experimental

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.

 

Poetic discovery of the hidden /  by Justin Harrison

An interesting conversation in the MA group today, following so questions form JK Andrea gave me a very interesting challenge…

Describe my research/practivce - using new words, ones that I haven’t previously used. Also the word ‘multidisciplinary’ was banned too.

I felt the challenge - it was good one which made me think about my work differently - consider it from different interstices.

I found these words: Poetic discovery of the hidden.

Which felt really good, there was space in them and yet they articulate a lot of what I feel.

 

Negative Lever /  by Justin Harrison

I’m in the studio processing materials I’ve collected. It’s been a week or so since I was in the forest and all I want to do is amass wood and bits. I think it’s because I am so led by my materials - the feel and presence and history. However I don’t feel comfortable just making cute little bundles. It feels like a ‘get out’ clause - just tie some bit’s together and it will pass as art. I really want more the presence of the artist upon the material leading to its transformation and meaning.

I’m trying to tie up unfinished/explored  ideas, the wood I cut is for bundle and more pegs. I make another peg but split the wood nailing the leather into it, the wood is too thin the black tack butchers into it - clefting the slim peg I had cut - need to get some simmer tacks.

I then clear my bench and take a drawing from the card form I had made some time back from disgarded boxes. it’s been on my wall for a while, because I wasn’t entirely sure why I had made it. But I did feel potential to it and now it may lad to sculptural work.

The paper is so large it takes up all available space in the studio and I have to stand in my bench and the paper to work.

The drawing is interesting- nothing too dramatic but I still like it. I would like to make it in black ink and in negative with a watered black wash. It also occurs to me that it would be interesting to make the form in stacked found wood. And a version in negative in stacked found wood. I still have more fence panels and I imagine stacking and gluing it.

SO maybe potential. But also thinking realistically about where I take this all for the MA show…

And what is this piece about - I’ve called it a Negative Lever. More tools for navigation of uncertainty.

 

Colour tests /  by Justin Harrison

So a whole session in the studio has been spent hand sanding a large diameter copper pipe. I’m allowing myself this indulgence of protracted fussing as I had also just made some faster pieces. It’s a balance right? Well maybe therapy, I had planned to use an angle grinder but it just felt wrong - disrespectful to the metals nature, the spirit of what I want to make. So I make my way up the grit papers. I was planning to go for a mirror polish but it feels tawdry somehow. I plan to knock it back by a grade or two.

It’s a test piece for my collaboration. I felt intimidated by the size and time it required so this a simplified stripped down version. Drawing should have been made at this point. but they are still in the atmosphere - I’ll pull them down later.

The copper is to test it’s reflective capabilities in low light. If it works then Jon and I can push on and develope the piece.

I do feel excited that this can develope and expand, I just need to stay relaxed and flow.

As I edit the photos for this post I also realise - that a comment made by Jonathan has sunk into my mind, and has been resurfacing from time to time. He had mentioned about my use of colour - I need to discuss this through a little more as I’m not entirely sure what he meant but it was encouraging none the less, and I become more aware as I examine the images - some colour and compositional tests.

I also wonder about etching drawing onto the copper, embroiling it and setting things, ideas and feelings into the fabric of the piece.

Also the music I’m listening to is filtering in. connecting and encouraging me. I need to keep a log as I easily forget what blesses my heart and making.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xrmTND6Jo4

 

I don't know /  by Justin Harrison

I don’t know what I made, or why I made it. But I like it.

I wanted to test the print screens at work, so I knocked up a quick stencil. Impromptu - I went with an impulse and a sense, I briefly saw this in my head. Cutting the stencil freely it took no more than 10 mins to make. (Using newsprint paper as the stencil)

Again in a rush due to other commitments - I pulled a quick print preloading the screen and pulling 2 passes.

The above is the first print. I was kinda pleased and surprised. Again I worked quick and unselfconsciously as it was just a test. But I can tell Iike the result… I photographed it and have been returning looking at it from time to time.

Again - It this thing that I need, to give myself permission to make work easily- not every worry piece of art hs to be laboured.

It’s inspired me - I want to use the stencil and make 2 colour prints of the black, grey, amber and the yellow that follows me. Also I had thought to make a print of the stairs, reduced to stark blocks of tone. A translation. I make a test in Illustrator - trace over the photo but dislike the literal iteration, it needs to evolve and be an interpretation. I’ll approach it again with simpler more intuitive making.

I also worry as this os quiet a departure form what I have been doing, but somehow I need to make it, get it out of my head.

