Making

This took too long /  by Justin Harrison

This article ahs been on my bench for the longest time, I don’t know quiet why it took so long to make.

I’m really wanting to conclude one or two key pieces as I rapidly draw to a close of the MA. However I’m not sure this is wise as I try to acclimatise to a new way of approaching my work.

I’ve modified it as the details I first drew feel excessive and lack a certain honesty. I’m mindful of the work retaining it’s integrity. I’m mad because I know I can do the stitching better. But overall it’s ok.

I feel the colours the soft dense black of the burnt wood against the burnish copper next to the warm ochre of the leather all coalesce to make something more for me. The item a tool, a ritualised tool with a distinct purpose but obtuse as to what it is. Passaging through uncertainty requires rituals that are ambiguous at best.

I am tempted to fuss with it some more, extend the height of the burn, something about the aesthetics for me isn’t quiet right…

 

Studio notes /  by Justin Harrison

This is the perils of limited materials - reclaiming stuff means that I only have limited supply of a particular medium, wood button or metal hooks etc.

Of the two wood formations I can’t decide which I prefer best and actually want to make all of them however there is not really enough. I have to make a decision….commit!

Also I have a new obsession of Indigo blue, it actually moves me. It’s like the depths of the sea of the expanse of the universe for me. It holds mystery and passage. Can a colour do that? Is it just me?

I’m cautious about painting wood - it’s a pet hate of mine, I love the grain and the natural colouring and variants. Yet staining the wood is an instinct I can’t resist. Maybe just a bit…

 

Practice /  by Justin Harrison

I'm surrounded by a mess of clamps, stray wood and glue. I'm wondering how I made any work before. I'm challenging myself to another spontaneous fast piece. I'm getting in my own way of making and it's annoying.

I have a creative tantrum and brake stuff.

/// Day 2

I had managed to glue and clamp some stuff yesterday before I lost it, as I continue to work on it I make different choices changing layout and direction, I question the wood where it wants to go what form it needs to take to speak, to articulate of the in-between, at times I purposely plane and smooth off the wood from it’s original texture. You can't see it easliy- but I know. Changing states. The wood came form a couple of boards I found in the street, the wood is coarse and rough with glue residue. I also blacken two slats - I’m constructing some strange object - born for the liminal. On object of negotiation.

I wonder wether to paint some or all of the wood. Normally I recoil from painting the material and hiding its nature, but I'm also considering my instinctual colour palette, black browns amber and occasionally blues. As I look over my blog and instagram account I see a strange consistency.

I'm asking, looking for the poetry of the work

I also have been dreaming about the clay drawings, about camping overnight beside the tree, ritualising the process

Heart spirit Mind soul in alignment. Generatiional imbalance.

 

Process Post. /  by Justin Harrison

Nothing too deep or revelatory. More me just making sure I’m writing about my process.

Yet something feels right about this, somethings I make and am unsure, but this I’m ok with.

Materials lead me again and there is something provocative and pleasing about the natural canvas.

I’m making a large icing bag basically, but for clay. I’m making my own tools to work with and that to is satisfying. I’m tempted to get ealborate, but I should have learnt from previous lessons that it will slow me down, but it’s hard - I want to make pretty!

The plan is to locate naturally occurring clay and use it as a medium to draw with, although I am now having to research and figure where I might find it. This could involve a number of exploratory walks and scrambling but then I like that kinda thing.

I feel drawn to the process of engaging with the land, gently moving an element and decontextualising it into a medium and meaning - a form of translation.

This too I’ve been looking at ‘Translation’ what does it really mean to translate language and other things? What and how does it happen? It’s connected to the Liminal.

Also please note it took me a ridiculously long time to figure the pattern out, when it shouldn’t.

 

Studio 22 Oct /  by Justin Harrison

It was quiet a feverish time in the studio today, I’m trying to make everything that is in my head, it seems the simplest response. I’m stressed because I want to be making MA worthy work again. I’m carrying the voices of imagined peers and imagined criticisms. ‘Everyone disapproves of my use of time and resources’. The power of our imaginations - I’m using my powers for evil not good. SO my response is to try and just make everything that I currently have in my head, just dump it all out because at least I am being productive and hopefully I can free up my thinking into more productive paths.

