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.

Planetoid 210

For a few years now I've been toying with the idea of using soil in some of my sculptures. This is my first foray into that particular area - I had to resist the urge to say 'field'. I'm not sure how I feel about this new piece (maybe it'll work as part of a larger group of similar sculptures) but that's okay because it was my first attempt at working with soil and I just wanted to see what would happen. 

 

I'm actually pleased with the physical results, as the soil mixture has set hard and doesn't show any signs of flaking. As you can see from the work in progress shot below, I built a plywood armature first. Then I covered it in a soil, wood chip and glue mixture.

'Planetoid 210' is a realisation of one of a series of sketches that I've been working on for some time. These sketches all involve architectural structures or towers sitting atop planetoids or spherical bodies that are obviously too small to realistically support them. The original drawing was inspired by something that happened to me whilst I was in Goa, India. I was swimming in the sea and noticed an interesting seed pod floating towards me. And as I picked it up to investigate further a small colony of tiny crabs decided that they must have hit dry land and proceeded to disembark onto my hand. I don't think that I'll ever forget those curious little seafarers and I often wonder how far and long they must have been travelling in that manner.

Planetoid Designs

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my studio lately, working on my new Orifice Tower sculpture – which is coming along nicely (although I’m probably being a bit over indulgent with the fine details). However, in between waiting for the glue to set on some of the joints and inner box structures, I’ve been working on a few sketches for a potential new body of work and experimenting with a new material. The material in question is soil (well, it’s new to me as an art material). The designs are based upon an idea I had a few years ago – and are a follow on from the sketch that I made at the time.

The designs all feature buildings or building-like structures perched upon spherical planetoid-like masses that are far too small to properly support them. This tiny drawing shows a small cluster of towers.
The challenge with using soil as an art material is to find a way of stabilising it but fortunately my first experimental mixture of soil, glue and other materials seems to have worked even better than I’d expected - so I’m raring to go with the first piece.