Making

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.

 

In the studio 2nd day /  by Justin Harrison

I now have two leather pieces I’m working on at the same time, Jericho and ‘Unammed’ . I spend a fair amount of time making the forming blocks for unnamed, I know it’s worth the effort now to avoid permanent flaws later. Dents and creases in the leather annoy me and detract. Natural scars are great but I want the leather to be exquisite and the other materials next to it are raw, crude and basic.

The natural leather takes on these beautiful honeyed sepia tones when it’s undyed. The trick is to find it in the leather with just oils and waxes.

I end up with a crazy clamp system as I decide I want the leather as even as possible.

With Jericho I measure up and then insert plastic to protect the opposite side for the cut I’m about to make. The cut is important so I sharpen the knife first. Want the join to be as close to seamless as possible. It’s becoming the language of the work. a contrast between refined and crude….The cut is good and cutting the two over each other works well for a flush fit.

There’s an ideal plasticity to wet leather which I feel I’ve just missed, but it’s unavoidable as I can’t be in the studio everyday. Using neats foot oil once it’s properly dry should help smooth things out.

Moving on to the wood I realised it needed to do more, scorching it seems like a natural response. I did some tests and sealed it with danish oil. I need the leather to contrast and not get grubby and it seems like the danish oil does the trick. I like the idea of caring for the fencing panels lthe same way I would a high end wood like oak or mahogany.

I frequently refer back to my drawings for reference position and placement of details.

I want to sand it back, scorch it but also leave the honest state that it exists in now. It seems odd but as I san the wood I have a care for it almost an affection, I wonder if it’s the soul qualities it has..

I scorch the final pieces and pray a little a I do so. I’m meshing intent into the piece, welcoming the Spirit.

I take the wood inside to sand and oil as I do so I feel a sense of excitement rise., the work is taking on character - a key thing that happens when a piecemeal like it’s working out.

 

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

 

Passing Through - Collograph Print /  by Justin Harrison

‘Passing Through’ Collograph print on paper. (Image my own)

I needed to find a school/studio safe process to seal the collograph plate. This was a test of the new sealing process.

I kinda like it.

He’s got something going for him and he’s going places, even if he is dead.

Another fast piece, made in under an hour. Although not one sitting - more like 10mins, 30 mins, 20mins. I wasn’t timing but you get the idea.

Again there is a pleasure for. me with drawing and by extension printmaking, specifically collograph. I get to draw three times. Once when I first draw the image, second when I cut the plate and third when I wipe the plate.

There is something deeply satisfying about drawing for me, it’s visceral, and somehow beyond my words. I long to make a drawing so honest and from so deep within that it it falls off the page.

Again I’m connecting to my materials trying to find a tone of voice to them, also not thinking too much.

Rhythmns.

I also wondered about encaustic wax, I stumbled across it today reading a web page about it. There’s a quality to it that I suspect could be really delicious. I’ve set drawings in wax before by just dipping but this is a more intentional process, proving layers and tones. In addition it gives me another material - another dialect. I’m concerencd that I’m adding yet another process to learn and adding more time whichh I really don’t have right now…

Tick tock….

 

Jericho /  by Justin Harrison

Not too shabby I took of the clamps off the experiment from last Thursday - ‘disrupt the average’. I decide that I do like it after all.

I think about putting it in the interim show and my internal maker starts hyperventilating and wants me to spend hours on it. ‘People are gonna see it and think I am a moron’.

I fuss with it a little bit and realise that actually I am gonna need to re-wet form the leather, its a minor technical thing but how I’ve cut the leather means I’m not gonna be able to stitch it well or at all. Not being super picky just need to make it work, AND I start to think that this is part of the work, I want the leather to be exquisite because I’m using such crappy wood, this is the premise for the dialogue between the materials - allowing them to speak. Value systems. Also the wood has value because of it’s source. An invisible quality to the material.

As I’m fussing the art work tells me that its called ‘Jericho’ - I don’t understand this but know better than to push to deep at this stage - I may be informed later - if the work feels like it,///

Hopefully I can finish this off fairly quickly - I want to play more with the faster and slower rhythms of making.The idea was impromptu andI guess this will just have to be.

Also there are other questions to ask about what other processes or materials could come into play. Do I burn the wood or add copper? Or perhaps these are second and third piece and this one should just be. Plus I really son’t have long…

This piece is also leading to some other ideas about abstract/representational work, and a narrative about travellers and what they pack…

 

Disrupted averages /  by Justin Harrison

Image: My own

Disrupted averages (Concept - Jonathan Kearney)

In the studio I have an hour or so.

Not long///

I have left items out on the desk from my last visit. I do it to provoke myself. It’s irritating and funny at the same time. Pieces of textured leather  - favourite tools. It all makes me want to make things immediately - the materials speak, not a language I entirely understand but it is language none the less.

I hang some large watercolour paper I have plans for - been day dreaming about making huge black ink drawings. Bold and sensitive, ink dispersing to granular clouds of vapour.

My phone is a pain in the arse and kepis turning off ###

Disrupt your averages/// 

I tried to make something in a hurry tonight. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I decide I have to make something in the next hour, using what I have collected or hoarded around me. This means working fast, the opposite of what I normally do, usually I take long, considering, measuring, crafting experimenting. This has to go out the window.