I managed to finish the last joint on the draw paddle, it still pains me that they are not well executed. I hate that the cuts are tatty - it really bothers me …like alot…it needles away inside my head. But I just don’t have the time to be fussy right now, I need to make everything that I am seeing, feeling. I am also hoping that out of this pushh will come work that really interests me. I am getting a little bored of just making paddles they aren’t talking enough for my liking.

I make a number of hasty pieces putting ,materials together to ask what they might say. I fabricate another peg, this is a self indulgent exercise as I get some kind of pleasure from making them, I like putting the leather and the wood togeher. It does leave the question to what purpose, what are their purpose? What do they hold? But then that’s maybe useful, pegs are my markers, simple and impermanent the temporarily can hold onto something or mark it’s place.

I’ve also had two lumps of tarmac sitting around the studio, that I’ve not known what to do, but today they got bound up in some leather I had left on my bench to provoke something to be made. Again led by the materials I tried to find something that they were happy with. It’s become some sort of sling or hammer, again I bashed it out, no measuring or marking. Photographing it on the old wood felt right, the placement and reference to an older history. I like the idea if ignoring chronological time. Anachrony. Derrida’s hauntology comes into play. I like that the sculpture has history in it’s materials. It’s lived two lives already;

Life 1. The Raw Material, the evolution/ life span of the wood, leather and tar, is one life time that has passed.

Life 2. The Given Purpose, The draws, the pavement, the garment. The material exists in an assigned purpose.

Now it exists in a third and yet still retains the previous histories, lives, they are still present and palpable.

I’m close to finishing the Holly Jointed Paddle, I just need to peg the blade sections. I drill the wood and have already bunted on bit and broken another. The holly is tough, I respect it for that, it again gives character to my materials for me and it’s important that I listen to them. Also in looking through my sketch book I notice a detail I had forgotten to add. I must upload my drawings as they carry important details and noters that I often forget and I don’t often look back through and read everything.


 

All Changes /  by Justin Harrison

I’m trying to pull everything together, I have various notes and ideas, there feels to be strong relationships between the elements I am discovering. So below are my latest notes and thoughts, for my research paper, which may need to change altogether from what I have submitted as a second draft….

Same not the same

"Strategy without finality" Derrida Differance - in Royale Nicholas Jacques Derrida p 153

There is no answer no unifying theory of everything

Change is constant

Territories and the liminal. Liminal Territories.

The liminal is constant change. The passage to transformation.

There will always be change - difference, differance. It brings creativity - progression - Transormation

Theory of incompleteness.

To accept change as a cleansing agent that protects us from structural stagnation.

"The question of difference within any society or culture is always conjunctural, ever-changing, and conditional. “Race” is not a permanent social category, but a historical product of slavery and human exploitation, an unequal relationship between social groups." Manning Marable Essay: https://items.ssrc.org/from-our-archives/black-studies-multiculturalism-and-the-future-of-american-education/

We cannot fill the void

We are incomplete

We will remain incomplete

The Liminal can never be resolved,

located in time

or space

or concept

The passage facilitates change

Movement

Accepting continuous change

Progressive generation.

"As he puts it in an essay entitled 'Ellipsis' (1967): 'Why would one mourn for the centre? Is not the centre, the absence of play and differance, another name for death?" Derrida in - Royale Jacques Derrida p 16

"For, always incomplete, of an incompletion which is not the negativity of lack, [deconstruction] is interminable, an' interminable analysis', ('theoretical and practical', as we used to say). As it is never closed into a system, as it is the deconstruction of the systemic totality, it needs some supplementary afterword each time it runs the risk of stabilising or saturating into formalised discourse (doctrine, method, delimitable and canonised corpus, teachable knowledge etc.)...[Deconstruction would be] afterword to the presence or presentation of the present itself." Derrida in - Royale Jacques Derrida p 145

The paddle as an agent of change/ movement

The presence and nature of change in UVR/artists work. Passage and Transformation.

UVR's Little nothings complete in their incompleteness.

Are her little nothings incomplete?

UVR Haunting of materials - age, presence agency, repetition

"After Derrida, one has to reckon with 'presences' that are neither simply inside nor categorically outside the text" Royal Nicholas, Jacques Derrida P149

Hauntings an 'incomplete presence' in the art, in the materials physicality, treatment and in the movement of the artist 'passaging'.

