Frome fireside

45 degree moire

Another full week in the Smoke. Followed by the most wonderful weekend here at home full of friends and sleep and fresh air and good food. 

Last weekend was spent preparing the film shoot and tutorial with Martin - photographing work and trying to work out some sort of a narrative for this headlong rush through so many different tunnels.

 Moire and space, ideal forms, post-war Germany, Bauhaus and modernism, optics and illusion, performance, pace, rhythm and perception. I feel sure it will all fit together in some subtle way that I have not quite worked out yet.

film set up

Plus the farmer's market, a belated Christmas meal with my dear aunt and time to talk to Francesca - so wise and kind.
Filming was frustrating but constructive. The logistics of getting the frames and the glass and the paper and the film and myself and the computer across the river in driving rain made a fraught start to the day. And the results are not great.  But better than last time and good enough for Martin to agree to my proposal of an online / interactive format for the thesis. Now need to work out the technology platform and security concerns - who should be able to see what and when....

aerial graal detail

The aerial graals are starting to work too. Delighted.
All the hard work preparing the tutorial with Martin paid off as he seemed pleased. But I feel like a complete fraud as, while the work is progressing fast, I have done no writing up at all!

The GVArt  / Ubran Times also seemed to go ok, at least Robert was pleased and people were kind about the work. Wore the lucky dress ;-) Frederick from the Imperial / Opera group was there - and a reporter from New Scientist! I will apparently be on the CultureLab blog next week... the event is written up here
http://www.theurbn.com/2012/01/william-utermolhen-alzheimers/

The biophysicist called back and we have planned a date to meet. Scarey.

Nudged the other projects along a bit too - print conference, fluorescent glass and uveitis, Dublin exhibition, Oxford music.

Then came home to rest. Magic.

lost in the post

Trojan horse bucking around in the hard drive so wrote this offline. Decided to upload this anyway -  better late than never I guess

It was another full week…the main objective being to line everything up for tutorial with Martin next week, and for the ‘beyond the bubble’ work the week after. And thinking of my little corner in Frome, hoping the garden wall had not collapsed completely, imagining the sound of the wind and the birds in the tree outside my window, the scent of the river in the valley, the light on the Orchardleigh standing stones and the taste of my homemade lemon marmelade. 

Monday - preparation and negotiation– preparing and sending files with the different line frequencies and densities for sintering and printing, six hours sandblasting, drilling and fixing and worrying and jiggling people and ideas and projects that I seem to be pushing uphill on my own. Too much time scraping around in the grit and dust. Gobbling apples in front of the computer instead of breaking for lunch, no tea, swimming. Not good.

Tuesday – mixed up hot shop times and arrived just in time to flash up the lehr and pipe warmer for a fraught Liam. Somehow I had managed to contaminate the embryos (sandblasted glass forms) and as we gathered glass (dipped the forms into hot glass), filthy sticky streaks appeared – irretrievable. Dismal. Pedalled through gentle rain to Battersea to prepare the shoot next week with quiet-spoken Roddy who has tracked down a wonderful hydraulic tripod contraption that, with a couple of Heath Robinson modifications, will let us make perfectly smooth travelling shots of the moire patterns. I changed into my best boots, packed and repacked my bag, polished and repolished one of the Cochlear pieces, rubbed E45 into face and hands in a poor attempt to appear polished and pedalled slowly but was still early for my meeting with the eminent glass collector and dealer Leon Duval and hung about outside Thomas Goode’s brilliantly-lit windows trying to overcome my anxiety and the irritation of a very plush 4x4 with a round shiny-headed driver chatting importantly on the phone with the engine running. 

 A very positive conversation with the inscrutable Leo– interested only in larger work (but apparently interested in selling my work!!!) - am I planning to have a studio – where – how (am I serious…?). 

