beermats

After this, I spent some time trying to figure out how I could follow it up once I was back in the UK. Main problems (seemingly) being sourcing raw materials and lack of the specialised equipment.

I had a bit of a eureka moment down the pub and thought I could use beermats as my source of pulp. I also thought I could utilise the whole collection process to give any resulting sculptural objects some back-story. I thought I could make a simple sculptural form that used the beermats collected over a set amount of time as a form of documentary tool.

Well, I did a few experiments but I decided that my vague ideas did not have enough weight to justfiy time spent on them at this stage.

Project status: shelved.

Meanwhile…

I had asked my local pub to collect their used beermats for me. This meant that, besides the smells and the stains, several of them had some biro doodles on them.

Project status: interesting tangent that I might come back to later but with a few samples put here for your viewing pleasure in the meantime:

that bunako thing

Last time was the turn of that juggling thing. Now I’m looking at that bunako thing. Still thinking about this thing.

The Set Up:

I was placed with the wood group in the sculpture department of Joshibi.

I was there for half-a-dozen or so afternoons.

I was shown a few techniques for working with bunako and just sort of left to get on with it.

The Results:

I grappled with it for a bit and started by making a couple of basic bowl shapes. …so, then I had a couple of basic bowls. hmmmm.

I spent ages just staring at them trying to figure out where they could go.

Eventually I focused in on all the holes that had been generated where I hadn’t managed to keep enough tension as I added new strips of wood. That’s right: I had two fairly shoddily made basic bowls!

I decided that I would try and make something of a virtue out of these things that would otherwise be seen as flaws. I started by highlighting each of the holes first with a penciled cross, and then later with drawing pins.

In an effort to try and produce something more sculptural, I then drilled out the holes and made some metal darts to basically point at the holes and shout “MISTAKE HERE!”.

For the second of the bowls, I made bigger darts out of cold-forged steel.

… and that was pretty much all I had time for.

I played around a bit with darts-pointing-in and darts-pointing-out and looked at how that changed the feel of things. My next challenge was trying to get it all back to the UK in one piece.

Back in Blighty I ignored it all for a bit, but then picked it up again and started to think about how I could try and move it forward. Again. This time I realised there were more imperfections that I could highlight. I worked a mixture of graphite and beeswax into the ridges left by my lacklustre sanding so that I was left with intermittent concentric rings around the surface.

[mental note to self: next time don’t use graphite for this – it doesn’t stay put and everything turns a murky grey colour.]

Did It Work?

Yes and no.

The problem is they still look like bowls. They’re bowl-shaped, and they’re bowl-sized. Too domestic and not sculptural enough. I think it has to do with the materials as well.

I talked with people about maybe using synthetic materials for the darts. Brightly-coloured plastic or something. Trying to get away from the strong craft-related association of the wood and the forged steel. Trying to get away from the novelty fruit bowl effect.

In the end I decided that it was the bowlness – the shape – that I wanted to destroy. The (as yet unrealised) solution that I might try one day is to cast some super-large darts: darts so large that they almost completely consume the wooden fabric of the bowl. Darts so large that by the time you have mode the holes large enough to accommodate them, there is hardly any wood left.

Of course, now you lose the 1:1 relationship of darts to mistakes…

On the plus side, I liked the idea that it all came from: find a characteristic of the process and run with it.

that juggling thing

… thinking about the stuff I did at Joshibi, looking at what I think I achieved in light of this earlier post.

Remember, I was looking at the way I work and trying to apply that to the situation at Joshibi.

The Set Up:

The group had been asked to use the paper pulp in a more experimental way. At least I think that’s what they had been asked to do: certainly the pre-amble had included references to conceptual art.

I missed the first session because I was being taught a traditional technique by one of the other tutors. So, that left me one afternoon to get experimental in.

I made myself some small balls of soggy paper pulp and three simple rules:

1. I can juggle with the balls, but I am not allowed to move my feet.
2. If I drop a ball, then it stays where it lands.
3. See what evolves.

I moved outside to give myself plenty of space and worked on a tarpaulin so that the paper pulp could be used again – I planned to use a lot of pulp, but not to keep any of it beyond the experiment.

