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Blog about my journey as a creative - all views are my own.

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We have been very lucky in Falmouth since the 17th June - The Falmouth Art Gallery on the Moor has hosted an amazing exhibition:

The Legend of King Arthur: A Pre-Raphaelite Love Story

I have been a fan of Pre-Raphaelite art for years, even going so far as to organise a tour of art galleries across the UK in 2011 to see famous pieces by Millais, Holman-Hunt, Maddox-Brown and Rossetti among others. I was elated when I discovered that this exhibition was occurring so close to home, especially since it ties in my love for Arthurian myth and legend also.

Possibly my favourite Pre-Raphaelite piece is the Scapegoat by Holman-Hunt, which hangs in the Lady Lever Art gallery in Port Sunlight, Liverpool. I smiled in my soul when I saw the above piece by the entrance, a surprisingly small landscape by Holman-Hunt. I was very surprised to discover that he had visited Cornwall at all, let alone painted somewhere I had visited and been familiar with. I enjoy Holman-Hunt's highly detailed, yet somehow simple pieces, with careful attention paid to the minutiae of the rock formations and portrayal of the damp and dry sand on the shore. A lovely piece.

The main draw of the whole exhibition was "The Lady of Shallot" by Waterhouse. I had not seen this piece in the flesh as it were before, but was taken aback by its actual size, I had surmised it was smaller. It certainly draws the attention like no other painting in the room. I sat and sketched this in the gallery and drew the attention of some of the other patrons, one man, a pastel artist in his spare time, called me brave for being able to sit and sketch. This struck me as something I had not thought of before about my character. Does it require bravery to be a creative? To want to capture something you see without regard of the thoughts of others who might watch you do so? I pondered this while I drew, but was inspired to work on something similar to the Lady of Shallot in the future maybe. It really is a remarkable piece.

Speaking of pastels, I was blown away when I closely inspected this piece by Evelyn De Morgan. On first glance, this is a sketch in pastel of a suit of armour, plaing silver/grey in appearance. If you pay close attention to the work, neither grey nor silver are used in the composition! I will leave it to mystery as to what actually makes it up, but rather than ponder the meanings of the work this sketch informed, I was totally taken away by her material use and technique. Something which, as time passes, is deeply informing my thinking.

Last but most certainly not least, I adored being able to see some work by Elizabeth Siddal. Her story is very familiar to me as part of the wider Pre-Raphaelite canon story, but in all my travels to see Pre-Raphaelite work, I had not come across her work in this manner before. Being largely untutored in art before meeting her future husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she displayed some talent, enough to pique the interest of John Ruskin, renowned enough that I need not explain who he is. I immediately fell in love with the simplicity of these pieces. It made me wonder; does drawing have to be significantly complex or break new ground to be considered worthy of entering the canon of art? Do we have to have a tragic story in order for our work to be considered posthumously? On the whole - why can't we all be remembered for our creations? No matter how simple they may be?

In short, if you are in Falmouth, please stop by this wonderful exhibition and spend as much time as you can soaking in these wonderful pieces and more! You have until 30th September!

The Legend of King Arthur: A Pre-Raphaelite Love Story - Falmouth Bid

The Legend of King Arthur: A Pre-Raphaelite Love Story is a touring exhibition that will depict the triangular interdependency that exists b

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Since May, I have been working part time with local Blacksmith, Jeremy Cash, based in Mawnan Smith in Cornwall. Since finishing my Foundation year, my time spent at the forge has been a saviour of my mental health.

Working alongside Jeremy, learning an entirely new vocabulary of skills, techniques and tools has been an absolute gift and to be paid for the privilege was just the icing on the cake! I have said from the beginning I would have done it for free!