Then to King’s College in the Strand for a ‘sci-art speed dating’ event, where I had been invited by Robert Devcic from GVArt – organised by the Opera group – a group of composers and perfomers who are ‘in residence’ at Kings and, apparently, interested in creating a network of people who want to make art works / performances informed by and informing science. They seem a very sophisticated and constructive bunch and, looking out of the tall windows onto the Thames surrounded by bright young things, it felt as though this might be the place where the tide runs fair and things can be done.  And realised quite quickly that I was shooting myself in the foot when I brought out my glass inner ears and tried to push the idea I had been discussing by email with the wonderful Chris Garrard  about the sounds made by the spaces in the body. Had a wonderful conversation with a professor of biophysics about the inspirational Rosalind Franklin who was a crystallographer and first identified the structure of DNA – although she did not realise that is what she was looking for. There is an outside chance that we might work together to create an art work to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of her discovery. That would be just amazing,  Sent him photographs and a hopeful email but no response so far. I feel worried that the work is not good enough. 

The GVArt mob – Robert. Arthur, Katherine, Mike and I all went on to Pushkin House to see an exhibition of drawings and prints there. Moving. Strange. I, foolishly, having been Very Good, sipping apple juice and eating baby tomatoes succumbed to the lure of cool champagne and salted peanuts and pedalled home imagining myself to be travelling rather faster than I was. 

Wednesday was a slow start. Bobbing up and down the building to cajole printers and sinterers (none of which were ready), making frames for the shoot next week and attending bits of a conference on Materials.  A meeting about a conference on printmaking that I seem to be convening. Tired of being the pace maker. 

Thursday managed to make it to the pool! And to get more embryos ready for the kiln, go to a workshop on casting, finish the frames, get at least some of the prints made, work out how to cast a new piece called ‘one degree of arc’, to get some clarity on the Bristol projects and get the flat straight for Francesca’s visit this weekend. 

Friday – made beds and cleaned sinks. finalised prints and frames for the shoot, sent off files for rapid prototyping, worked in the hot shop with Liam to pick up embryos, retrieved brilliant online book on moire patterns from Imperial Library,  went swimming ;-), sorted out Oxford and Bristol trips, had a quick half with Owen, Rie and Zemmer, picked up shopping and made it to bed- at last!

slumped moire

In Edge Street with a kir pondering the first week back - hard to imagine that this time last Friday I was stirring butternut squash soup and lemon marmelade in my quiet haven in the West while working what time to set the alarm for my ride out of the Frome Valley.

The SPEEC conference in Oxford on Saturday (http://www.music.ox.ac.uk/speec/index.html) was a gentle and thought-provoking affair. Quietly directed by Chris Garrard, I glimpsed a parallel world of academics and performers / artists trying in their own ways to answer the same questions - the relationship between the brain and the body in aesthetic experience, how to balance process / research / serenditpity and outcome / intent / performance, how (or whether) to capture the experience, how (or whether) to try to intervene in the worlds of sight and of sound (and what about scent, touch, taste?),  the tension between the maker / performer, the market / gallery / concert hall programmers / funders and the audience (live or virtual). I am wondering whether it might be possible to set up some sort of exchange / conversation about research by practice in sound and visual arts - would be wonderful!

Chris had kindly set up the singing bowls in the Committee Room along with a slide projector. I gave a brief introduction to my work and introduced Chris who showed a section of the film we made together to a full house with lots of questions. Later in the day, an academic from Oslo who had been working on texture and sound introduced himself and sent over some fascinating papers about their work - he seemed interested in setting up a joint project. Perhaps in the summer...? I also met two men with very different approaches to capturing the sound world - one seems to play sound through a space and record the echo and extracts rhythms to create new patterns, the other seems to play a sound into a space and, from the echo, creates an accoustic 'map' of the space - so it is possible to play a sound and work out what it would sound like from within the space. We agreed to spend a day playing together - to be continued... And the dress, chosen with my aunt and part-sponsored by my globe-trotting mother - was just the ticket ;-)

I got back to London to find the flat grubby - sheets on bed, bathroom full of damp towls and pubic hair, sink with dirty dishes, depleted store cupboard and the scattered debris of a potted palm tree that must have been taken by the winds from some balcony to crash down into the courtyard, overturning table and chairs, the impact narrowly missing the windows. Hmmm.

Sunday glorious sunshine - early morning swim, cleaning, shopping and a very happy hour with young Jojo pushing buttons and jumping down the stairs at the Science Museum followed by lunch with Michael and Caro.

