scale

Jointed Paddle - Ritualised tool of Passage by Justin Harrison


It’s take all summer and I was supposed to be working on fast pieces. But I had this paddle planned for a time since I cut a joint in a section of thick Holly wood. This is the progression from the initial idea. It’s just so hard cutting and drilling Holly. It’s a defiant material and somehow I like it’s resistance.

It feels good to work at a larger scale and I’m keen to find a better way of displaying it and perhaps contextualising it. I do wonder about the previous discussions on animation and film. How would this lend it’s self to being filmed? Could a short looped film of it in the forest with a liminal persona?

There’s a lot I like about this, the surface with some under bark left for texture, the pegs holding it together are kinda cool, brought cut and also from nearby Holly, a little like tuning pegs, I enjoy their prominence - somehow they add something more to the piece. I like the way the blade moves the animation that comes through the articulation. Again it asks to be animated, but how and why?

I do imagine a multiple sectioned paddle spiralling round with a figure in the centre. Or could it abstract more, and focus on essences?


 

Hatters Wood by Justin Harrison


It took me a while to settle in the space - I needed to walk and talk.

Began collecting wood soon found I wanted bigger sticks. Size and scale is important. The scale matters - a lot. The central pole must be long 10 foot. it affects the presence of the work. The materials need to speak as much as I do.

I noticed a simple split in the wood as I worked it, striping it of it’s bark. Beautiful in its stark simplicity. It’s presence unashamed.

There was a suggestion to place the work against grass but no, it really feels wrong - it becomes a formal sculpture where as in the wood it’s some thing else - an intervention? No something more sympathetic and synchronistic.

This work is a collaboration with an artist and musician and friend. I am leading the sculptural part of the work in response to music written and performed by Jon.

I am making drawings and sculptures influenced by Jon’s music - somewhere in the work I trust will be a coalescence.

Working together was new and a little unsettling.

However it soon became something more comfortable. The ensuing dialogue is becoming more and more interesting although I still resist a little.

This work was test - how would the basic elements work in the space. But was by no means a finished piece more a physical sketch.

Seeing the poles felt good- creating the space. Intervening in the space -although it also felt very incomplete even if the other elements I’ve thought of and drawn were to be included; fire, copper, bone wre there - it would still be too simplistic.

Moving the leaves helped too, clearing the ground. But I do want something of me not just something modified but made. The core of the work, the substance of the piece. A point of focus.

Theres a lot for me to say having made this test piece:

More is needed - it feels interesting but very incomplete.
What’s missing?
What is needed?
The Copper - did it work?
Scale?
The core idea of the work.
Liminal themes
What am I saying…///

Jon’s Comments>>>

I like it. Something about it is transcendent.

Wow factor 

Element needs added- that’s only me.

Something from the earth

Something of reverence

Needs something to push it.