No words, many images for exhibition, Munich: ‘Body and Soul’
Category Archives: Soul searching
Transporting transformation
There is a bite in the air, the season is changing. As my eldest son and I drove to swimming lessons the other night we spotted trees turning from their summer green into autumn shades. We saw a miraculous site of birds glistening in the sunset like pieces of glitter floating in one contained space. My son described them like ticks using his hands and saying it’s how Baba makes birds, he was transfixed. The shift from summer to autumn always feels more significant to me then any other season. It’s a reminder that all things fade away. We also had news this weekend of a family member in Egypt passed away. Deeply saddening, life changing news. But, there is always change. A kind of transportation, from one realm to another. Transformation.
“When change visits your life, you can be sure things are turning for the better. It may not look that way in the very moment change arrives, but if you will wait a while and have faith in the process, you will see that this is true.” (Taken from someone-lost the reference)
I have been thinking about this as my link to the transportation of sculptures. We’ve done so many trips to London (I write we but it’s the sculptor, the sculptures). I just sort out the congestion charges and ‘wo’-man the shop. Over the summer ‘we’ ventured into Europe with ‘a man with a van’ for exhibition in Germany. The sculptor flew out to meet them and then back out to pack them up. In a quick turn around ‘we’ then had pieces going to Paris.
I had a whimsical fantasies of going as well. In fact with this trip the sculptor didn’t go. We relied on the driver taking them to the gallery and the unload and unwrap happening without my husband. The exhibition opened last Friday. But really that is much more cost effective than having to fly out to meet the sculptures on the other side. It’s amazing how memories can take us to a place though. Thinking of Paris transports me to a time in my early twenties, still searching for myself. I took myself off with a black and white SLR and not enough warm clothing for a February weekend in Paris. Consequently the cold somehow lured me into a ‘Coiffeurs’ and I came out with my hair red.
Well as I reminisce, the reality of this trip was that the driver had problems finding the gallery so I had to practise my very rusty A-level French with a hotel reception staff which our gallery contact number went through to. I couldn’t ‘unlock the language’ and was a little disheartened, when he asked me if I preferred to speak English and he continued to speak in received pronunciation.
Yesterday the sculptor was down to London and back to take ‘Aphrodite’ to Passion of Freedom. At the end of the week he will be back down again for the opening and picking up other pieces to then go somewhere else. At the moment my husband is almost constantly on the road. I am loosing track as to where pieces are! The difficulty with sculpture is the cost and space of moving them from place to place. Transporting them.
There is something about the space that transforms the sculptures. Having space around them to be able to view from different angles makes all the difference to sculpture. Space, dimensions and time all have connections both in sculpture and thinking. Which links me nicely back to this autumn days which have come around so fast again. This year has past by me again making me reflect that I am still waiting for that moment of transformation. When I am totally in the present and not wishing away time or clock watching, waiting for the next milestone or event. I am definitely better at it than I was. The best of thinking is to reflect on creation ‘How am I’? Taking ourselves into account, especially when we don’t know what the future holds. If poetry, art, sculptures helps to give us those gentle remind us then it’s a useful vehicle. The chrysalises gradually transforms into the butterfly. Transporting us from one way of thinking to the next.
Can ‘Candy’ and ‘Candid’ result in an awakening?
“The intelligent want self-control: children want candy” Rumi.
My husband took the work to Newby Hall ready for installation (Exhibition now open). A member of staff commented that the sculptures looked like sweets. They do look like candy canes. Lick-able, as though each colour would taste different. Eating sweets has been a bit of a topic of discussion recently with our boys having, had lots of parties and sweet handouts at school. So candy has been on my mind…but now it is time to start focusing on more aspirational things as we approach our month of retreat, guarding of our lower beings and those animal instincts!
My husband did an interview for Candid magazine once which brought the word ‘Candid’ into my vocabulary a bit more. It was a great discovery. I not only like the word which sounds like candy. I like the meaning. Truthful, straightforward; frank, because I think most of the time we skirt around honesty in preference for politeness. We ‘English’ like politeness and whilst we value honesty I am not sure we can handle candid comments very well. We want things sugar-coated and sweet. Makes me think of the line “some people can’t handle the truth” which I don’t think many of us can. We don’t want that raw reality preferring the hazy safety of polite untruths and staying within our comfort ones. Rather than thinking of our own faults we like to judge others faults before seeing their virtues. It makes us feel better about ourselves but before we do that we need to call ourselves to account. The capacity for self blame is a heathy soul and it humbles us. The importance of scrutinising ourselves and being brutally honest can often lead to an awakening.
