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 60th
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 |
No comments:
Post a Comment