The biggest project I have contributed to during my time at the forge was a commission for a garden gate to be hung on a property in Mylor Churchtown. From drawing it out in chalk on a work-surface to scale it up to rudimentary tasks beyond. In the sawing, drilling & tapping of various parts of the making process, my work seemed very arbitrary in nature. However, as the process wore on, things started to make sense. Especially when I had worked up in my training towards using the forge itself. Even today there are still times I feel unsteady, but Jeremy is great teacher - patient and methodical in his approach.

I worked on all of the components in the above pictures, from the linked loops to the forging of the bluebells for decoration. I even did most of the first coat of spray-painting; something I had never done before, but am now moderately proficient at.

I even helped in preliminarily fitting the gate in its final position, (see above photos). I find it remarkable how that a year ago I was filled with trepidation about not being up to speed in my learning about artistic practice - I would never have dreamt of working with my hands so much as I have in the past year, but now I have a rudimentary understanding of traditional metalwork. Alongside my previous experience in woodwork and hopefully a future rudimentary understanding of stonework too, I am hopeful to have a strong founding in becoming a sculptor of traditional practice.

I must be honest here; I have recently undergone a bit of an identity crisis. I am so far away from the person I used to be. Sometimes I find myself looking the mirror and not recognising the person I have become. I hope one day to be closer to the artist inside myself I know I am.

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Before this post I have been primarily using this blog for use for my uni work to be graded etc. I have been umming and ahhing over whether or not to use this blog for personal use, I guess I need somewhere to write up my thoughts and creative journey. I have been incredibly tied up with work over summer and haven't had time to write up what I have been up to since before the EoY show for my Foundation year. The week after my own EoY show, I attended the Final Year students EoY show. I was blown away by the quality of the work on display. Above are the only photos I took from the opening night. There was a good reason for the lack of pictures taken; the work of others truly intimidated me and made me feel like a fraud.

I was standing before the work of true artists, and even though this was their night and I should have been inspired by their work, I came away feeling completely and utterly like a square peg in a world of round holes. That I was bereft of any talent, skill or style about who I am and what I am capable of. This is in turn made me feel guilt as none of my feelings were the intention of any artist with work on display. Having a bit of distance from the evening in question, I regret not going back after my wobble as now, I cannot remember a single feeling about the work on show.

The lesson I took from this is to, in future, blinker my feelings about the work of others. To steel my creative soul from fear of the work of others and focus down on making my own art better.

I hope that this speaks to someone out there and it isn't just me who feels like their own work isn't good sometimes. That, in being a creative, there is a vulnerability we face almost everyday to the world. That we are like an exposed nerve ending sometimes, so easily pained by things that aren't really that painful at all.

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All's well that ends well

Last night's preview of the EoY show was a resounding success! The quality of of everyone's work really shone through and couldn't have been more well received. Head's of department for our future BA progressions were there and were thoroughly interested in what we had produced. The staff at the Poly have been amazing in helping us to build and manage our exhibition - all that remains to be said is please go along to our little exhibition if you are in Falmouth today and tomorrow, the Poly is open between 10am and 5pm.

Above are just some of the work on display across all disciplines from the Foundation year. Seeing my wood carvings on display in public is still a lot to take in, but my work is in amazing company!

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Well - the exhibition setup is finally here. The culmination of our 10wk projects and everything we've been working toward.

Once I had come round to setting up my exhibit after helping out where I could, I setup the flats to add the corner that I requested and placed the black linen over the plinth then put everything in place as I had designed. Unfortunately I hadn't foreseen how "drowned" my sculptures were by the sheer amount of white background. Thinking on my feet I was able to source some more linen to hang from the flat panelling. Having hung this in place, I used safety pins to curve in the fabric at the base, to focus the lines toward the sculptures. With the help of Ed from the Poly, I was also able to focus a spotlight on my work and he also loaned me the use of a couple of battery powered tealights, for extra effect in making a shrine.

All that's left to do - is enjoy the opening night!

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So the final wood burnings took a little while, but I am beyond satisfied with the results. There were a couple of mishaps with the woo burner overheating and placing marks that I didn't intend, but I was able to incorporate them into the final designs so that they are unnoticeable.