Awakening of a realisation of our own actions, behaviours, habits. In a secular context self-awareness has now become mindfulness which although is good practice has no moral dimensions. As Immanual Kant said: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.” The moral dimension of self-awareness includes nobleness. In the battery farm of the modern capitalist system which aim is producing eggs regularly, getting along with the other chickens and then ultimately you die and get made into cat food. The process goes on and there is no higher aspiration. So preoccupied with all the other chickens, even mindful chickens, we are left at the level of the zoological. Yet, we were made for something higher than the lower self ‘zoo’. Nobility is what happens when we leave behind the animal desires. The thing that makes us human and not animal. Our higher being, one of virtuosity is nobel.
If we awaken to reality in this world we need to consider what we do, what we have been doing.
Forget the sweets, be honest and look at the day that is to come and hope for an awakening.
(reference T.J Winters, Cambridge University)
Strange Sensations and Slow art
The first week of the holiday ended and I had felt smug at how well I had managed the days with the relentless rain and keeping busy. Yoga, breathing and letting it all flow working with me well. However by the second week with less yoga practice and illness I felt personal tested because the weather was so good. I had had several ideas for active boys but I have had the most odd and strange fever. It sounds dramatic but when you have an infection it is as though an alien has taken over your body. However, it makes you grateful for your health and appreciate that for some people who can be their state of being on a more permanent basis.
So for the last weekend of the holidays, feeling a little bit more normal I planned to take the boys to a local museum where I had seen a little advert for ‘slow art day’ with a child friendly image of a tortoise. I thought that would suit us all as it was about the pace I was working at – tortoise pace. When I looked into a bit more I realised it wasn’t a kids holiday making activity but an annual event celebrated around the world with the idea of taking time to look and appreciate 5 pieces of art work and then discussing it. I think this is a fab idea but I couldn’t envisage not feeling hundred percent with two boys on the run, more at a hare’s pace, in a gallery space.
This was the general theme of the holidays, having plans and then them not quite happening, always a good lesson to learn. So here are some images of our own slow art the boys did at home and over the holidays on the rainy days.
Having a first day to myself yesterday after the two-week holiday with the boys, I went for a walk and realised walking helps me to think through ideas. It enables me to hear my voice in the peaceful sounds of nature. My husband has been busy working through an idea in clay, a preparation for a larger piece. He was telling me how he has realised he carves the whole thing in his mind before hand almost like watching himself do it in his mind’s eye.
On my walk, I took a moment to sit on a bench in a field with a large oak tree and a stream running through it eat. I noticed something I hadn’t seen before, a plaque with a poem by William Henry Davis:
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
So I sat, ate my apples and reflected. I am conscious I am always hurrying the boys and think about articles about ‘The hurried child’. It is important to slow down and do things at a pace that makes us appreciate. My husband is driving with loyal driver and designer Anthony Hartley to Surrey to put these pieces (images below) in the wonderful Hannah Peschar sculpture garden. So if you are in that neck of the woods (odd expression but seemed appropriate) then take a slow wander around the beautiful surroundings amongst stunning sculptures and works of art.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.Henry David Thoreau
Memories are made of this
So many things to write about from the past
Perhaps though best
to sit and look and reflect
with prompts of words
like
Form, Figure, Shadows, Style,
Signatures, interpretation, Calligraphy,
Titles, human, movement, body and more
viewing from different angles to explore
Language for the mind in recalling
Thoughts for the soul in remembering
Knowledge for the brain in retaining
Ideas for the spirit in recollection
Prayer for the body in remembrance
Memories are made of this
The rebel within
“Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
George Orwell.
Trust me to stumble into the farmer after knowingly not keeping to the path. I’ve never been much of a rule breaker. Born conformist? I think some would disagree as I have made choice that perhaps are not so. Give me instructions and I will follow them. Search for truth and stick to it. When I do try to go off the beaten track my conscience gives me a good slap around the face. Having a rare Saturday afternoon to myself, boys with grandma, I’ve done my yoga practise and packed up a small backpack with book, an apple and a bottle of water ready for a solitary ramble. I decide to take a route where I know there will be a few benches along the way to sit and read a while. I chose a perch I had forgotten about but was in the direct sunlight, as despite feeling like a spring day it was still a chilly early February afternoon.