Neither inside or outside of the art. The meaning neither inside or outside the artwork

See below also 'Included Middle" as key connection, regarding the position of a thing as neither inside or outside.

The First Incompleteness Theorem provides a counterexample to completeness by exhibiting an arithmetic statement which is neither provable nor refutable in Peano arithmetic, though true in the standard model. The Second Incompleteness Theorem shows that the consistency of arithmetic cannot be proved in arithmetic itself. Thus Gödel’s theorems demonstrated the infeasibility of the Hilbert program, if it is to be characterized by those particular desiderata, consistency and completeness.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/

Heisenberg noticed that there are cases where the straightforward classical logic of A and not-A does not hold. He pointed out how the traditional law of Excluded Middle has to be modified in Quantum Mechanics. In general cases at the macro scale, the law of Excluded Middle would seem to hold. Either there is a table here, or there is not a table here. There is no third position. But in the Quantum Mechanical realm, there are the ideas of superposition and possibility, where both states could be true. 

The Included Middle is a conceptual model that overcomes dualism and opens a frame that is complex and multi-dimensional, not merely one of binary elements and simple linear causality. We have now come to comprehend and address our world as one that is complex as opposed to basic, and formal tools that support this investigation are crucial. The Included Middle helps to expose how our thinking process unfolds. When attempting to grasp anything new, a basic “A, not-A” logic could be the first step in understanding the situation. However, the idea is then to progress to the next step which is another level of thinking that holds both A and not-A. The Included Middle is a more robust model that has properties of both determinacy and indeterminacy, the universal and the particular, the part and the whole, and actuality and possibility. The Included Middle is a position of greater complexity and possibility for addressing any situation. Conceiving of a third space that holds two apparent contradictions of a problem is what the Included Middle might bring to contemporary challenges in consciousness, artificial intelligence, disease pathologies, and unified theories in physics and cosmology.

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27155

///

Draw on paddle with clay?

UVR Transformation of materials in form and concept?

What is this deep love of materials for her?

A strong sense of history and of time passed.

"I always have a specific vision of what I want in my head, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to start. Other than that, I rely on instinct. I honestly don’t understand it, but I also know something else so clearly. Earlier today, I was working on a required legal document and I felt like a child. I felt so stupid in regard to my lack of understanding and the fact that I don’t want to understand them, but I have to because I’m grown-up, or whatever. I feel completely different in the world where I make my art… it’s so clear to me that this is what I was born to do. And it’s not as though anything is absolute, or definite, or defined." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"Titles do have a meaning for me, but I don’t want them to have that meaning for anybody else. For this reason, many of the titles I give my works are in Polish and are often not translated. I refer to my sculptures as “bowls” but hate it because they are not bowls. They are an excuse to do all these things that can conceptually feel like fabric, or like the ocean waves. I cannot compete with actual waves, but I can make forms in an entirely new way. Trying my hand at these wave-like structures, I like when there is unexpected movement, or where it does something that it shouldn’t or is not supposed to. It’s as if they misbehave." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

When you attended Columbia in the early ’80s, Minimalism was all the rage. Did you ever connect to that movement?

If you made work with a figure, you’d be dead in the water without any hope to show in a gallery. The minimalists were really in power for many years and they had a haughty idea of what was right and what was wrong in art. The minimal look is minus feelings and full of philosophy and erudite high-end talk. It’s so not me, although it’s not that I didn’t borrow from them either. I borrowed the grid from Sol LeWitt, and their use of repetition. UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"The grid is my guardian." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"That’s the best thing about art, you can’t label it. You won’t find an answer, ever." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

"I come from generations of Polish peasant farmers. I’ve always been inspired by their tools and wood piles. There is nothing that is superfluous." UVR

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ursula-von-rydingsvard-on-how-your-career-evolves-over-time/

 

Negative paddle recycled /  by Justin Harrison

A quick experiment/Physical sketch - gluing recycled packaging together, I plan to add black paint to emphasise the negative space. Also need more card. It came together relatively quickly and I hope to get it concluded pretty soon. I especially like the departure from straight lines caused by the indents in the packaging. It gives it a new dialect that I hadn’t anticipated.

Again I notice I am repurposing rePlacing materials, a new identity and yet a previous history. Moving across time and intent and purpose. Making small spaces, aspects, interstices.