The finish on them and the smell add to the rustic folk art aesthetic I was aiming for. That said - now that these are complete, I am a little sad at the end of one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever undertaken. Only thing left to do is transport them for exhibition...

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Today was the last taught sessions on the IFY. Although I will carry on seeing most of my cohort next year, I was a little touched in thinking about the journey this year has taken us all on, and how far we have to go as well. Firstly I checked on my rusting experiments from my sculpture and the results were better than I had hoped for!...

From these small blue marks, the ideas of aging I wanted have become brutally apparent! Jon agreed that they now look great and said the effects should just continue to grow over time, along with the drying out of the trunk. After having scanned in my sketchbook and rounded off a few other things ready for this final module submission, I went into town to the Poly to visit the 2nd year Photography exhibition: Melange.

I was immediately drawn to this first selection, due its obvious religious iconography. I was really taken by the way the photographer took the holy and made it controversial by changing the fashion of the model but not the colour, and the colour being what draws the viewer into a religious mindset. Obviously I was of the mind of how it was presented, given that our own exhibition is less than a week away in the same space, but having had this particular exhibit "lay the ground" as it were to have the viewer explore the idea of what their gods and faith might be.

This piece called "Molusca", appealed to my own fascination with macro-photography. I could clearly tell the subject was based in the kelp that washes ashore so frequently on Cornwall's beaches. I knew from previous research that there can exist a microcosm of life in amongst the plant-life that springs from the oceans. It's not often I see such a wonderful piece that speaks to the unseen world all around us. It's large size and presentation were also to be commended as I am sure that it would offer up something new to see with each viewing.

Given the current cost of living crisis, this diptych was particularly poignant. Having the every-man presented in such bold images struck home that every worker, on land, sea and in the air has a story to tell, is living a life that is just trying to get by, exactly as we are. The juxtaposition of vibrant colour next to B&W spoke that nothing is always clear cut, even amongst the most colourful of characters we meet, they are facing the same struggles as those whose lives are obviously living in darkness. A very evocative presentation.

Finally I enjoyed this piece for a number of reasons - I was fascinated at how the photographer technically mastered printing onto a translucent material without losing detail in the image. Also the choice of having light fall through the image from behind was also enjoyable as a viewer. It was a clever choice given the subject matter discussed in the description provided. It also hinted at subjects I have been looking at in terms of our relationships with powerful primordial forces that, as a species, we have had a relationship with since the dawn of time. Obviously we look at nature very differently to our ancestors, but we are still drawn to it's power for creation, calm, inspiration and destruction.

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This week I have been trying to finalise my big sculpture - it has been a physically and emotionally exhausting but rewarding week.

I used the tools above to finish all the fine details I could put in. I tried using solid beeswax to make highlights to certain areas to draw attention, but after applying a small amount on an off-cut, it didn't create the effect I desired. When I asked Jon for advice on what to do, he said it would provide an effect similar to furniture polish and make it look too modern if I wanted to keep the worn rustic effect I have made, so I abandoned that idea.

After taking a moment to appreciate how far I had come with my sculpture, I sketched out some rough ideas of where I wanted to put the coins I intended to hammer into the beard. Before I could do that however, I had to fashion a sharp tool to make the holes the coins could be hammered into. Jon and Andy the wood-shop technicians fashioned me a sharp tool using staff only tools to penetrate the oak so I could hammer in with ease. Again, always using an off-cut to experiment on first so as to not damage the sculpture. The shot above right shows - the experiment was a success.. on to the hammering...

The above photo shows the positions of the coins I had hammered according to my design, and my reaction was that it looked far too sparsely coined. So...