So I begin, I keep it simple. I take two pieces of wood  cut the other day. I had plans for them, but I can always cut more. (I have a generous supply of old fence panel wood stashed in the corner). Playing with the two pieces in different arrangements I decide I want to join them somehow, I consider plaster but know this will take too long, instead I cut a small piece of leather with the intention to make a cuff to join them.

I’m already breaking my own rules by not sharpening my head knife first - it should cut in one or two passes - it takes too many and leaves slight double edge. I cringe internally and move on.

Then get annoyed an go back and clean it up, but quickly. Next I soak the leather to wet form it. I run it under a tap - ideally I’d leave it in a clean bowl of warm water and watch the bubbles ecstatically escape the back of the leather but again this all takes time. The skin takes long to relax under the cold water. Like me it's cold.

As I fold the leather around the wood and clamp it - I realise that it’s too small compositionally, intuitively I want a larger cuff - to have more presence. I should have seen this before I started.

Then I have a some realisations as the hour comes to a close///

  1. I’m no way gonna finish in time.

  2. I failed and that’s fine.

  3. I will need to cut more leather and reform it and wait for it to dry.

    Thats annoying ### It’s annoying as its wasteful, and is gonna cost me time and finance. Then it occurs to me that this is an issue for me. Like a big issue. I don’t like to waste anything, because I can’t afford to. I realise that historically I have always worked very carefully and methodically and meticulously. I thought it was because I liked well made work. (I do - but that’s not the point) It’s mostly because I’m afraid to make mistakes. I’ve learnt to work this way to not spend money or make errors.

I think about the maxim - the rich stay rich while the poor get poorer. (This week it was announced that the worlds 10 richest men have doubled their wealth over the past two years whilst more people have fallen into poverty).

I wonder if rich culture increases and advances, because it can innovate far quicker, it doesn’t need to conserve its resources. It can afford to waste a few prototypes, raw materials, money and make mistakes. Where as poorer cultures work must work carefully and methodically with the precious few commodities or compromise instead, still creative and innovative, but advancing at a slower speed.

I also realise:

  1. All the work I've done is really useful and informative and it's ok to experiment and waste a little bit of leather. No time has been wasted but well spent exploring. It's informative.

So. interesting. I disrupted my average tonight and I saw something in myself, my practice and perhaps my culture.

IMAGES+++

My own

 

Make lots of things /  by Justin Harrison

I can not justify this piece, except that I love crafting and making, direct from my hands, this includes drawing especially too. Oh and for some reason I particularly like the colour of the plastercine today. Portraits feel so ‘art self- indulgent, arrogant and over confident of thier place in art history and practice. It makes it hard for me to make - except that I get some sort of satisfaction at summoning forth the work. Finding moments of detail described in a simple gesture or mark that Describes much more.

I struggle as it doesn’t feel very ‘Fine Art’ or very ‘CSM’. But then what has value. What does it mean for me to abandon approval. What could I make?

I’m still rolling over my friends words, how there is a quality and uniqueness to the things I make. The presence of the artist in the work. Even in a photograph or ready made, when work is really successful I feel as though the presence of the artist can still be discerned, felt.  

Still looking for the more in my work, something…a hand full of pigment cast like dust on the floor. A sentence that unravels the moment. An image that summons an aching. The more. Work that transcends the ordinary of everyday.

 

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.

 

Studio /  by Justin Harrison

Working in the studio. I've been drawing these articles for some time and it was good to have my hands on physical materials, to work towards making. I feel like I'm getting stuff done when I hold a section of metal or batton of wood.

There were various plans I had and I knew I wouldn't get everything done, but I was glad have charred some wood and dipped it in plaster. That's not it - the work. Just a test of the materials to see how they behave and look together.

I had a bunch of questions in my head - trying to see where the work can go. Essentially it should work. I want to build up the layers of plaster enough to carve back into forms, polish and refine. I realise that I need to use scrim if I am to escape the form of the baton, although this could present problems later on when carving back if the scrim is exposed.

For some reason I have chosen the shittiest wood, old fencing panels. Sometimes it disintegrates as I cut it. But there is a charm to it too. It's honest and lacks pretence. If I were to use new wood somehow the dialect changes. The other thing I note is the wood came from an art director who I worked for back in the day, she's passed on now and there is an element of memento mori and honouring to using this wood. It smells too - the creosot gives off a tar like scent that isn't unpleasant, but some how a little unsettling. The associations and the scent jar almost - stood amidst it all I find the moment odd.

The plaster makes a heat of its own as I mix it in the cold studio. It's always a fight, waiting for the right moment the only lasts a minute or so. I dip the wood and then immediately figure out a way better way to do this. Next time I can production this a little better if I set it all up and have the battons suspended.

I'm not entirely sure the plaster is white, it seems to have a cast to it. Will need to research it there are better brands to use. Was good to be making.

 

I am everything you left behind. I am everything you don't want /  by Justin Harrison

An ‘opportunistic print’. So not necessary my work?
’Somebody’ left a sink in a hot mess.
I just found it and pulled a print form it.
I’m gutted that I didn’t think to photograph the sink first, it would have made this.