 

Studio Notes - Jointed Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

Previously I had cut a joint into a length of Holly. It had a resonance that I especially liked. So now I am embarking on making a full length paddle form. I don’t need it to perform or look exactly like a paddle but take essential qualities from one.

I find all the wood I use fallen and never cut it from a live tree. It’s left behind too. The branch is particularly straight but I suspect it could be interesting if it had a noticeable bend in it. But for now I just want to get this made and se what it says to me.

I need to cut two fairly good joints and I also wonder if its possible to make a ‘universal joint.’

The blade of the paddle is forming but I’m not entirely convinced I like it just yet, however I think it’s best to just let it evolve for now.

Another thought is if I could find a dead standing tree and put a joint into one of it’s larger branches…

 

Studio Notes - Cabinet Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

Cabinet Paddle. I’ve had an old draw knocking around. It’s been waiting for me to do something, so I set to it with a saw. The lock and holes to fit the handle still present, it’s former life still marked, haunting it. (I also like the connection to draws that I have been drawing.)

I’ll put in joints again, the other preoccupation I have, it’s purpose and use rePlaced.

I love the history to the materials again, more than just a cut of wood it’s history marks it and places it in and out of time. ‘Time is out of joint’. (The wood smelt peculiar when I cut it, it’s history was given up in it’s scent, mothballs and varnish and everyday life).

I hope to make this a little better than the current ‘Physical Sketches’, cut the joints nice.

I also had a practice carving it that I will need to cover somehow as it detracts from the dialogue. More copper cladding perhaps.

 

Studio notes Brittle Paddle /  by Justin Harrison

I’ve been in the studio a couple of times in the past week and have been trying to push through some of the ideas that are accumulating. Make lots.

The paddle as a motif and a series is a current preoccupation although I do wonder if it would benefit from abstracting more.

One ‘physical sketch’ came about by just having materials around and placing them together, I saw a relationship between them, brittle and splintered fencing panels)that I currently have ‘in stock’ around the studio) in various shades and tone, gave themselves to a loose form of a paddle - not exact just essences - I liked the departure form a formal representation.

(As a foot not to self the wire brush works really well at selectively removing layers and tones, it enables me to ‘draw’ upon the sculpture).

The paddle feels like it wants be a lot more than a signifier of of a navigational tool. making a series of them in drawing and making gives me time and space to contemplate it’s role which also ties into my research paper. Examining liminal spaces there function and characteristics.

I’m making work a lot looser and rougher than before, I’ve left the craft behind for ‘more production’ I think the work is benefitting from it. Before I erred on the side of craft, which slowed me down and I think sometimes was a cover for a lacking in m conceptual underpinning. That if it was pretty enough I could be forgiven for not really being able to describe what was happening.

All is left clamped up and gluing again, (with a cheeky addition copper that asked if it could be included).

I need to make some room - have a clear up there’s a lot on my workbench still…

 

Translation /  by Justin Harrison

I’m now obsessing which can be a good and a bad thing. The paddle is now a key object, I’m making them in my studio and in my drawings. The tool for navigation, immediate and resides in our hands, yet partners with a craft of some description.

I’ve been listening to Anish Kapoor interviews and reading text as research for y paper - and them there was a brief discussion about making a series of the same object or work can up, and I found it encouraging, to explore an idea - open it up and out. I think I worry that I am just repeating iterations endlessly and that there is no value to it. I am annoined that I feel like I need permission.

The drawings are strangely pleasing for me, I’m connecting with the way the ink bleeds out to granular and the empty negative that it creates.

This particular media I’m using was ironically made by Stuart Smeple in a reaction to Kappor’s Vantablack, it has a quality in its miss use that I especially like. When diluted it has a granular property that separates out into delicious bands of gradients, leaving small tidal marks and tracks. Something deeper in me connects to specific marks, moments. Yet it leaves this gritty feel, like BhaBha’s scalar interstices, the bundle divisable. Collective moments spread across time inconsistently. The bleeding through, the threshold melts, margins fade.

 

Studio Notes /  by Justin Harrison

Little nothings - in the studio and I’m making more quick pieces, they don’t feel deep but maybe that’s ok. What they can lead to is more interesting. I do worry that I’m not landing on any one pursuit. I still like to surround myself with materials, my desk is littered with bits of wood leather and copper piping.