On the hoof, I hammered in many more to give off the impression of a beard filled with coinage. I was pleased with result and took another emotional moment to inspect my finished project. When Jon came over to ask if I was happy with what I made, I said that I was and was happy with the aged look I had created, I then joked that it was a shame I couldn't rust the coins to add to this in time for the exhibition. With that, Jon took me to talk to another student working around the corner and showed me her work. She had created a copper plate and appeared to have written in aged copper on the back of it - when Jon asked how she achieved this, she said "Miracle-Gro".

She had plenty left over and offered me the use of it - and within minutes we were experimenting to paint two coats of Miracle-Gro to see if it would work on my first off-cut hammered 2p. She informed me that she left hers overnight to have an effect. Given that this was last thing on the Friday before the Bank Holiday weekend, I am still waiting to see if it worked. If it did, I will paint the 2ps embedded in my sculpture and leave them to work their magic. When I came home I still had a meagre amount of energy left in me to experiment with how I want the drapery on my plinth to look when it comes to exhibit.

Using an off-cut piece of linen I had at home, I experimented with how I wanted the fabric to hang from the plinth to make it look remotely like an early civilisations' shrine might look. I didn't want it to look as exuberant as modern altar cloth might look, so I have chosen linen as this would be a clean, readily available cloth in early civilisations. I was happy with the equal corners that the drapery from the above photo shows. I then went to go purchase a black linen in the correct measurements to fit the plinth I have ordered from the Falmouth stores. I want the sculpture to appear at eye height and having done the correct measurements, it should look exactly how I have planned. Here's on to the last working week of the IFY...

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Yesterday I attended the evening lecture with Turner Award winning artist, Mark Wallinger. Admittedly, I went into his talk slightly too tired to receive the knowledge he imparted about his work. I found him to be engaging in the reasoning behind his work, but not quite an engaging speaker. I found it difficult to keep up with some of the points he made about his work. Of the pieces he spoke about, I was very taken by the ideas he detailed about "Ecce Homo".

Given the religious ideals behind my current project, I was fascinated by his reasoning for creating this sculpture. Wallinger said his sculpture of Christ was not meant to be perverse or tongue in cheek. 'I wanted to show him as an ordinary human being, Jesus was at the very least a political leader of an oppressed people[...]' I was taken by humanising the image of Christ, I have come across this concept before, in a painting by John Millais: "Christ in the House of his Parents".

I was aware that upon it's public exhibition, Millais was met with public outcry of heresy that how dare he place the messiah amongst the meanness of the carpenters shop along with such iconography of poverty. One thing I was disappointed in learning about "Ecce Homo" however, was that it was not carved, but cast to look like a marble statue. This raised notions of what could be construed as "cheating" to me. That said, it also raises questions of why choose to cast something over carve, does its cheapen the idea? Or is Wallinger trying to suggest an idea behind using casting and moulds? Either way, I am intrigued by material use, for its meaning, from my own work in using Oak, considered to be a holy tree in pagan faith.

After the talk I walked down to the Poly to visit the 2nd year Fine Art & Drawing exhibition. This being my first experience of a Preview night for degrees, I was overwhelmed by how busy and bustling it was. I couldn't quite appreciate what was on display. I was intrigued by the work the collective groups had created, but couldn't stop to penetrate their meaning. I came away feeling overwhelmed and wondered if my own preview night would be equally as overwhelming. That said, I spoke to Duncan about what his take away from the exhibition was and he put my mind at ease saying that the purpose of the preview night is for socialising and conversation rather than taking meditative time to appreciate the art itself. There is a constant learning curve to being a creative. I am slowly piecing together all that this life I am embarking on entails. Sometimes I need to feel overwhelmed to learn the lesson involved. Either way, I was happy to see all the other students enjoying the fruits of their labours, even if I couldn't quite meditate on what they had made.

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First completed piece

I have resolved the first piece for my exhibition. My St Patrick's tiki sculpture. There is a genuine feeling of accomplishment to have something in the bag for my final module! I painted it using acrylic paint as I wanted a sense of cheapness to it, but I also used pyrography to write on the back "Guinness" in Ogham, the proto-Gaelic language I learned in order to produce this piece. I am proud of how it has turned out, I hope it will be well received in the exhibition.