 

Ritualised Tools of Passage /  by Justin Harrison

I'm sanding some reclaimed wood for a piece and I hesitate, the colours of the grain - the history of the wood are emerging subtle yet sweet; knots, creosote, grain and dirt, its like a book with an obscure narrative that I'm trying to follow - I'm slightly torn how much to sand, I love the glassy feel of super smooth lacquered wood but it feels like a crime to remove anymore of the paternation, like I’m erasing memories. I'm trying to engage with time in a disrupted way. Keeping the history yet making new.

I accidentally put Danish oil on first - I had planned to use varnish however I know that these mistakes often work for the better so I don't worry too much. Fine saw marks appear, as forgotten half healed scars as the oil soaks into the dry fibres of the wood. Then I put too many layers on and it changes the colouration I had been obsessing over, the oil takes the wood to more warm honey colours and some of the paternation disappears.

/// I lament for a moment///

However these sculptures are meant to be fast explorative pieces, all of which is research and informative. The more I make - the more I learn about the materials and my work.

As the oil is drying I cut a second piece of wood, it's thin and brittle and doesn't have the subtlety of shape that I want, so I take to carving at it in attempt to have a little more control. This works but ads time to the process. I'm able to manipulate and manifest the forms that I feel in my head.

At some point it also occurs to me that I can char the wood that I will get a nice contrast against the Holly pegs I've been making and plan to add. This changes the voice of the piece, more gravitas than the honeyed wood. I like it and putting the two together creates more dialogue that I enjoy. (I do wonder about how I animate this work more a feature of the other recent sculptures)

On reflection of the two sculptures placed together as a piece - I almost feel as tough I've happened upon something that I shouldn't have. Like opening a tomb.

The apertures agents, the pegs agents in conflict. Some sort of holy/unholy moment. The passage at crux. The threat of the outside coming in.

I'm not sure I quiet understand what I've made, I need time to absorb what is going on. A slow burn.

 

In-between /  by Justin Harrison

In-between having purpose, being discarded, becoming waste. The wood and cigarette packet lie in the passage awaiting transformation from one state to another. Passing from one territory into another.

Passage is the beginning of movement of all things, references, being, knowledge, place, identity, territory, history, home, meaning.

More materials to process, strip back and rePlace. I’ve taken them back to my studio, to see what they say.

 

It seemed like a good idea at the time /  by Justin Harrison

Mud

Smells bad

I look weird

Forest smells good, wet

Trees look fecund, perfect light

I rush

Forget to photo in sequence. My keenness blindness

Mud applies odd full of sticks and stones

Realise the smell is also duck shit

Drawing is hard, feels silly

Like a bad idea, not how I had imagined

Run down my arms

Not as good idea as I thought

Drawing is not working how I planned

Maybe that’s ok

I left in a hurry and didn’t ask the tree how it felt about it

///////

The above is my notes - I was gonna write a detailed journal entry but I think I prefer just the notes.

Further thoughts.

I think about using terracotta clay it would apply easier and I’d have more control with the drawing but I also know that the materials would need to be integrous, If I were to buy the clay it might feel synthetic.

I need to look around and find a river with red clay, maybe go onsite and collect it and work with it. A set of drawings across 5 or so trees?

Sources for naturally occurring clay

https://victorianweb.org/science/geology/smith3.html

https://nativehands.co.uk/2016/11/wild-pottery-clay-digging/#:~:text=You%20can%20also%20look%20for,area%2C%20that's%20a%20good%20sign.

I did like the blackness of the pond mud against the lightness of the tree. It has a quality to it that feels satisfying. The materials matter. It was textured too with leaf matter and sticks, this to gave it a unique quality and tone of voice.

I do need to go back and visit. See how the drawing changes as it returns to the forest 🌳

A ritual tool

Addendum///

I returned a month or so later, I really wasn’t expecting to find much and was suprised to find most of it intact. I find that I like it but not enough, it feels like it needs more, but I can’t quiet figure what. I do like that I’m drawing in mud. Mud made up from decaying elements of the immediate surrounding, leaves , twigs, dust and yes duck feaces. Some how it rising up from the ground feels interesting. I do still worry about it feeling ‘Andy Goldsworthy’ but again if I could push the work a bit harder it might stand on it’s own better.

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Passage /  by Justin Harrison

There is something about this that I like, I’m not sure how I feel about reducing my drawings to a gif. But then I’m not sure it’s reduced them, it’s done something else for me. I wonder where I could take it, and what it means right now.

I think there is an element of strangeness that I like, the transitioning the movement that is somehow honest, it’s not trying to be an animation with a distinct narrative. It’s a broken moment, a haunting, ‘time is out of joint’.

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 my 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.

This is a slightly modified version form my first attempt. I worry that this could mean hours on my computer. Have I really only discovered animation now?