I cut my finger magnificently and there is a fair bit of blood. I curse a lot, not because it hurts, but because it’s gonna slow me down.

These pieces confuse me, they come from me and there are qualities about them that I like, but I’m not often sure why.  I want to draw and yet I end up making  the physical sketches. I think about Matthew Barney and how his work moves between sketches and sculpture. Is this a root that my work also takes? How dp I find the equilibrium between the two.

What is my work about?

Being set apart? Margins?

What about the photography and prose?

I do notice the motif of reclaimed materials, it’s becoming a stronger preference, the motive I suspect is primarily financial, but also a rejection of capitalism and a concern for the environment, I am mindful of my presence. The more I research capitalsim the more objectionable it becomes.

In addition the history to the materials helps me to construct the work. This came up before in Jericho where the provenance mattered - even if it was just to me and definitely influenced the work.

 

Age and time /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

In researching Ursula Von Rydingsvard for my research paper - I've come across a some ideas and material that connects with my practice - I'm curious about time, how it is perceived, approached and explored by the artist. Process is a key part of my practice and I see often that this relates to ideas of time and history. The layering of materials, techniques and processes. Building up and breaking down.

“Levi Strauss remarked on the laborious working process of layer-by-layer marking, sawing, and grinding, noting that “at each stage of the process, hundreds and thousands of marks were inscribedon the mass with pencil, saw, grinder and a variety of hand tools, adding up to a wearing down.” This ”adding up to a wearing down” Levi Strauss saw as “the back and forth of actual time, the time taken to mean it” and he added”

“Though this sculptor does not practice mimesis (her
humility precludes it), these human inscriptions
of eventfulness are echoed in the formation of tidepools, tree stumps,and river beds - minute quotidian world formative acts.
Thousands of marks made consciously,
leavened with kind cutsand crual, then leaded
down, blackened to absorb the light. A topology of
chambered need. An apparition of the dark.”

The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P 46 The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P 46

Also:


”Positioning her sculptures at the midpoint between metaphor and concreteness, she deliberately multiplies narrative possibilities through a va-et-vient of memory and action.” The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard P89

And:

“Time puts all back into equalibrium, which is more in keeping with natural laws. I would like my work to be as though time acted upon it---avery long time.” UVR from her journal - (taken from The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard) p 82

Basic to her technique- which she surely developed in answer to a deep and indefinable need - is the element of repetition, the implicit statement that there are situations in life that have no beginning and no end. The arts in human history are threaded through with the impulse to escape calendar time (surely the basis of Islamic art), and many of von Rydingsvards routines suggest her need to enter the timeless universe of mythology. In casual remarks she has revealed her deep respect for ritual - the repetition of eternal gestures, always the same, in orderer to propriate the gods who themselves are always the same.” The Sculpture of Ursula Von Rydingsvard p 60

To Ponder:

Time is variable and I don’t believe it can be considered constant, even atomic clocks cans show variance when subject to different gravities.

In addition the Ethiopian calendar and Persian calendar both differsto the Gregorian calendar commonly used by the west, what does this mean a global and then universal understanding of time? The Gregorian calendar cannot be the standard by which everything is measured.

By recycling and repurposing material like wood it’s age becomes multiple, the initial growth of the wood will have been progressively accumulated (demonstrated by the rings), then there will be the first intervention where it is constructed into an item - a chest of draws or scaffold plank, then the 2nd visitation rePlacing, rePurposing and refashioning where it can be made into another item, and then decomposition. Which age applies then tot he item and by what/who’s calendar? This relates again to Derrida and Spectres and time being ‘out of joint’

 

Mechanics of Paper /  by Justin Harrison

MA Session - Paper folding.

I like it when there is no clear boundaries with certain disciplines, especially in the arts, which is why I like Derrida’s work, the structures get broken down and bleed into each other.

With the paper folding the surface becomes space. 2d is both 2d and 3d. Sculpture and single plane. It seems a natural response to then photograph the work, explore the tonal planes and how the sculpture can return to an image, abstracted and RePlaced.