The Results:

Phase 1: Juggling by myself
I was stood in the middle of the tarpaulin and a ring was just starting to develop around my feet when I acquired an audience…

Phase 2: Teaching someone else to juggle
A difficult enough task as it is, but made more interesting through trying to communicate across languages…

Phase 3: Another participant
This time throwing the balls to each other across the tarpaulin. Two more zones start to develop.

Phase 4: Bedlam
By request, the rest of the group joined in. I couldn’t really formulate a strategy for this, so we just let people get on with it ’till we ran out of pulp.

Did It Work?

As a piece of work it doesn’t really stand as much more than a tentative experiment. Ideally I’d do away with that nasty blue plastic and use an obscene amount of paper pulp. I’d like to see it splatted all over and into the place where the event takes place and at least knee high. So much so that you’d really have to climb out of and over the stuff when you decided it was time to call it a day.

I hadn’t really bargained for the extent to which other people would want to get involved. Bringing in extra people raised interesting points about communication etc etc, but diluted the splat-pattern(s) starting to emerge. If this were to become a piece of work then I think it might be best to stick to one person in one location.

As for the way I was working, I really liked the set-up of defining the rules of the system and then leaving things to work themselves out. Emergent systems? Something to think about later. This methodology harks back to earlier work I have done and I think it could well be an interesting line of enquiry to follow up on.

Proposal

So, how would this become a piece of work?

Well, we’re gonna need one hell of a lot of paper pulp. [does it need to be paper?]

This will either need to be prepared in advance, or prepared in situ as the event unfolds. [ok, so I seem to be thinking of this in terms of a performance piece with the resulting splat-mountain acting as some sort of documentation.] If the balls are prepared in advance, how does this affect their splattability? If the balls are prepared in situ, we’re going to have to think about a support team and facilities. Hmmm, not necessarily a bad thing – might add to the spectacle!

Who would do the juggling? Surely more effective if the person doing the juggling can’t actually juggle?

In a public place, you could recruit someone who wants to learn to juggle: they are furnished with the pulp balls and the same rules as before:

1. They are not allowed to move their feet (except perhaps for toilet breaks).
2. If they drop a ball, then it stays where it lands.
3. See what evolves. It finishes once they have learned to juggle.

The splats become a record of their learning a new skill.

So, the recruit has learned their new skill and the splats have been splatted. What happens next? Are they left where they are [environmental implications?] or can the whole thing be dried out, picked up, and transported elsewhere?

It might be quite nice to have the event taking place near steps or something. Then, when the mass is lifted away, you are left with the negative space of the steps. Ha! A new way of casting!

Joshibi 1

So, I decided I needed to put the lid on, shake things up good and proper and then see what came out: I needed to scare myself a bit.

I went to Japan; I studied at Joshibi; I learned loads; had a great time and was not ready to come back home. It may not have turned out to have been that scary, but now I’ve had some distance, I’m starting to realise exactly how much it’s turned things upside down.

To borrow somebody else’s words, “watashi no sekai ga hirogaru”. My world has spread. And that’s probably a good thing.

I’ve been looking at things differently:

• Wandering around with a camera, wondering how to explain car boot sales.
• Actually appreciating [some of] the architecture of Birmingham.
• Oh yeah, and myself.

I’d been questioning the way I worked for a few months prior to going to Joshibi. I’d been doing the Professional Development sculpture course at Dudley, learning stone-carving, wood-carving, more welding, more ceramics and more casting – but not being quite sure how that was going to manifest itself in my work.

Then I had a bit of an early-hours-of-the-morning-eureka-moment. My best work wasn’t to do with what media I worked in, it was to do with the way I worked. Joshibi was a chance to try out a few hypotheses.

Rule #1: A clean canvas

Don’t take any materials/plans with me. Don’t resume any existing projects.

Rule #2: Learn new things

Well, it would be stupid not to.

Rule #3: It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

OK Pugh, think defining the rules of the system and then leaving the rest to chance. Think putting yourself in a situation and then documenting the results. Think that compulsively collecting random things is entirely justifiable behaviour.

Rule #4: Relish being illiterate.

‘Cos it’ll be different next time I’m here.

I’m going to leave it there for now and have a think about what the results were…