My freelance creative process and practice / Sheffield based.
I’m developing a body of work called Carapace, they’re going to be armours, skins, husks… wearable hopefully. For this I’m experimenting with paper clay, how thin can I make it, what qualities can I make the most of. I’m also re-organising this site to ensure images of my work are more prominent.
I love the idea of having a hardened exterior. I definitely don’t permanently but it is a good feeling to be finding your shell again. This word also relates to new work on which a longer piece will follow. I did the sketch below after loading but before unloading my kiln and I was so pleased to see the same shapes emerging.
of, relating to, having, or forming a crust or shell
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crustaceous
Emotion of the day series, with thanks to Be Manzini
Enjoying researching fury related words for my four protest badges. The words in the photo are taken from the etymology of forge, fray, fiery and fight.
Having fired the moulds taken from the plaster ceiling rose (see previous Instagram posts here and here) I pressed the first round of porcelain shapes today. The hands holding tools are the most interesting to me and I’ve started to think of these as protest badges. I’m thinking of calling the collection The Furies and then individually they could be things like Fiery, Fury, Frustration, Forge, Fight. The potentially unglazed porcelain or a matte finish glaze will hopefully evoke a classical marble statue. I’m hoping to finish these for Sheffield Ceramics Festival in July.
A good studio session throwing porcelain for a new tall (taller than kiln) sculpture to be stacked over a cane for support.
I recently finished A Room of One’s Own for the first time. There’s so much more to say than this initial post but in the midst of several funding applications I am reminded of two of so many phrases that hurtled towards me.
“That collar that I have spoken of… bowed my head to the ground.“
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (p.5, Vintage Classics)
This physical manifestation of worry or preoccupation is a concept I’ve ruminated on for some time. The Daily Journeys We Wear is an overarching concept for my present art practice. The notion being our lived experience can be manifested in wearable sculpture, portraits that enclose, cage, guard or amplify us.
I am developing a new series:
Worn: A Battleground.
Exploring what we carry with us.
Accumulated weight. An armour of sorts.
Worn Weft Weary. A trio.
Vestiges of an emotional battleground, artefacts.
I like the sense of a trio emerging here. They’ll be several stances forming a group I think. The W words are textural and a ripe starting place as specific words often are for me.
“A nugget of pure truth to wrap between the pages of your notebook and keep on the mantelpiece forever.”
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (p.4, Vintage Classics)
I loved this phrase from the moment I read it. That preciousness and the idea of a gift of words. A weightiness too though that can be burden like the previous collar. It is writing I want to write and the pressure I feel to find such writing when deadlines loom.
Documenting this sketchbook helped hone why they’re such a key part of how I develop work. Continually reframing the composition of pages and elements I revisited the textures, surfaces and shapes I was interested in when putting the pages together. I tend to work with several projects in mind with so much not realised in sculptural form. Sketchbooks continue alongside making and documenting and bringing them online has added another dimension to the research and revisiting process.
Anna Kime