Workshop

This has to be a long post because so much has happened since the last one.  You are probably getting heartily sick of these blogs, but I am going to continue to make them !!! just for friends and family who are following this excruciating account of our travels.  You don't have to look at them I guess, but if you are, I hope you are enjoying the story with us.  We are very happy to do the physical reality part!!!

Since the last blog, we had another week at La Meridiana, where we were settled with this collection of people from England, America, Europe and us Aussies.  They were all good people and we had some great times in the studio and going on excursions together.  A few husbands turned up so there were a few couples in the second week enjoying the activities.  Here's Dirk and Kenny - Tip Toland's husband.  Kenny was there from the beginning and was doing similar things as Dirk like reading, scooting around the area and generally goofing off.

I will give you some photos of the workshop.  Tip and Beth took us through the process of making solid sculptures on static and movable armatures so for the first week we were doing busts with accurate measurements of the head and facial features to make realistic portraits.  We played around with emotions like shock, shame and happiness.  These seem pretty simple but it was a good series of exercises to do as realism is making a huge comeback into art so competency at this is logical.  Abstraction is at last losing ground and the figure is no longer considered a no go area for contemporary art.  The human figure is like a loaded gun in art and has always been so. ...and I'm happy to see it back.

Tip Toland specializes in realistic figurative sculpture of personal perspectives on life and and Beth Caverner Stichter who is an artist using animals to depict the human condition and her own life..so it's not just making the figure but approaches to why we do it.  We had many discussions on the philosophy of making art and slide presentations of technical aspects of making difficult constructions and current work in the figure around the world.  It's very exciting to see what people are doing..

Tip is using Italian artist Alessandro as a model for measuring distances between features.

This was the exercise....make a bust with proper dimensions of the head, then make different expressions on  the face and then cut it off and make a different expression and cut it off, etc.  The first one was 'shock', and here is the before and after faces I made - the second one painted with the process Tip took us through in the second week.

This next one was the second expression..."shame" but not coloured...just the bust and the cut off bit.
I don't think I can put anything else on this blog because it won't take any more pictures.  Probably a good thing!  I will make another and show some of the other things we did this last week.  Back soon.

Essentially, this workshop for me, was to find out how to do large figurative work, and to get a new perspective on where to go next.. I have been at this game for 30 years...all my working life. I was essentially looking for a magic bullet, to jump into a fertile unknown where things get interesting.

I know that I got this understanding from the workshop.  You don't get a leg up with anything in this realm....you have to do things on your own.  What I mean by that is that you can have all the tools and skills you like, but if you don't have good ideas, its all play dough for kids.  Beth and Tip are fantastic artists and I respect their work, like them as people.  They showed us all that not only do you need the techniques, there is the essential element of self expression which is the peeling of the onion layers.  That's my quote, from someone else.  And another quote:  Everything has already been done.  There is nothing new under the sun.

Cliche' after cliche', yep, that's me.  So now, knowing all this, it's just reminding myself of the obvious...and has been obvious all along.  Go inside, go inside, go inside.   The mystery still awaits.

"I wish I can, I think I can, I know I can!"

This was made on an armature, and could be much larger but there was no point.   Apart from the fact that I couldn't bring it along with me (us), there's no advantage to making it any bigger than it is ... around 40 cm tall.  BUT I can do it larger...much larger, and that's the point.  It was made in solid clay, then cut up and hollowed out as sections, then reassembled off the armature.  This is a good technique to know, as it takes the onus off hollow building in coils from the ground up, and you can tackle large sculptures this way, probably more easily in the long run, as you can be more in control of the shape and perspectives as you build.  Beth and Tip both make life size and larger than life size objects with this technique.

(I was going to leave it there at La Meridiana for the manager Pietro to fire and put in the garden, but Miriam - one of the residents who lives in Italy,.took it for a few euros god bless her and will fire it some time herself.  For some reason she thought it reminded her of me!! Who knows why)

The next blog HAS to be about the last week of day and night trips around the countryside...what we did in our spare time!  Stay tuned.

Love to all back home!