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Second Week of Carving: Having taken off the bulk of the bark and straightened out the bottom, the real carving began this week in earnest. I have lost hours to carving this sculpture, it's addictive and hypnotic, something I hadn't anticipated in the spiritual side of this project. After carving a conical shape outline for the hat at the top, I had to mark out the face being the focal point of the sculpture. I asked Jon's advice on how to start this accurately, he suggested I print out the A's that will become the eyes and cartoon them onto the trunk. Using a needlepoint tool, I poked pinholes all around the outline of the printout, then Jon gave me a small cloth with red chalk dust in it. Holding the stencil in place, I tapped the chalk cloth up and down, creating a dot-to-dot of the outline, then using charcoal, I simply joined the dots and these became the starting points of the face.

From this point I was able to mark out roughly how the rest of the face would follow, using proportionality I have learned in the life drawing sessions as to how average facial features will be space apart.

From here it was easy to just carve out exactly where facial structure would fall, although this was a time consuming exercise, it didn't take long for me to take off material with ease.

The gouges and carving chisels also make light work of forming human features, for example, the lines the gouges have made on the back of the head have given themselves to represent the way hair might fall and look when coming out of a hat. There are some things however chisels and gouges have not made easy. Once I had taken off the bulk of the wood to rough out where features are, I had to start detailing. I was most concerned how I could hollow out the centre of the A shapes to form the interior of the eye shape. Jon noticed my reticence to carry on carving and asked me what the issue was, I thought I would have to resort to a power tool to enter the eye socket, undoing the premise of using hand tools to create a primitive sculpture. Jon then said for me not to worry, and sought out a tool I had briefly seen before, but never used:

A hand drill. After measuring the appropriate diameter of the A socket, we chose the correct drill head and after 5 mins work...

The A socket had been successfully gouged and I could continue using chisels and gouges to take out the rest of the wood. Jon then recommended I take a look at a rather beautiful tome:

I have since ordered a copy of this as I think it will be invaluable in collecting my own set of tools in years to come. It lists every tool and it's manufacturer since 1700 - even down to the shape of the handles certain makers would have made. After this sidetrack, I then looked at fine detailing the eyebrows and the mouth. Again, I was sorely tempted to use power tools to do this as I was scared to use large gouges and a mallet to hollow these things out... and, once again, Jon noticed my quandary and came to aid yet again. He opened a drawer I had not explored inside the wood-shop, the drawer containing hand push gouges. Thanks to these smaller gouges I was able to fine detail around the eyes without causing undue damage to the work I had accomplished thus far.

When it came to carving the mouth, Jon also showed how use straight chisels at an angle to achieve the correct angles when carving at angles from outside inward. I thought was perfect and was exactly the realisation of what I had in my minds eye.

After a hectic second week I had come to experience a moment of mindfulness about what I had accomplished so far. My work in carving has opened up a sense of almost spiritual awakening. I feel a genuine joy in myself I have never experienced before, almost like a feeling that this is what I here to do and accomplish. I cannot wait to start my Degree first year, I have so much to learn and to make and to do. I have sampled so much this year, but nothing has given me as much joy as the woodwork involved in this project.

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Last trip of the year

Yesterday the IFY went to the Poly in Falmouth & the Maritime museum. We went to the Poly to explore the space which the EoY show will be in on from May 16th. It was interesting to see how much room we have to play with and how it could potentially be laid out. The light coming into the room isn't much but I sketched out a rough map of where the light would be in conjunction to the position of the building to the position of the sunlight. Duncan spoke us through the outline for mapping out the space which will be negotiated over the coming weeks.

Once we had a feel for the Poly we moved onto the Maritime museum for the new Pirates exhibition.

