passage

Fluid tools of passage /  by Justin Harrison

Having indulged in making clay drawings for the sake of it I realised that I should animate them as I have with some of the ink drawings, the ‘passage’ created feels close to what I have been pursuing. There is a strange tension of pursuing what I feel is so elusive. Yet I need to continue.

Again I am making work in a very loose fashion, just getting it made - so it can exist, if feels right to have a growing number of works that I can focus down on in the future. I imagine this work being animated much more beautifully, the current format of Giffs is perhaps the most accessible but also the crudest. And I do wonder what software would be best I doubt I need powerful software but one that can blend between drawings well. In addition I suspect that I can move the animations further on conceptually to make the work more engaging, I don’t feel like I have to add a lot more narrative - more let the work evolve as I have with the sculpture.

There is scope to experiment more with the drawing, what. and how I render. I do enjoy the gentled looping of it, the constant transitioning and translating, perhaps a peace in the constant changing, that for it to resolve would actual feel uncomfortable.

More a fluid tool of passage, which intuitively makes sense.

 

Negative Passage /  by Justin Harrison

More animated drawing. This worked well the last one I experimented with and I am keen to see where it might go. First is. a Gif then the second a rendered video - not sure if there is a significant difference.

Still mindful of translation, demonstrating a passage.

Silent poetry.

Looking for my poetic discoveries of the hidden.

The animation lacks a little finesse, I’d like smoother transitions and I think the drawings could be a little more on point. I’m still experimenting with the process of drawing and deciding what feels best. A lot of it seems to be me figuring after I’ve made the drawing. I do like the freedom of just making and not overthinking. I get surprised at times when I like the outcome a day later fo see something of value, yet its also infuriating as its so hard to reproduce the effects I especially like and want to capitalise on. I also made a mistake in the tweeting between frames (In passage) and the timing is out but I like it. I like getting lost in the frames, that it never quiet settles.

Basically I get fussy. When I can’t be.

 

Things rarely are how we think they are. /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

I’m in the studio again. I go straight to the piece I’m working on Jericho , keen to finish it in time for the show and just to see it made. I start sanding it again. I have more vision and understanding for it. The burning is scorching, the effect we feel in transition to permanent change.

I wanted to French polish the sanded part have it really refined travelling through up to the raw state. ( I still feel an affection for the work).

I also check on the other leather piece - couple of planning mistakes but no mind - I’m trying to push out more in theses limited time sessions. Embrace the rhythms. I plan to leave the original nature of the wood intact - it’s history still present and hard to deny, but effect a transformation, the passage marked upon and into it’s skin.

There is a journey as you travel up the piece - moving up the wood following the grain, beginning with a finished and polished section, the knots and grain brought out and embellished, the honey of the wood drawn forward, sanded and polished. Then it transitions into blackening, the wood scorched and velvet like becoming a dense black. Finally the black transitions out into the raw original state of the wood when it was a fence panel.

I’m gratful I have a spare pice of fence panel ‘pre burnt’ and sanded to test stuff upon, as I like the work I get more precious about it which can be annoying a slows my making down. This was supposed to be an hours work but has swiftly turned into more. But then the more is good ideas are evolving and gestating. I apply some yathch varnish - longing for French polish. Maybe the second and third layers…

The power has just gone pout in my studio - I’m only in here for a precious 2 hours and now I can’t see. I set up the laptop and use what light is available - I also move out to the hall where there is emergency LED lighting and carry on as best I can.

Almost there what’s left Is to stitch and oil the leather. I wondered about inserting more layers into the piece but I’m trying to keep within my original restraints of a quick sculpture - I edit and have decided to leave it as it is and see how the piece feels once finished. I can always make more and evolve from it - if I like it enough.

 

Encombre 3 /  by Justin Harrison

 

It’s the orange glove, otherwise I might have skipped the scene, as just repeating previous work. But there’s this disembodied skin again - cast against the fragments stone and grit, lying prone, limp and deflated. It had purpose, briefly, visceral and present, now it’s passing through. The black plastic is encroaching, soon to suffocate everything that has been rendered.

Passage and place. Briefly.

Now limp like a dead game bird from a flemish painting.

 

Bag Dump /  by Justin Harrison

I’m not entirely sure where this is going… but there is a thread that runs out from this. I’ve collected these images all formally arranged elements from a bag. There’s something about collection, organisation, display and function. All the items are things I’d like to own, but beyond this it feels like a narrative is buried beneath all of this.

I’ve had this though about travellers, individuals ‘passing through’, there location being ‘in passage’ and place being where they pause for a time, and or where they are going.

There is an element of folk law to it too, I feel like there are deep stories that I need to unearth, maybe in the making, as I make and collect elements for a travellers pack.

Who is this traveller?
What is their purpose?
Where are they heading?
Where did they come from?

Currently Reading:::
The Rites of Passage /// Arnold van Gennep

Currently Listening To:::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46VHdzSdB7k

 

Breaking Down /  by Justin Harrison

I saw a blown out tire on the way to work. Cast to the curb. There was something poetic in its appearance. The confidence of it’s thick black tones counterpointed by the twisted ribbons and threads of it’s insides. Somehow it felt like it had now become a victim of a hit and run. But by whom? Then the leaves add another texture to the scene for me. They too have fallen, curling and twisting in their passage. All transitioning away from their known purpose. Exit.

I’m not sure what I want to do with it, just leave it as photographs or progress it into drawings, there is something about the forms and shapes it takes that is a little provocative to capture - maybe printmaking. Maybe a digital composition of all four images.

 

Trashed /  by Justin Harrison

I feel like my mind has the landscape of an angry 3yr olds bedroom. everything is everywhere and nothing resides in its proper place. It's all out and on the floor. I'm filling pages of my sketchbook with odd disjointed ideas, some manifestations from years ago, some from just now.

I've gone down rabbit hole with Derrida and doubt I'll ever return from that one with any useful information other than he makes your nose bleed if you read too much.

Continuing to build up a glossary of random words I like:

Passage///

Diagram///

Constituent///

Honouring///

Threshold///

Threshing Floor///

Refine///

Filter///

 

It's not funny /  by Justin Harrison

IMG_4664.jpg

I need to figure out why I like this image so much. Taken from Todd Philips ‘Joker’ this scene shows Arthur collapsed after being beaten by youths. He’s in the throws of pain and humiliation and incapacitation, laying prone in the middle of a side alley. Somehow the bright colours add to the jarring nature of the spectacle. The buildings and passage frame him in and out of darkness. I wonder if this could be described as a liminal place but one absent of a ‘master of ceremonies’ to lead him through, no ritualised pattern to follow and exit from a rite of passage. One that Arthur has to deliver himself out of transformed but not transcendent.

A joke, but it’s him, he’s the joke.

But he’s not funny.

The role of the Joker, in some cultures is the trickster, who by their nature stand on the threshold of the sacred and profane, the heyókȟa in Lakota Culture. Stood between the two worlds they exist between the lines.

Also Cayote in indigenous American stories, is a trickster straddling two worlds.

Liminal spaces in ‘rites of passage’ serve a constructive purpose. But when there is no rite to be led through and no leader, then there is decay.