After being startled by a friendly robin, scaring a rabbit and spying a horse and a llama I follow a new path to explore a different direction. Undeterred by the very obvious bridge over the stream to my left I continue through the field ahead feeling the rebellious urge to go through the muddy fields. Naughtily and feeling a little like Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit I squeeze myself under the barbed wire and fling myself over the fence. I enjoy these small cheap thrills. I start to wonder what the penalty for not keeping on the path is and why one can’t just walk where you want to. I started to envisage Mr McGregor with a shot-gun still I wasn’t deterred but would definitely not be able to run should that occur as the ground was like ‘quick mud’. Adding to the excitement of my private adventure. Sometimes we do need to question the path we take in order to find ourselves.
I felt relief when I saw the wooden public footpath sign in the corner of the field ahead. Stopping to take a picture of a furry caterpillar to show the boys distracted me from seeing the farmer with his two dogs approaching through the gate. “Braved the beck did ya” he mumbled in his thick yorkshire accent. Not following what he meant and in my naive honesty and perhaps to relieve my conscience admitted to coming through the field. As long as I hadn’t cut the tie or the wire no harm done I think I grasped. Though his explanation of where the path actually was I still couldn’t fathom. Regardless, I think it may have been too overgrown and slippery steep to actually have followed. Are you local he asked. Yes I replied I live in co-ling or cowing I am still not sure how to say it. I will by some maps and stick to the road now I pledged. Smiling I walked to the sculptor’s studio realising I hadn’t been there in a while and it was on the route home.
The air inside a stark contrast to the fresh crisp air I had been deeply inhaling realising that much of the time I forget to breath when I am with my boys. Yoga helping with that! The studio felt toxic but looked a lived in proper working space, without a corner vacant of creation. In my eyes a mess but a place of activity, equipment and ideas for sure. My husband unveiled his bike to show me its purring engine but in the process flooded the tank. It’s over a year since he went to pick it up and I only briefly mentioned it in ‘Beauty’ then never posted about it again. There is something symbolic about a bike being a rebellious vehicle, even purchasing one feels like breaking the ‘norm’. In some ways he is the opposite of me when it comes to rule abiding. I remember in our first year together when he was teaching me drawing he instructed that you had to learn the rules in order to break them, that was what art was about. I can’t seem to do that though. My nature inclines to searching for rules in order to follow. We balance each other out, probably, on the scales of conformity and rebellion and meet on the same conscious awareness.
Here are the images of the bike, turned into a sculpture of sorts in its own way. Always questioning the rebel within.
Hollow Man
This outline flows likes a ribbon, so curvaceous . It is a simply stunning piece. A beautiful start to a new collection of work entitled ‘Body Language’. It looks to me like a candy cane, you can imagine licking it and tasting different flavours depending on where your tongue touched.
The shadows created also provide images in themselves. To the untrained eye, perhaps the figures is not as easy to see in this piece as in the more geometric structures of his work. However, this piece combines both what has been my husbands preoccupation structurally with ‘outline’ and minimising the human form and the exploration of the philosophical questions of human essence and ideas of the body as a vessel.
Stripping away at the content to make a sculptural outline of the figure, like a line drawing in three dimensions. This new work is about the abandoning of body and focusing purely on the line or edge of ourselves. Which leaves the subject as hollow. Man is essentially hollow. If we imagine that the body is a container, then it needs filling. We naturally search to fill the void, to find substitutes for that hollow space. The tragedy of the modern age is that we fill ourselves with everything that distracts us from where we need to look to find real satisfaction.
You can currently see this piece along with a number of other pieces at ‘Forsters’, City Park, Bradford, Yorkshire.
The Rhythm of Life
Perspective can be everything. In order to make myself see the positive I am starting with the highs of summer. At the beginning we had some glorious weather and plays in the park. We had good days out walking to waterfalls, scarecrow festivals and train journeys to a new city. We were together with family and friends. We played with Lego, had picnics and tumbled around. I had energy. The second half has seen a dip in my energy is levels and my patience has been none existent on some days mirrored by the weather with more overcast cloudy days rain. As the six-week school holidays draw to a close I berate myself for getting cross and now at the end I feel mournful of the times I clocked watched and marked off the days on the calendar in achievement. As I was reading a fellow bloggers entry to break from writing and gain inspiration I related to a similar idea about the idea of what we chose to let our memories focus on and how that can influences our thinking. I am therefore being mindful to focus on all the positive things I have done with my boys this summer at home.
