Sketches

Strewn across the studio floor are what have become sketches, studies and experiments on paper. The immediacy of committing to paper is extraordinarily liberating for a someone so engaged in the process of constructing my usual surfaces of panel, french linen and the obsessive many layers of hand-made gesso. I can go: "straight to it", with less investment in the surface I am less precious about the marks I make.

The sketches are stand alone pieces and also inform the work ongoing. I am mindful to take the lessons from working on paper and am also drawn to think about... 'what if I made my own paper?'

Something I have not done for many years since constructing paper pulp sculptures in Sheffield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Off to research how I might do this again. But it will have to wait until after Brighton. ONLY 8 days to go!

Look Who is Watching....

Body Casting Demonstration at The Art Room, Ashford.

I have just been sent the image above of the outcome of the body casting demo this month as part of the SEOS Preview Show. Body casting was a process I used a lot in my practice as a figurative sculptor.

I developed a whole body-drape approach over the many years worked at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, with anyone from young children sat in 'buddha' like poses to images of personal identity working with young adults that were wheelchair users. I had forgotten the magic of working with plaster and the impact it has when the model peels themselves from the cast husk.

You can check out a web broadcast TV film and interview by going to www.yourkenttv.co.uk and search for "getting plastered in Kent".

Thanks to Sharon Binnie (model) for braving the grey overcast weather with me.