Jason

Spent the day up at Faber Pyropus foundry - run by Jason.  Jason does all my 'direct burnouts'.  I give him small wax figures that I have sculpted to relate in some way to a found object - usually rust or wood, but now, for the first time, bone too.   The wax is then covered in ceramic shell and then put in a kiln so the wax melts out literally leaving the shape of the sculpture behind inside the shell ready to be filled by bronze.  The resulting figures are solid bronze and 'unique' - ie one offs.  This is the ancient 'lost wax' method - the wax is literally melted out, lost.  Needless to say, it's all a little more complex than that but the basic principle is there and it is a truly ancient art.

Today then, Jason and I were 'fettling' - in other words kicking the metalwork into shape.  Jason does the bulk of this but then I bring the found objects to the foundry and together we painstakingly get the figures to 'sit' back on the objects with the same ease that they did in the soft wax.  This done, the next process is also traditional - tea and biscuits.

Then comes the patina.  Each little bronze must in some way relate to its own individual object, the thing that inspired it.  In some cases it is a simple job of matching the two objects up, and Jason does a fine job of making bronze look like the rust I place it with.  In other cases it is perhaps more subtle - the bronze and the object have to look as if perhaps they were found in the same place or have been marked by the same process of time.  Jason does the work.  I stand right by him all day humming and haarring and holding the objects next to the bronze until I 'feel' it is just right.  He is very patient!

I took at lot of pictures today trying to capture something of the glorious filthy ordered disorder that is his foundry - a bastion of practical skill, delicate craftsmanship, brute force and sheer hard work.  In the end I chose this one of him with his blow torch because I remember the first time I had something cast into bronze and saw it being put under a roaring blowtorch.  I was very moved.   Moved that something I had made could withstand that force.  Moved perhaps just by fire and its power to transform, and bronze with its power to endure.  Even today, when I am so much more familiar with the whole process, I still love it.

Bronze

I spent this morning at Castle Fine Art foundry in Nailsworth.  This is where most of my bronze is cast, and the picture here is of myself putting a few final touches to the metalwork on a piece called L'homme de Chene.   This piece of a curled and seated man was originally sculpted in acorn cups that my sister Sarah collected for me from a tree in France - hence the title.  A mould was then taken and a bronze edition started.

Each bronze requires quite a bit of involvement from me even after the original has been delivered to the foundry.  I travel up to check at the wax, metal and then patina stage.  In fact, this process is one of the pleasures of my work.  What this picture doesn't show is the many craftspeople who got the bronze to this stage  - each of them so skilled and patient - so that I can check it and add some finishing touches.  It's working with them that makes each trip to the foundry so satisfying, as well, to be honest, as a welcome change from the solitude of the studio.  I often wish, as people stare at a price on a bronze in the gallery, that they could see the hours and hours of work that goes into each one by these craftspeople, and the hours and hours of training and experience that took place even before that to make the work possible.

So there is that pleasure - of the people and the timelessness of the craftsmanship.  But there is also a pleasure just in the bronze for its own sake.  So heavy, so durable.  A material that humans have worked for millennia.   Transforming the impermanent  - wax or acorns - into the permanent.
 

Thank God for the British Museum......

I was up in London yesterday checking a wax at the Bronze Age foundry.  All went well so I had time to see a couple of exhibitions......

Firstly I took myself off to see Women Make Sculpture (really?!) at the Pangolin Gallery in Kings Place just near Kings Cross station.  Some of the work was interesting, but with the only criteria for the show being that women had made the work there was of course not enough to hold it together - apart perhaps from the rather forced idea that if it's women then we must have some 'domestic' materials - cloth and pins preferably, and of course some disembodied penises.

Kings Place itself is huge with a massive open atrium with coffee bars strewn around.  The whole thing is given a cultural edge rather than a corporate one by the presence of The Guardian offices, a couple of galleries and a conference centre.   But scattered round this ultra modern building were many, far too many, large scale sculptures - 'placed' presumably to be sold, but so badly 'placed' and crowded out that each lost its meaning and power completely.

I moved on to the massive (and NY based) Gagosian Gallery - also up near Kings Cross.  Here the opposite ethos reined.  Seven pieces of very similar - and admittedly rather beautiful - assemblages of scrap metal by an American artist John Chamberlain stood with no competition.  This is a high cathedral of pure white cubed gallery space.   The only interruption to the white space was the two impeccable and imposing black security guards in beautiful black suits.  I had the feeling they were there not to guard the work but to add to its sense of value by the apparent necessity of their being there.  Nobody acknowledged me - not even the man whose job it was to specifically open the door to the gallery.   In my boots, and with my cheap rucksack, I was of no significance.

And so, on to the British Museum.......and what a relief.  Partly to be amongst so many objects that were not for sale and which had been made for practically every other reason under the sun.  But my overwhelming feeling yesterday was relief at being amongst a human race of equals - every language, race and nation seemed to be there.  The objects on display also come from the corners of the globe and so belong as much to the non-British visitors as to myself.  And it seems that wherever we come from on the globe, and whatever the historical period we lived in, we as humans like to make things, we like to decorate things, and we like to make representations of the human form.

Not one single person looking around was more or less important than any other regardless of what language they spoke or how much their shoes cost!

Pina Bausch

This week I have seen the new film about Pina Bausch twice and have been inspired and amazed both times.  The film is called Pina.   A German dancer and choreographer, she seems to have been a woman of few words, expressing herself instead through her own body and that of her dancers.  The body is used to express that which is beyond words, underneath words.  Surely a connection here with something I'm attempting to do in the studio with my figures.  But she is a master.  As she said to one of her dancers: you've just got to get crazier.   See the film and you'll know what she meant.

Ai Weiwei

Today is the first real day of my blog.  Yesterdays postings were simply about me learning the mechanics of how to post things with my ever-helpful designer Kevan.  And so now I'm up and running I have to give some serious thought as to the purpose of this blog.  Am I simply adding to the stream of e-verbiage that it is so easy for all of us to spew out?

Perhaps, but I also know that this technology is changing the world and the way we relate to each other; the way politics is conducted.  So I am using this first posting to remember Ai Weiwei.  Here he is - free and on my studio wall.  But where is he now?

China - you will find that many of us artists, and many others too, will not forget him easily.

Walking in Mull

 
Walking in Mull - many beautiful things to be found.  

Getting the first image up and running!

This was the studio about five weeks ago before my show at Beaux Arts Bath.  It's just so different now....completely empty!

Setting up a blog...

The lengthy process of educating a craftsperson in the wonders of the modern world begins today.

Kevan Attridge struggled manfully to try and get the finer points of webbiness across to Anna. Did it work?