The sculptor has been busy setting up his first solo exhibition and public art pieces in the park. Beautiful images were taken and it felt such a good achievement. Then we had another dip as despondency set in on discovering the outdoor pieces were getting ‘worn and torn’ much quicker than we anticipated because of people climbing and jumping on them. We debated whether they should be taken out, that the cost of upkeep was going to be too much. A few alterations made, they are there to stay but highlighted a need of education about art in public spaces but also the interest physically in the art. Bringing us back up we successfully sold five pieces in one fell swoop to one collector and so we are very excitedly putting plans in motion for a big trip to Egypt in December. A well-earned holiday, time with Egyptian family and something to look forward to for us all.
There are rainy days and sunny days and blessings in them both. There are highs and lows in life and wisdom in it all. Rhythm and flow occurs throughout our day, week, month and the whole year changes. In the midst of it we can appreciate those daily rhythms, depending on our perspective. Change can be welcome or sometimes unsettle us. There is a change in the air as summer ends, school starts and autumn approaches.
Something can be constant. We all have something which becomes our aim, what governs our lives and can sometimes dictate the way we focus our day. We all have something that structures the rhythm of our day. In effect what we submit too.
‘The Bow’ at Damside Mill In Haworth,below, see it next at Saltaire Arts Festival as part of the Sculpture Trail. September Sat 13 – Sun 14 2014 1.00pm to 4.30pm Free Entry.
Journeys
…..And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Robert Frost poem ‘The road not taken’ has always been one of my favourites, “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference could be an epithet of my husband’s and mine. It is starting to become clearer that the creative process is a journey. Not that we didn’t know that, but we are at point where we can reflect backwards and look forwards more. My husband’s work is truly evolving, progressing in a way which seems meant to be.
His work started in clay, because that was what we could afford and with space limitations, the scale we could manage. So his hands gave form to clay.
He always talked to me about his attempts to produce an outline. Distinctly remembering a co-student at university who was doing beautiful paintings but putting a black line around everything, when the tutor had commented that, that isn’t how we see things, the student replied back , it was how he saw things. Thus began my husband’s obsession with trying to create the black outline of a 3D object. Almost an annihilation of the body and form and a preoccupation of what makes it so. Theses paintings show the idea and the exploration of that a line gives.
My own personal spiritual journey mirrors that of the sculptural journey, removing the focus on our body and form and seeking a deeper meaning and purpose to this life. So with the clay sculptures it was very much about the light and shadow and minimising the human form with curvature. With a little bit of expansion into wood, he developed a series of wooden forms with small figurines exploring the human condition but still looking at the idea of the outline that was being created. The more we strip away at our own personal desires and take away the superficial aims of money and materials, what are we here for?
As a teenager my time working in a nursing home for the elderly gave me a stark reality that the time here is fleeting and that in old age we physically become a shadow of ourselves in youth. There must be a deeper meaning to it all. As we verge on the cusp of our spiritual retreat, precious days to focus on our hearts. Time to reassess, re-prioritize and recognize the most important things in our lives. To understand what we are doing here. “Where, then, are you going?”
With the meeting of a steel fabricator there was movement into a new medium, enabling the shape of the human figure to be minimised more. In almost a fusion of the clay work and the wooden work a new series was created. The light and shadow create the outline in much of this pyramidal and obelisk work.
The addition of colour became a uniting tool for the journey of sculptures and enabled another layer of meaning to be visual presented. Emotions and ideas, the sculptures now in a state of consciously making us ask questions.
‘Souls’ became the laconic title of the next body of work but in this case the souls of sculptures compressed into the minimal form. If our human body is like the clay then the soul is a distinct other entity within the human framework and has three states of existence, base desire, that which our bodies need to survive, secondly the soul in a state of consciousness when we start questioning and discerning and a final stage where one is at peace and rest. The purification and development from the first to the third is a life long pursuit. A wrestling between each stage, a honing and a shaping of our inner reality.
Stripping the figure right down to its most minimalistic form resulted in the ‘Evolution’ both in the title of this piece and the progression into a new theme of work. In keeping with the philosophy of our bodies being merely a vessel for the energy that makes us. What are we without our bodies. Taking away the matter, the material and focusing on what gives us shape.