The rest of the week is a bit of a blur with early morning radio full of awful news of the death and torture of brave protesters in Syria, release of prisoners in Burma, more bank bonuses and endless twittering about referendum on Scottish independence. Mild days noticeably lengthening. Four swims (;-)), in bed by 10 (mostly), brain and glass prep for a few things coming up tutorials with Martin and with Priscilla (reading Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried), a meeting about a print seminar that I seem to be leading by default, a meeting with a scarily high-powered gallery owner / collector next week, meetings in early February with the medical students at Bristol University and with Above and Beyond charity / the Eye Hospital about two different projects to make interactive sculptures for public engagement work, Kings College / Opera Foundation 'speed dating' event next week to meet scientists interested in making performance work for Somerset House in the summer, a talk at the RCA about the Creative Quarter project and PR / preparation for a talk at GVArt about the Trauna show. And ideas for the birds for the Dublin exhibition flittering about in the back of my mind.

Dinner with Charlotte (rushed but lovely) Private Views at RCA for Fashion show (heaving in every sense) and at the Aram Gallery Send to Print show (brittle and depressing), experiments with press moulding and rare earth casting (complete failure), 3D modelling for the Wilding effect (fiddly but finally worked it out!) and cold working (hard graft but such a delight to see a hidden form arise), many many hours sandblasting plus one hot shop session with the new layering technique (very promising), the second session frustratingly cancelled. 

Feel exhausted just reading about it - the laundry is done and so am I!

December - nearly done

The big deadlines over, there was a bit of space to take stock and to see friends and family.

There was time present as part of the Research Open Day, to meet Becky and Nicola from Bristol University to see how we might work together, to progress ideas for a print conference at the RCA, discuss Heidegger with the ArtNerds at the ICA, sing in the Imperial College Gospel Choir carol concert and pack a parcel for my dear Didi and family so far away.

A series of tutorials at the Work in Progress show gave me much food for thought, realising how much there is still to do to fully understand how these moire effects work, and that the project could go in a number of different directions.

Some of the technical issues seem to be relatively straightforward: a day with the ever-patient Rodrigo Solarno and the Rhino software package showed that it should be possible to short-circuit much of the printing and folding to establish the optimum combination of line thickness, spacing and distance. Time with Liam Reeves in the hot shop has given me some exciting new possibilities to register matrices within a form.

But the bigger picture needs thought: are these objects or structures, are they material or immaterial, does the object or the subject move, might there be any figurative or representational quality beyond projection and reflection, how to evaluate the objects and in what context.

And how on earth am I going to write 40,000 words!

It was Definitely time for a break!

November nights

Another busy one...

Wilding work continued apace with the aim of having something worth looking at in time for the Work in Progress show that we installed on the 28th of the month. George Duck and Roddy Canas introduced me to the film studio. I made my first rudimentary moving image files and got enough screen printing done thanks to Damon to install a series of wall pieces alongside the glass work.

Vanessa Rolf invited me to be part of the Creative Quarter event, a day of activities for young people run by the institutions clustered along the Exhibition Road. My job was to devise and run a half day of workshops for14 to 18 year olds and their teachers to introduce students to the joys of working with glass. It was such fun.

The Oxford performances at the Bate Museum and at St Hilda's seemed to go well too.

Last but not least, I installed the piece called Lesion for the Trauma Show at the GVArt Gallery in Marylebone: Robert Devcic is building a unique reputation for presenting unusual or difficult work. The theme of this show, the way that artists express ideas about physical and mental trauma, continues that vein. But the exhibition felt more like an affirmation of humanity.

October - full steam ahead

Claude and I set off for Kensington for another year with grateful thanks to all those who have made this adventure possible.

The first month focused on planning and a review of published work  review trying to decide on the emphasis of the project - should I go down a cultural or scientific route? From this would flow a whole series of choices such as who to approach as a supervisor, the form and structure for the written work and the direction and context for the studio practice.

