Sculpture

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.

 

Strip /  by Justin Harrison

This is gonna look like I’ve lost my mind….But then I guess when art is being it’s least performative - perhaps it’s being most honest and has greater potential for insight. Or to at least move towards something genuine.

There is simple pleasure for me in removing some of the bark, ‘stripping’ to raw wood. I’d like to do it almost surgically. However I also enjoy the rhythm of the cut marks across the surface. A rhythm that feels located in the familiar. I’d like to have multiples but worry about time and is it worth it for the work. Is this my work? I keep looking for clues from myself.

I’ve been listening to various of talks on Derrida, Mark Fisher, Marx, Julia Kristeava. Presence and performance and Image. . I don’t know that I can surmise it all just yet. But something akin to - Presence in crisis, the lack of location and reference - a digital malaise or palsy.

 

At the core /  by Justin Harrison

I’m not really sure what’s going on with my art work. Having finished a busy season where I work - I’ve allowed myself some down time. Being in the forest and making whatever I feel like. It’s odd to see what is manifesting when I’m not being observed and there e is no real agenda, or imagined audience.

I see that I am motivated by materials, just having something in my hand is provocative. I keep on stripping sticks, it’s a satisfying ritual reducing on half to a naked white state. Hazel strips easier than holly, and gives a whiter wood. I like the contrast between the dark bark and white wood - some form of binary. Not that I believe in binaries. I find them almost dangerous, treacherous.

I became enamoured with the green of the Holly tendrils, previously I have been only using wood that has fallen. (I am everything you left behind). However I wanted to see how it felt to break my own rules. The vivd green had a diffenret feel to it and felt as though it invited a different response. I guess its the language of materials for me. I worked in a very unconscious manner and let the form evolve with little intervention.

I’m not sure it really succeeds as a piece, however it still falls in to the category of ‘little nothings’ timed pieces.

 

Cleansing /  by Justin Harrison

I had some time, so Iwent to the forest. I find it such a refreshing location to be in. Immersed in sea of tress and green. I find a place to be, to quiet myself.

I took my coffee pot - it’s a ritual. A place of prayer.

There is a clearing I favour, occupied by Oak and Holly. When I came upon it today it had litter and various bits of evidence human passage. It upset me, it felt very wrong. I cleared it as an act of cleansing and humility. Remembering that I make mess, literal and spiritual.

Some small works came…’little nothings’ - quick and unselfconscious. (More limited timed pieces). Playing with materials. Stripping. Stripping small branches of their bark The work seems overly simplistic, but then this is an exercise in me getting out of my own way, not censoring everything and realising what can come out of play. So much is serious and ‘oh so earnest’.

The drawing followed and I can’t decide which way it should go up, or where it should go. But I almost need to just get this stuff out of my head to make room for the following ideas. A cleansing. My head is full of stuff, it’s getting crowded.

Breathe.

I see the forest as a site of constant change and micro transformations. Growth and Decay. Transformation up and Transformation down.

 

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.

 

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.

 

The woods /  by Justin Harrison

I’m back out with the trees. What is it with this location? I don’t feel like my work resides here - but there is an sense of place of peace of belonging.

I hunt around and find what I was hoping for, a fallen Holly limb. It’s been cut but that wasn’t me, my impact matters and I won’t cut down live trees. 

In cutting wood for the bow piece I realise it’s not going to work. The thickness I want won’t bend, I’m going  against the nature of the wood. Even if I try and steam it I don’t think it will yield.

I like the piece quiet a lot and don’t want to abandon it but I may need to realise it in a different way.


Personal Notes: Cutting wood is research. Practice based research. Movies are research. Reading is research. Discussions are research. Whereever I make enquiries is research. My intent and focus.


To Draw/Make

Paddle - the journeyman 

Collograph - multiples of Horse as prep for large format drawings

Bundle

Backpacks

More leather casing/strapping

 

Just stuff I like /  by Justin Harrison

Not been the most productive this past week, I think my Brian had had enough after the assessment and interim show. So as an attempt to get things moving again - I’m just collating a bunch of stuff I like especially around the idea of books.

