has taken something limp - unable to support itself or to hold a shape - and hardened it, frozen in both time and space. Cotton sheets are usually given whatever passing form they may have by being draped horizontally over a bed or a recumberent body; curtains and men’s shirts that Havel has used as an image and a source since the mid-1990s might suggest a kind of verticality, but they are too far from self-supporting; they depend on a support- hangers, curtain rods, clotheslines, torsos- and are given form by pleating and placketing, perhaps, but mostly, again, by gravity. Against the flimsiness and transcience of their sources- the shirts and sheets…are destroyed in the casting process- the bronzes take on form, permanance, embodiement…from the quotidian and fleeting to the permanant and monumental.’

Joseph Havel’s White Collar Practice , Howard Singerman.