After much surfing and soul searching and conversations with inspiring tutors including Steve Brown, Annie Cattrell and Al Rees, it became clear that I feel more comfortable with the way that scientists have looked at space and perception and so would be more likely to get something finished in this relatively short time. I was so delighted that the psychologist Priscilla Heard agreed to be my second supervisor. She suggested that I look at the work of the German artist and academic Ludvig Wilding who developed a series of art works exploiting the way that moire patterns create extraordinary mobile illusions of space.
The first step was to get to grips with the variables involved, working first with printed paper and transparencies, then with glass. Slumped, fused, cast, blown, etched... it felt wonderful to be able to use all the skills and connections built up over the past two years. Things that used to take me weeks were suddenly possible in days.

working out Wilding

I borrowed Richard's car and drove up to Oxford to install the musical instruments at the Bate Museum of Musical Instruments and spent a very happy hour playing with the singing bowls and Chris Garrard and Chris Ferebee, PhD students in Music at St Hilda's, planning for the performance at the Music Marathon in November.

Bate Museum of Musical Instruments

Chris Ferebee and Chris Garrard

I also had the chance to work with staff and patients at the Bristol Children's Hospital to introduce them to Apophysis, a brilliant fractal pattern generation programme that I used for the Eye Hospital panels.
There was also a meeting with  meet Becky Jones, a wonderful medical student at Bristol University who is doing a PhD on the immune system in cancer who was keen to find out more about the work that Annie Hinchcliffe and I have been developing over the past year or so.

And went on a white water training weekend trip with the Canoe Club to sunny Tiverton!

September - back to school

The building work ended with a house warming party. It was such an incredible feeling to be able to fire up the cooker and fill it with food and stack the burbling fridge with juice and beer and wine and cake and see the space full of friends, family and neighbours, the children drawing pictures in the kitchen and making a den under the stairs, all chatting and laughing until well past our bedtimes. 

I felt ready to go out into the world again. 

DIY July and August

This is the only photograph from July and August - the place was so full of dust perhaps I simply did not dare get the camera out of it's case.

These month's emails trace the seeds of new friendships and the discovery of the quiet delights of life in Frome - the Canoe Club, Diva's cafe and the Farmer's Market, the walk along the valley to Mells and gossip at the Keyford laundromat.

The news at last, that I had been awarded funding for not one, but two years to complete the PhD at the RCA filled me with confidence and excitement. This was mixed with anxiety that I would have to put this gentle place on hold again for a little while at least.

The accounts are full of receipts for an apple tree and araldite, a cooker, a clematis, copper pipe and cupboard doors, a second hand fridge and half a roll of roofing felt, buckets of white paint, plaster for patching and a peach tree, roses, radiators, rollers and roofing insulation, worktops and wood, tiles, tape and lots of tea for Dave, Dave and Dave, Ben, Ned, Colin and Clive.

No hot water and the floors in bits meant a fairly spartan existence, sleeping in a bag on the floor and waking early to swim at the Frome Leisure Centre before the team showed up thirsty for tea. The bath became the sink where I learnt to make a kettle-full of water do a whole day's washing up.

Preparations were also underway for the launch of the Eye Hospital and Bate Museum projects and I went to serve at the Vipassana Centre in Hereford: so utterly peaceful - and with endless hot water!

June on hold

Deadlines for joining the end of year exhibition came and went with still no news about PhD funding without which I could not stay at the RCA. I went round and round in circles - was I finishing or starting?

As usual, I dealt with the anxiety with a flurry of displacement activity: the installation of the Eye Hospital panels and a new glass cabinet with the Uveitis work, conversation with Ruth Jacobs at the Children's Hospital about the potential to show children how to use the fractal generation programme that I had used for the Eye Hospital,  long conversations with plumber Dave about boilers, mason Dave about leaks and walls, electrician Ned about wiring and the start of a long and labyrinthine process to get mains gas piped to High Street. Lots of blowing and casting to get together a body of work in case I had to pull together a final show at the last minute, and to France to celebrate Charlotte's birthday.

Verneuil, Oxford, Bristol and London

May Be

A more intense month, starting with the interim exam, which seemed to go well and I eventually heard that my application for transfer to PhD had been accepted. Good for morale although I was clear that unless there was full funding, I would not want to stay on for the PhD. I determined to carry on as though I would be presenting my final show and thesis in July.










With the thought that I would soon be out in the wide commercial world in mind. I accepted a commission from Moorfields Eye Hospital for a series of paperweight gifts for delegates to an international conference and delivered them all on time thanks to James Devereux.

The glass panels for the Bristol Eye Hospital finally arrived amid much excitement.