I have always been fascinated by the ongoing love affair in pop culture with the pirates of the 17th century. I went into the exhibition with excitement about what they had to show.

I have to admit, content wise, I was a little underwhelmed by what they had on display, but I understand what the exhibition is trying to achieve. Some years ago I read "The Pirate's Pocket Book"(Robertson, S. (2008). The pirates pocket book : in which is related the lives, crimes, manners, fortunes, atrocities and fates of the most notorious pirates, sea-robbers, buccaneers and other felons of the sea. London: Conway.) which contains all available knowledge on the subject from newspaper articles and documents from the day. A lot of the information I knew already was on display in the form of reading displays. I understand that as a group of people, pirates weren't ones for leaving artifacts and historical evidence, being criminals and all, but I was disappointed that other than some fancy dress articles and guns, there wasn't much else to show. That said, I feel that the information in the exhibit is there to teach folk that a lot of what we think we know about piracy, is made up in the fictions of Robert Louis Stevenson and other early Hollywood films.

I was fascinated by the above sculpture by Ica Niemz however, I loved the form it took from mixed media to resemble a wooden skeleton. Closer inspection speaks of how it is speaking of the hidden histories that some historical people might have become pirates to escape the anti-homosexual laws that existed around this time.

Also on display in the museum were the above exhibits on sculpture and hand-tooled woodworking. I admired the work that went into the rib-cage piece, I am doing a lot of learning around types of wood and their uses and am trying to pay particular attention to how things are crafted. I also made a point of spending some time around the longboat and how it was made. I could already identify some of the tools on display by sight from what I have learned in the fine wood workshop with Jon. All in all, the time at the maritime helped my thinking about presentation a lot. That sometimes it's not about the content per se, but how it is presented that can make the difference.

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Also this week I have made some headway with my final production of the St Patrick's Day/Guinness tiki design. I have been using the previous prototype as a starting point. I have upped the ante with material use, I purposefully have gone with commercially obtained lime wood from Amazon and acrylic paint, to illustrate a commercially based "god".

Having previously used felt tip pen to colour play on the prototype, I was happy with my use of acrylic paint to best suit the vibrancy I was after. In the carving of the wood I felt a certain satisfaction in seeing the larger version take more of defined form; especially when recreating the signature Guinness glass shape.

I left the back of my prototype blank; as I was uncertain of what to put there. With my previous sketchbook experiments with the proto-Gaelic script, ogham, it seemed appropriate to write "Guinness" on this side. I have been creating some pyrographic experiments with other work and I made a test strip with acrylic paint to see how burning would look vs engraving with black and brown as the base colour for the sculpture.

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Today I "broke ground" on my large piece for my FMP. Using the oak trunk I obtained from Cornwall Hardwood supplies in Camborne, I made the first steps toward meaningful progress.

With Jon's help, we managed to lift and place the trunk on a work bench. He then gave me some options for tools to carve the bark off.

Jon suggested this beautiful tool as the most practical option for debarking the trunk: a drawknife. The bark came away with relative ease after this.

Before turning it, Jon noticed that the trunk was starting to rock in situ, he then gave me some ratchet straps to make sure the trunk wouldn't just rock on the spot and make it harder to carve the bark away.

Once I had carved half of the bark away, as per my design, we stood it on its end, as it will be positioned in situ on the exhibition night. I noticed that it was top heavy and slightly leaning in one direction. Although on its own it wouldn't fall over, if it received a nudge, it could present a safety issue. Jon then slotted an offcut under the slant on the base, and we tried to locate where the peak of the lean was located, after some adjustment we found the spot where the slant was at its peak. Jon then suggested using some charcoal and a rulers edge to mark out what would become the flattest edge.

Using a handsaw, I then took off the marked amount of the base, again, securing the trunk constantly with ratchet straps as I sawed. Once I had managed this, we stood the trunk up again..

It was at this point the trunk stood true and would require a severe knock in order to move it from where it would be positioned in the exhibit. It is now ready to be carved with my final design. The final four weeks await.