There is always a desire to draw and to explore drawing, I’m looking for a common thread to explore or maybe just make stuff and see what happens, I suspect the latter is better because the former sounds like an old procrastination tactic. I like the idea of pages and pages of delicious drawing building a narrative, coloured collographs, mono prints, raw drawings and etchings…

I discovered an artist too (picured above) who seems to be working with similar motifs. I also see similarities to his invertigations.

“In Tibetan text ‘Bardo’ refers to the transitional state between one life and the next, a state in which those that have passed, in a karmic sense, may ne guided by the living towards a more positive ‘rebirth’.
When a tree dies its wood can taken a new form and be re-imagined within a different realm.
Clays was once rock, formed beneath oceans, raised up by the mountains to crumble and be washed to the seance more.
Metal, Glass, Leather, cotton, plastic, stone - all that exists is moving, becoming again, in a constant, cyclical change.
Birth is not the beginning and death is no end”
Nic Webb: Instargram 2MAR2023

Also see: https://www.nicwebb.com/works/hod-english-oak

 

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.

///////

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.


 

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.

 

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.

 

I am everything you left behind. I am everything you don't want #4 /  by Justin Harrison

Another discovery, at 2am this time. Not quiet what I’m looking for… I like when the subject has undergone some form of transformation. However it has this cinematic feel with the lighting, in addition the arrangement of 3 items has some from of aggregation. So I guess it counts.

The subject has this sense of semi-passive/dysfunctional patience to it. ‘Waiting for Godot’. It sits mutely in it’s incompleteness (Half a sofa), somehow stalwart in the belief that it has purpose. This whole image has a late middle aged feel to it. Or is that just me?

I find the first image works best, the lighting and confrontation perspective.

Less of the dead horse in these - which I find disappointing.

 

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.

 

Dead Horses /  by Justin Harrison

I am everything you don’t want. I am everything you leave behind.
(I realise that the sofa comes under this title too)

Ok so been having a little fun researching dead horses. I’m still stuck on the discarded sofa I found in Brighton. The strong connection to dead horses. Especially with it’s four legs stiffly jutting out like rigamortis. Covered in layers of fabric like skin and fat.

My favourite of all the artists had to be Berlindfe De Brukyer, her relationship to the materials she uses is potent and I’m left unnerved and beguiled at the same time. Visceral and cruel her work is quiet matter fo fact and yet more subtle codes are embedded in her layers.

Some of my deep fears and darker encounters seem to reside somewhere in her work to, unsettled Want to leave yet continue to look, like a bad dream that I can’t leave.

https://www.galleriacontinua.com/artists/berlinde-de-bruyckere-21

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Points I’m mulling over in connection to my research questions:

What does it mean to be transformed? How does this occur?

To Discover Temporal and spacial locations in which a form of transformation happens. 

What are the consequences?

Why are the outcomes?

Can we influence the process?

When does it occur naturally?

When has it happened in history?

How do other artists engage with transformation?

Are liminal places key in all this?

IMAGES USED>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A DEAD HORSE - (JEAN-LOUIS-THÉODORE GÉRICAULT)

Untitled (desiccated horse carcass sitting up) - Sidney Nolan (Australian, 1917-1992)

Hungry ones in Petrograd dividing a dead horse in the street (1917) - Ivan Vladimirov

Berlinde De Bruyckere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJwkXf5RK4
https://www.galleriacontinua.com/artists/berlinde-de-bruyckere-21
No Life Lost II, 2015
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/berlinde-de-bruyckere-at-hauser-wirth-new-york-6097/

 

Encombre 2 /  by Justin Harrison

I saw a connection to the enviscerated horses in the movies and the sofa cast aside - partially dismantled. There is something I find unsettling in the brash colour a synthetic fleshly pink mixed with the violent disgorging of springs and struts. Layers of fabric folded back like fat and skin. Struts as bones splintered. Left sprawled, undignified in the street.

Yet how is an old sofa a dead horse?

Sacrificed in its death for another.

Another roadside victim, like a roadkill fox cast to the curb.