Exhibiting at The Dig

This Thursday 4th of November I will exhibit one of my sculptures, at The Dig.
The Dig takes places at The Nest which is the new name of one of my favorite venues, Barden's Boudoir. 36-44 Stoke Newington road N16

THE DIG - LATE NIGHT UNDERGROUND ARTY PARTY
http://the-dig.co.uk/wp/?page_id=166

As part of East London’s famous First Thursdays, The Dig will be running debauched late-night lock-ins on the first Thursday of every month, bringing mind- blowing bundle of creativity from artists, writers, musicians, film-makers, designers, thinkers and dreamers.
 
The night will also be the official launch party of The Dig’s Creative Journal.

Caprichos at BCAF

This weekend I will be exhibiting my new work At the Battersea Contemporary Art Fair. http://www.bcaf.info/exhibitors.htm
The title of the series is Caprichos.

Caprichos is an allegorical set of archetypes materialized as three dimensional figures. They are the product of the creative union of my conscious and unconscious mind.

As a group they have a few things in common, the processes and material used; clay.
Drawing is my first step to consciously visualize and capture images from my unconscious. But it is not enough, I need to materialize them in 3D in order to finish their individuation and define them.
I follow a kind of ritual during their production.
They all originated from a pinched pot, two pinched bowls which are joined together to form a ball. This ball is like a planet to become or to be inhabited by the figure. The figures grow from this primal ball of mass and define their forms during the process. In some of them the ball gets transformed into something else, a skull, a turtle... In others, it disappears to become the core or heart of the piece.
I do not always strictly follow my drawings though they are the starting point.

The logic behind my choice to name these figures Caprichos is that I felt like indulging myself in their production. The term Caprichos also refers to Goya's series. They have in common with Goya's a the humor, but even if I consider them as food for thought it is not my intention to enlighten or to lecture the viewer. The viewer will make up her/his own stories. Caprichos are triggers, devices to stimulate cognitive (thought) processes.

construction line

I participated in this event last week. I was very excited and looking forward to it. It was a great experience, I did not have enough.


A review and photographs of the event can be seen at:

"http://detailsonrequest.blogspot.com/2010/05/report-on-fridays-performance-of.html"

having flowers goes to luxury goods

This week I am participating with one work in Luxury goods. http://luxurygoods.freevar.com/
The work is called Having Flowers.
The starting point for Having Flowers was to make a piece which would specifically refer to females. My work is quite sexless in general, as it is made to represent all earthlings, any organism, and the dynamics of forces. Being a woman I felt the need to make something to illustrate and celebrate the feminine in particular.
What first came to my mind was the power to generate life. With it came too the taboos and prejudices exerted throughout history towards women and their sexuality.
Menstruation is seen in some religions as a punishment from God. A punishment given to Eve and her successors after she mislead Adam into disobeying God. Leaving religion aside, not so long ago it was considered bad taste to talk about menstruation. Instead people made use of expressions like 'having flowers' among others, to refer to women menstruating.

The saying (Having flowers) gave me the idea and title for this piece. The piece represents a pubescent female, menstruating, bleeding. Flowers bloom from her blood. Her features are not just human and her expression shows bewilderment.
Which is what many females felt and feel when having their first menstruation. Even if women know it will happen, and it is part of a gradual process, it is none the less a big deal. It is like gaining super powers. Those super powers have a lot of implications, it is best to master them.

While in the process of making the sculpture it occurred to me that Having Flowers did not just represent women discovering their first menstruation.
As humans (any gender) we do a lot of creation; more humans, cities, empires, laws, paintings, art, genocides, myths, poems, languages, computers, cars, guns, bombs, etc,etc. Animals do their creation bit too, and plants, and volcanoes, and insects and planets and stars and cells... To create something has consequences, speaking from a human point of view not all of them wanted or foreseen.

So, the creative power is challenging, can be puzzling and all organisms have that power.

clumsy week

Last week was one of those clumsy ones.
I did many things wrong, had bad news or been neglected and broke some of my work. The casualties were mainly from the functional, 5 items in total. But I also managed to break my last favorite figure. This figure was based on a painting from William Bouguereau which depicts two souls fighting, an illustration from Dante's inferno. I love the painting I made a 3D of version of it.
It took me more than a month, which I enjoyed of course. I set the two figures on top of an inverted skull. I am using the inverted skull quite often lately as a metaphor for humanity; 'the skull is a vessel for the human soul' many people said that.
I was very content with the modeling, form, size , proportions and everything about the figure. But then boum! shit happens....I broke one of its hands when I was packing it for the biscuit firing. I was trying to fit as much work as possible inside the kiln so I was arranging and rearranging the pieces, wrong...Before biscuit firing clay figures are in the most fragile state. After biscuit they are quite hard and is save to manipulate them.
It did not feel good, even though I can repair the figure. I am considering to make it again, after I leave a bit of time to pass by. Somehow Ceramics is a battle with destiny, so many things can go wrong without reparation and sometimes due to bad luck. As ceramist I can not help but to aim for the perfect piece, technically speaking, no cracks, no glaze drops, even and uniform. But that is irrelevant for a sculptor like me who wants to communicate with the work.
I did not want to communicate perfection but the human struggle for survival. How we fight against each other even if we are lookalikes or love each other... We fight.

Great! I tickle with my catastrophes. Somehow I was in good mood, upset, grumpy but happy in the back of my head. So I went out for a few drinks during the weekend, wrong again...

My clumsy week is finished but I managed to caught a virus during the weekend. So now I am at home feeling awful with a red nose and time to spare on having this little crisis with Ceramics
Shall I stop doing ceramics?, as it distracts me from my real goal. At the same time I love the medium, I even love to do functional table ware, and to eat from them...