Annie and I worked away at the Uveitis models - I found it fascinating to play with ideas about immunity, the self and the other, pushing casting and blowing techniques to their limits. We discussed whether these sculptures might help patients to understand and take better care of themselves.

The flute user group at the Bate Museum in Oxford seemed to be enjoying the glass instruments. I met the talented young composition student Oliver Currie and we talked about the potential for him to create a piece of music inspired by the objects in time for the installation of the exhibition in October. Andrew Lamb also introduced me to Chris Garrard, a PhD student, also in Oxford, who made the most wonderful sounds with the objects, using a violin bow to draw a deep song from the rim of a clear dish. We agreed to work together on a series of singing bowls for him to play with and present at the the Oxford Contemporary Music Marathon at St Hilda's College in November.

At the end of the month, I decided to invest in a couple of hours of professional photography with Eszter Segarra. We chose a black background and decided to go for bling or bust.

Matrix 2. Shelley James 2011, blown by Simon Moore assisted by James Devereux 

Matrix 1. Shelley James 2011. Hot glass. Blown by Simon Moore assisted by James Devereux

Matrix 1. Shelley James 2011. Hot glass. Blown by Simon Moore assisted by James Devereux

Visual neglect. Shelley James 2011. Hot glass and transfer print. Blown by James Devereux 

Macrophage. Shelley James 2010. Cast glass, copper foil and borosilicate glass. 

April already

This was a month for a bit of consolidation with some time at home in the West to enjoy the lengthening days and walks in the blue glaze of the bluebell woods.

Studio practice at the RCA looked at pattern in terms of form and surface, while the written work focused on pulling together technical reports and contextual material ready for the interim exam in early May: would I make the transfer to PhD - and did I want to?

The Jerwood Maker's interview went badly - looking back, I realise that I was just not clear enough in my own mind about where the work might go, so was completely unable to convince the panel to take a punt. Probably just as well. I learnt a great deal in the process and was able to meet the inspiring Siobhan Davies who had been very supportive. Perhaps something might come of that conversation one day.

I also went to Sunderland to present a paper at the Parallels and Connections Conference. Got the dates muddled up so missed my slot and was acutely aware that the work is in transition - Kevin seemed disappointed and I vowed not to present again until the results are clearer. But it was such a pleasure to see old friends and eat home made ice cream again.

March hares

Another lively month

The PhD proposal was put to bed and we started to get the hang of this encapsulation business and even to be able to play a little!

Three very different commissions kept me busy too:

The first, a series of lenses for the Crafts Council Handling collection demanded extreme precision at every stage and the chance to reflect on a process that had started to become so familiar that I had stopped wondering about how to make it better.

The second, for a private client from Durham who asked me to interpret an image he had made and encapsulate that in glass. Rodrigo Solarno, artist and computer tutor at the RCA showed me how to recreate the form of a blown embryo in Rhino to create a flat ‘map’ of the surface that I could then use to generate the transfer print art work. Sonja Klingler and KT Yun then worked their magic to encapsulate the piece in hot glass

The third, a wedding gift commissioned by a good friend, involved a more intuitive and playful approach to colour and form and was again only possible with the skill and generosity of Sonja and KT. 

A trip to Paris was feast in every way: museums, opera, food, wine and wonderful company.

A day trip to give a talk at the Craft Study Centre in Bilston made an interesting contrast.  

The Anthony McCall installation at K9 in Baker Street was quite magic - probably the most memorable and inspiring exhibition of the year. 

February - cooking!

My nieces experimenting with colour and icing sugar...

James and Simon experimenting with colour in hot glass

This was a month of consolidation and production– refining the musical instruments, checking and double-checking production and installation details for the Eye Hospital panels and working with the nurse consultant Annie Hinchcliffe to find different ways of describing the way the immune response works in the eye.

At the RCA, as well as writing and rewriting the PhD proposal, studio practice centred on a series of experiments to test each of the variables of matrix encapsulation: size and thickness of plate, different types of stencil, depth of sandblast, temperature at pick-up, set-up in the pick-up kiln.

Having joined the Gospel Choir at Imperial College in October 2010, I donned my best bling and joined my young friends on stage for the Afrogala concert. That's me at the back in the middle...