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Last night I attended a lecture from Steven Claydon, who is known as a sculptor and musician. From my perspective I was overwhelmed by his ideas and the ideas behind his work. He spoke of his modes of work with such in depth insight and intent that I found it a little hard to keep up with his train of thought. He spoke of ideas such as objects having a history of their own with sound/vibrations passing through them, leaving their marks and being recorded as memory. I was fascinated by this as it was very similar to the ideas postulated by Oliver Beer in his piece "Household Gods" in the British Art Show 9 in Plymouth last year. For my own work, Steven's ideas speak to me about memory of objects as having a meaning beyond it's assigned meaning by it's creator. Steven spoke of objects as acting like vinyl records, recording their surroundings invisibly, but on the surface being boring, black discs. He went on to say that if objects are like records, we only lack the means to read/listen to them. He spoke about his recent body of work "Lacrimosa" - centred around ceramic objects. He mentioned associating various ideas and practices from around the world in these pieces, including Japanese firing which alluded to the pottery involving the tea ceremonies. He went on to talk about his history in ceramics, starting at age 16 and enjoying the whole process - particularly in the act of dragging something out of the earth, changing it's atomic form through mixing and then firing it in a kiln. He spoke of what he called a "secular animism" in his work, I had to take time to unpick what he meant by this. Animism being the attribution of a soul to objects and natural phenomena and Secularism being the separation of the state from religious institutions. From these definitions, I can only surmise that he means some kind of separation of a soul from certain states, that only certain things can be attributed a soul. I will have to come back to this train of thought when I am better equipped to understand. He also made mention of his thoughts on where our identities begin and end, speaking about whether or not we are the prosthetic of our digital selves. All in all, I feel that I wasn't in a place to receive such a wealth of ideas and overwhelming breadth of knowledge. However, I would suggest checking out his work, it is truly astonishing!

Steven Claydon - Sadie Coles HQ

Steven Claydon (b. 1969, London) graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea School of Art & Design (1991) and an MA from Central Saint Mar

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This week I finally made it to the Van Gogh immersive art experience in Leicester! It was everything I had hoped it would be - from a faithful recreation of Vincent's bedroom at Arles, to the wonderful delights of projection mapped visuals across the medieval All Saints church. I can only repeat what I have previously said about my feelings about him as an artist, but I really took what I have learned this year about projection mapping into what I saw and it gave me brand new appreciation for the way in which the folk behind this wonderful project have achieved in bringing new audiences to his life and works. One of the most striking parts of this show, was something I could not capture in a photo. The VR headset experience was definitely the most moving part of this - flowing through Van Gogh's painted world was truly and experience to behold! I can't stress enough - everyone who has an appreciation for his work or even a fleeting interest, needs to see this! It has to be experienced firsthand!

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Today I went down to visit my friend Jeremy Cash, who has recently taken over as the resident blacksmith of Mawnan Smith. I spent the day helping him make a few orders he is working on and talking and understanding his craft. While for my own current project I am working in wood, it was great to learn and understand the difference in the crafts. He explained all his tools and his future plans for the forge, something I hope I can help him with over time if at all possible.

Watching the comings and goings of "the village blacksmith" was almost timeless to see; having the large wooden doors open to the forge and having customers come and chat with Jeremy about things they would like him to work on was like something out of time. A time when craftsmen were revered and respected for their devotion to their work. A time that, from what my own project has shown me, is almost long since past. It really resonates with me to be able to keep these almost ancient traditions alive. Hand tooled goods created with time and dedication to their perfection.

This is something I passionately believe in, either through art or business. It was all an enlightening experience to witness all round.

Jeremy's website is here, please check him out!

About | Blue Jay Metal Crafts

Bespoke metal design, blacksmith services and restoration in Cornwall. All aspects of metalwork and fabrication undertaken with a focus on d