December studio visit and tutorial

Part of the Camberwell/Acme award is the valuable offer of mentoring from a practising artist whose work you admire. I had a lovely tutorial visit from Gayle Chong Kwan who had been one of the judges for the award. Realised I had been feeling a bit detached and purposeless,  felt I was using the studio as a kind of incubating space, just replicating objects. Gayle emphasised that I should now be showing my work as much as possible, entering open calls, commissions etc. Important as my work only resembles finished work when I have to fill a particular space. She also encouraged ideas which you sometimes sit on thinking they're too random - if you think of it, make it. Both are the way to push work forward and I needed to be told again.

December sculptures

Pink arm - top - used chopped up sweaters sewn with scrim. With Bean - above - sewed painted string through scrim so looks like balding tuber potato. Like a baked bean with a purpose.

Blue feet is a 3D manifestation of a scribble in an ipad drawing using very thin steel I wanted to make it stay up on its own, embedded in concrete core and then stuck in pop socks which I filled with blue plaster sludge. Here it is communicating with red snail horned thing.

More watercolour painting

 

 Continued with watercolours not mimicking ipad marks this time, though including some of the powder shapes and objects in the 3D work.

Wardrobe pathos

"Momentum (2012)

Bits and pieces from a wardrobe rescued from the street and reassembled so that they can be contained in its only drawer, while the wardrobe itself remains precariously upright. A metaphor for human beings and their struggle to remain standing, using everything that they were originally given to build their personas."

Saw this in a re-title email and felt it related to my work, was expressing similar ideas. By Jaime Pitarch in Madrid.

Dutch Artist

http://www.wilmavissers.com/paginas/frame2.htm Great Dutch artist Wilma Vissers, lovely website with lots of crayon drawings you click on to see each piece, resembles Richard Tuttle's work.