It’s no secret I love process and the practical tuition was very satisfying. Finding the form in the paper feel good too as we creased the paper. In this I chose to work with waxed paper. I love how it takes and draws each crease in white, whilst maintaining a warm translucent qality. Ultimately the paper doesn’t perform so well structurally but then moving beyond folded form it then lends it’s self to more possibilities. Again the language of materials is there to be found and negotiated.

 

Paper Spectres /  by Justin Harrison

I realise I’m missing an opportunity after the MA sessions we have - I need to reflect on the sessions after each one, that I’m missing out on the thoughts and ideas that arise from each Thursday. Sounds obvious now I say it but I’ve been so focussed on my own practice that it didn’t occur to me. Plus I should just pretty much document anything - especially if everything is research.

Thursday’s photographic session was an interesting one as I didn’t have time to think, but just throw stuff together without too much consideration, the speed with which I wanted to work meant that it was very intuitive and unconscious. Normally I would have liked tie to think about what I would do and prepare materials. But coming straight from work and not quiet being sure of what was going to be asked, meant I had to work on the fly.

(((I find an interesting tension between working intentionally and intuitively, I see value in them both, but struggle to reconcile a way to work using both - although I wonder if this is the value to making the ‘little nothings’ that Ursula von Rydingsvard creates.)))

Taking the direnct transfer images I was still working true to my practice taking layered paper and collaging. It’s quiet close to my practice already. Accumulating images and working them back and forth. It’s a part of my visual language t he photographic image. I note how often I use photography as a means to thinking a nd documenting ideas.

What became more interesting was when I collated the images together and place. them as one long block on the Miro board. Putting all the images together made sense of them, the colours and movement through form, with elements being lost and captured.

How the images are captured on the paper has a ‘spectral’ quality (Derrida - Specters Of Marx) , it’s evidence of history, present and future across the same site. Unfixed the image won’t remain, and the image viewed is not how it will be in the future, or how it was. There is a ghostly presence on the paper which cannot be entreated to stay or name itself.

Currently I’m reading - Spectres of Marx by Derrida. I’ve moved onto this text following a conversation with someone more versed in Derrida and other associated writers. There are a number fo terms that Derrida uses in Literary critical analysis, Hymen, Trace, Differance, Spectural. Thera are all similar but different, and I need to get a little more familiar with them for the sake of my research and my sanity.

I’m especially liking the notion of the spectre it’s connects easily to what I am investigating with my research paper and own art practice. More time with it is needed, as there are nuanced motifs in what I am reading that play out in my own work - especially the choice of materials. In discussion with Jonathan during a turutorail we discussed how the history of a material (a fence panel) has a key role for me in the nature and language of the art work I am making. That it becomes woven into the heart of the artwork and it’s integrity, even though it may not be clear to the viewer.

 

Making stuff /  by Justin Harrison

I glue some more battons together in the stack as it felt too light weight not enough presence, fiddle with a clamping system and revert back to string wrapping.

Then I turn my attention to the base plate - Ive been sanding it and start thinking about just the transformation the material from rough to finished - am I adding value or meaning? Can I also do this with copper too - I still want to draw on it. (I also realise I should have dipped it in water to raise the grain before adding some oil - but I got too excited by the material wanting to see its grain)

Still not sure about the direction of the sculpture stuff it seems too tight and controlled and unimaginative. I don’t feel excited about it. But I need to push on and make not worry.

I move on to a funny little piece started last time I was in the studio the tin batton pieces I’m following the idea that at times it’s good just to make and not overthink but let the art evolve. I’m undecided what exactly its about other than ‘an article’. A collection of physical sketches. I keep on rearranging it and get tired and just make a decision and glue it.

Ursula Von Rydingsvard has a collection of pieces called ‘little nothings’ a collection of smaller less self-conscious pieces. this seems like a helpful technique and I’m trying to fill my bench with quicker pieces whilst I settle with my practice.

Then because it’s been on my mind and in my drawings for a while I cut out a paddle from a fence panel. It’s crude, quick and dirty. But then. I am trying to make quick pieces too and to do it to my satisfaction would realistically take weeks. There is something satisfying seeing it in the physical, it represents something but needs to go under more transformation.

When mounting the paddle quickly on the wall to view it I place the ‘article’ next to it and something small happens that I like. A relationship strikes up between the two pieces it’s small and quiet but present non the less. I leave up and arrange the there current pieces to see them together.

There are various thoughts around the purpose of the paddle that I’m beginning to explore in sketchbooks also relating to the vertical poles.