But there you go, somedays I’m awake and the others…well.

This isn’t the first time I’ve played this game, there have been a few other occasions where I have been able to ‘capitalise’ on chance. But this episode has inspired the words or perhaps title:

‘I am everything you leave behind’

‘I am everything you don’t want’

This happens sometimes - something sticks in language, I discover a pull in the words. I feel a weight behind a phrase - yet I don’t understand what it is. It’s like it’s a mystery for me to solve. Maybe in the making. Something exists beyond my frame and I have to pull it in. Land it.

This image is a landing of some kind - of the phrase.

 

Day 2 in the Forest/// /  by Justin Harrison

Stripping the wood down to the raw white wood I find there are about 4 different layers of to get through till you get to the wood.

My wife worries that I’ll be cold, I have a thermos of hot Japanese tea but I don't need it the work is hot it’s self.

I spent more time stripping wood of it's bark. Learning about the material and how it responds. It informs about the time scale if I want to work larger. It will take longer than I thought.

I also burnt the wood a little, it was green, wet and took time to colour. I'm not sure if I like it. Whether it will work how I imagined. I wanted a gradient that transitioned well but its patchy and organic. It's not how I drew or imagined.

I tested a stripped stick and a natural one against each other. Hammered them into the dark brown earth. There was something about it I liked and I wonder if it might work better on a much larger scale. There does seem to be a language to it - the contrasting vertical presences. Although I miss the craft of drawing and sculpting - this feels too simplistic somehow.

Perhaps when I add copper to it the voice will come through more.

Another thought crossed my mind. how. would the work change in voice if I were to cast sticks in porcelain? It would take black colour well if I wanted to dip or stain. Raw porcelain has that toothy bite to it which would take the black.

I'm also worried that this is taking a lot of time, all this effort for work that's not very good.

I took more sound recordings too, they still amuse. 

Oh year and the ribbons, as I shaved the bark off I made ribbons which reminded me of the blown out tire, the same forms occurred, similar violence had occurred to the object to create the form.

Stripped.

 

Pulling threads - everything is divisible /  by Justin Harrison

Not deconstructing just dismantling.

Derrida says everything is divisible, so I divided the canvas into threads warp and weft. It could continue reducing to finer fibres, then to chemical compounds///atomic structure///neutrons and protons///up quarks and down quarks and gluons///

I liked the stages of undoing. An abandon to the process and loss of form and purpose, yet still remaining with some memory of self. I could paint 4 canvases and dismantle 1. As a set. All equal in the sum of their ‘constituent parts’. The Horizontal and Vertical. Undoing.

(I also felt ridiculous doing it, like I was performing being an artist, really an imposter. Trying so hard to be conceptual - I’m not convinced - It feels smug and empty at the same time.)

Taking photos as the canvas eroded and reverted to threads. A partial dismantling  - the first division.

I’m not sure I understand deconstruction or Derrida anymore.  I read him and think I grasp it then when I got back I have no idea how I thought what I did. 

Read Anthony Gormley today - I love his drawing and felt encouraged by how he’s free to draw and let the connection to his more involved sculpture work itself out. The are ties between the two practices but not always immediate or linear. 

Reading/// Derrida’s ‘Letter to a Japanese friend’. /—— again

Researching/// Matthew Barney. I love the vast expanse of his narratives, along with the interconnected themes that relate and reference. His work had such a strong relationship to materials, although I know a lot of his work is made for him, which I would find hard - not to get my hands dirty but have someone else make my work..

Things I want to make:

Stick bundle
Bundle drawings
Immerse installation
Etched copper tubes 
Stick feathers -wood and plaster
Bundle and wall set
Small natural linen drawings 
Axe for an angel - etch on axe cheek.
Immerse diagram drawings
Portraits
Large wing drawing representational to abstract.
Plaster sculpture abstract for. With inserts.
Large gestural drawings 

 

Holly is a sticky wood /  by Justin Harrison

Out on location in woods. Looked for and found a resource of wood to process for ‘bundle 1’.

A number de-limbed branches were on the ground so I took the opportunity.

Again to hold materials in my hands feels good and adjusts the course of my thinking.

I realise that this project is going to take longer and more energy. The holly doesn’t give up its bark easily and is a stick wood to work with when green but pleasingly dense and heavy, and to process a number of large poles will take some time in addition to resourcing them.

I stripped one shirt Barton and left a little bark which gave a texture that spoke differently to what I expected.

I was short of time and didn’t get to burn the wood or test it against copper. However I processed a pile of wood and worked up a sweat despite the cold. I want to capture the whiteness of the wood Before it greys. The contrast to be pronounced when I burn one end.

Staining paper to in preparation for drawing letting the inks ‘bleed out’, possibley another form of dismantling my work.

Research: artists, context and connecting theory.

During making I also recorded the sound of me working - I thought of my friend who I’m collaborating, with who’s first instinct is a musician, I figured it would be fun and provocative to make a recording of the sounds of me working on the sculpture for our collaboration and send it to him instead of pictures///