New Work In Progress

Following on from my recent sculpture, Planetoid 210, I've decided to continue with the spherical theme and have started a new piece that will hopefully end up looking (if all goes well) like the love child of two of my other sculptures, The City and Cardboard Brain. Like Cardboard Brain, the new piece is going to be constructed primarily of interwoven periscopes and as with The City, I plan to use windows of magnified glass that will allow the viewer to peer into miniature environments, slotted in between the voids amongst the periscopes.
I say all this now but until the work starts to properly take shape its hard to tell how much space there will be for the miniature environments or if the overall shape will even be remotely spherical. These sculptures sometimes have a will of their own and refuse to conform – or is that just me anthropomorphising again?

 As you can see from this work in progress, it's early days yet. I've still not constructed enough periscopes to make the framework for even half of the sphere. I have a feeling that it's going to get trickier and trickier trying trying to fit all the internal sections together as the piece starts to take form but luckily I love that sort of thing.

This was the sketch that I made when I came up with the initial idea for the work. Admittedly it's not the most considered drawing in the world but I do have a habit of quickly forgetting ideas for artworks unless I jot something down on paper as soon as I think of it. So a lot of my drawings are little more than a few quick squiggles, but enough to act as a mental prompt.

Sketchbook Archive # 01

The City/Fetish Mutated

If asked ‘what is the first thing you would try and save in a fire?’ I imagine that most artists would say sketchbooks (OK - if they had kids, they ‘might’ say kids first) – yet when it comes to exhibitions and the art world in general, these vital documents go largely over-looked. I know that not all artists use sketchbooks but to me they are invaluable. Not only do they act as a form of external memory (one of the worst things is to have a great idea for a piece, not make a note of it, then forget what it was) that you can come back to years later and find new inspiration in, but they also allow you to work out your mistakes without having to make them in the physical world.
So, as a tribute to the ‘the sketchbook’ I decided to start a regular (well, I say regular – I imagine that there will be more than one) Sketchbook Archive post on my blog, where I show a few examples of my working-drawings and talk about what was going through my mind at the time (cue the sound of wind and tumbleweed rolling across the prairie).
So, there goes –
The images above are perfect examples of what would happen if I could cross-breed some of my sculptures. Or rather, what the outcome would be if I started mixing some of the materials and techniques from one piece with that of another. These drawings take their inspiration from my earlier sculptures, The City (made mostly of wood and found materials) and Fetish, made from human hair. Ever since I first made Fetish I’ve been both fascinated and repulsed by the use of hair as an artistic medium. I love the look of it as a material but it feels horrible when you have to mix it, by hand, with glue. However, hair is a great thing to draw as it seems to dictate its own flow. But when I start introducing the rigid structure of wooden frames and boxes into the drawing, a kind of equilibrium or harmony comes into play and the two materials start to dictate the overall form the potential sculpture might take.
In a couple of the sketches you can see where I’ve experimented with adding items that I’d previously used in other sculptures – things like tubes, teeth and doll parts. This is one of the great things about sketchbooks – you can be a playful, dark or as silly as you like. And often, some of the best pieces come from what you originally thought of as just a stupid idea or from the crudest thumbnail sketch.

Entrail Plasma Box Sketch

Entrail Plasma Box Sketch, originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

I seem to have an obsession with wheeled boxes that trail entrails behind them. I think it might be something to with the conflict between man-made geometric forms and the biomorphic aspect of the natural world. Or maybe it’s something to do with the body being seen as this pristine box that tries to deny the existence of its viscous, smelly and often rebellious insides. There’s probably something deeply Freudian going on.
Anyway - this is the most recent drawing and it’s for an idea that I had that requires the use of a plasma cutter and a welder. Unfortunately I don’t yet have a plasma cutter so this particular project has been put on the back burner.

Hairy Tower Sketch

Working Drawing 03, originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

This sketch is of a sculpture that I've been planning for some time now. Its for a piece that would be a hybrid between my 'Fetish Tower' piece, which is made of human hair, and my sculpture, 'The City', which is predominently made of wood. It will be interesting to see how much the end result looks like this initial sketch.