 

States of mind /  by Justin Harrison

I’m working on assorted projects in the studio. With the mantra ‘make lots’ in my head. I know I can get caught up with trying to perfect stuff and so faster ‘physical sketches’ and experiments makes sense. But I do find it hard and it has been so for the past few days. A lot of my work feels silly. I care about making good work, but then to make good work means letting go. Work that is constrained doesn’t breathe, but is stifling. So I come back around the circle again to - just get on and make.

I start by cutting more wood with no real plan, other than dividing it up to smaller and smaller pieces, with a loose plan of reconstructing it.

Implementing more time limited piece - I set the clock for 1hr. By the end of 2 hrs I have two pieces partially made - (gluing). And a third is glueing to0 - but that’s been evolving over a while.

I’m trying to capitalise on the limited deadlines as a launch point for developing the thread of ideas. Although today I don’t feel entirely convinced. But I do know it works, things reside in my preconscious and I all too often reject them and don’t document them. but if I’ve learnt anything it’s that making and blogging captures the elusive and transient thoughts that actually coalesce into more.

Also this helps document some practical stuff like better ways to secure items whilst glues sets. (String wrapping).

It’s an interesting process - moving through different emotional states with my practice. Some of which I’m learning to ignore as they are counter productive, arresting my process.

I like the more inquisitive states I’ve been finding, photographing and writing and reading as well as making.

 

'Make more' - pages from my sketchbook /  by Justin Harrison

I made more. I don’t quiet understand the direct nature of the vertical forms, but intuitively I do. They have agency but not body. They exist yet remain unavailable. As I draw I’m looking for a specific composition and feel, but I don’t know till I see it. The blackness around them feels important and adds to a generative feel for me.

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‘From nothing comes something’

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The collaging is self-indulgent, there is just something delicious about the waxed paper, and the way it takes a crease. I wonder if I am trying to sculpt when I collage and layer, previously I have made collographs and the same thought occurs then.

Is there a place of drawing and making occupy the same piece/space?
What does it look like?
How can I capitalise on it? Or am I trying to combine two things that are genuinely separate entities?

I also notice that number 7 is my favourite right now and that I have departed from the clear vertical columns. Will they translate up larger? Somehow I want more craft and beauty, more draughtsmanship. It feels ok to play with abstract in my sketchbook but I want the dialogue to remain accessible in some form. Or does it?

Am I doing too much on behalf of the audience? Should I trust them to interpret? To paraphase Roland Barthes -’ the audience becomes the author’

 

I bled on it, it must be finished. /  by Justin Harrison

Really wish I’d put a coat of Aussie wax on it, just three coats of neats foot oil feels too vulnerable. But then it is a fragile little piece. The wood is thin, knotted and brittle, the leather porous and sensitive to it’s environment (including my blood - I jabbed my finger several times sewing it).

I think that’s what the piece is about, sensitivity and vulnerability in passage. But its more as well///

I finished late Sunday night - just in time for Monday, an annoying tension of kinda rushing it but then taking too long. ((( Note this started out as a piece that’s supposed to be made in an hour)))  But what’s come out of it is interesting and suggests to me that I should attempt the experiment of’ limited making time’ again,especially as the concept was generated through that process.

I’m intrigued by the artwork thats been made and what it touches on: Restoration, RePlacement, Resistance. Strongholds (my ref - not a theme clearly described in the piece) Momento mori, death as passage, way marker, the fear that permeates change.  

/// I’ve burnt the wood so intentionally, the surface quality is really important, transitions from raw wood into charred wood through to high polished grain and knots. I’m wanting to use the visceral feel of materials and their treatments to articulate.

I am curious to work with the fencing panels some more ( I have a bunch stashed in the studio), sanding and polishing to transform it to find value and beauty. \\\ I spoke in class the other day about ‘Agitating Agents’ people or situations that rub us up the wrong way, how they can work to refine us, teach us. Slough off the surface detritus. Process and change and discomfort.

I also wonder what would happen to the piece if I were to change it’s scale and it 3 meters high. But then I’d really have to love the piece to commit to it.

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Is this work  a documentation of passage or an intercession for change? or both I can’t really decide at the moment but then maybe I don’t need to and it’s in the process of practice I may find answers.