The college effect of using steel and mannequin parts also another part of the journey that came about from the idea of mixing both realism and minimalism together. It can sometimes be a struggle, living in day-to-day reality whilst maintaining a connection with an unseen reality but the reward is endless.
‘The Smoker’ became a turning point for a new idea. Using car exhaust parts to form an idea, an outline.
In nature there is no outline, all that is created is seen by what appears in front or behind. What is the reality of what we are seeing? We only see an edge because of the layers of things. So the line of the house I see outside the window is only visible because of the clouds behind it. In these images of new work not yet finished (so a sneak preview) the beginning of a new stage in the development of the sculptural journey can be seen. A new material enabled an exploration of ideas, in full circle a return to the initial curvature and idea of line . It redefines or explores further the idea of the outline, taking it to the next level in abandoning the matter within completely and focusing purely on the edge.
This reflects the spiritual journey of focusing on our true self, the ethereal essence within us which ultimately outlasts the earthen vessel carrying us throughout this realm of our existence and onto the next. It is certainly a way of seeing the world, both as a sculptor and following a spiritual path, a gift I am eternally grateful for. In a fitting completion to this entry yesterday the sculptor discovered a new dimension to this new work which symbolically connects the two, but I shall leave that to write about once the sculpture is complete and our spiritual retreat which we are about to embark on has ended.
A whole lot of Greek going on
The symbolism and history of Troy is immense, the Trojan horse, not only as great tactic of war and deception but a pivotal moment in ethics of morality. Simon Armitage considers “how we are locked in the same cycles of conflict and revenge, of east versus west, and the same mixture of pride, lies and self-deception that fed the Trojan War”. In the moral world of the Greeks, revenge was the way to go and there was great honour in that. Now in modern or perhaps western understanding there is a shift because of the way society is organised and social needs , the way we think of ourselves as human has changed. Perhaps we believe that the shift from vengeance to justice and forgiveness much greater in the moral compass. In many ways we fool ourselves into a deception of thinking how we would react, if a situation would arise that provoked us would be vengeful?
I felt I needed to research a little bit before writing about this piece but consequently it is harder to finish. It has taken a bit more working out. Having studied Classics at A level, the subject is not too foreign however, my memory appalling. In its own twist of fate I happened to listen to a ‘Start the Week’ episode on Radio 4 about Greek Tragedy and it would appear that with the memorial of world war one this year there is a harbouring back to the past about war and tragedy. Perhaps I am scrambling up all that was discussed in the programme and not coming out with much sense but it highlighted to me again the idea of the subconscious interconnection of ideas between artists. In this case there is definately a lot focus on Greek history this month. So in a good arts and culture plug: The Last Days of Troy is on at the Royal Exchange, Manchester from 8 May – 7 June and then at Shakespeare’s Globe, London from 10 – 28 June. Thebans, with words by Frank McGuinness and composed by Julian Anderson, is at the London Coliseum until 3 June. The writer Kenan Malik’s book ‘The Quest for a Moral compass’ is also out this month and in discussion at the Hay Festival this weekend (30 th May).
In a more rural setting, in a small village a sculpture stands in a studio. This epic piece took its own journey of making ( as you can see from the images in the entry ‘Space to play, place to work’) From a block of polystyrene the craftmanship of this is paramount to those Greek and Roman sculptors of past.
It is a contemporary recreation of an idea that fascinates my husband. The horse itself as an animal a majestic creature and the idea that sculptors, craftsmen, creators have been making things for centuries. This work may seem very different in style from recent works which have been more minimal more geometric such as the ‘Souls’ pieces.
There is the link of colour but there is also the link of ‘Soul’. For me ‘Troy’ is not just the idea of a tactic of war and of armies or military power. It is the shift from the outward reality to the internal. The human condition internalized. We may not personally seek vengeance on the gods as in Greek history but we analyse and over analyse our behaviour our minds. However, like the horse on the outside, impressive, beautiful and an object of admiration, inside destruction is about to manifest. So, today are we, on the individual level, all about making an external impression, beautifying ourself and showing off our achievements. Objectifing and materializing. We forget our integrity and what is hiding within. Our own internal beauty gets lost and so where is our ‘Soul’.
THE SCULPTOR'S WIFE 