THE SCULPTOR'S WIFE

The morning follow up….

'Receiving the award' — ‘Receiving the award’

Last night was so very exciting, when I talked to my Husband he said the Judges told him it was a unanimous decision and they decided the minute he stepped out the door. “He is a breath of fresh air in the art world”. Today they announced “An exciting yet challenging few months lie ahead for sculptor Sam Shendi who has been awarded £10,000 towards the cost of producing his large-scale sculpture, which will be exhibited for the first time in the Forecourt of the Royal British Society of Sculptors in October this year. Congratulations!

The jury were looking for a realistic and achievable proposal, an innovative and exciting concept and very importantly, someone who would maximize the potential of this career-changing opportunity. Sam Shendi ticked all of these boxes and convinced the jury that they deserved to win this prestigious award.

The five Finalist’s maquettes, all interesting and exceptional in their own way, can be viewed at the Royal British Society of Sculptors from 31 January – 29 April 2013 Gallery open: Wednesday – Friday 12.30 – 5.30pm (or by appointment)

The website says that The winner of 2013 FIRST@108:

will be awarded £10,000 to create a full-scale sculpture based on their proposal and maquette.
be contracted to produce and exhibit the work at the RBS in South Kensington, London from October 2013 for three months with a possible later exhibition at another London venue.
have the opportunity to be mentored by an RBS sculptor with substantial experience in public art commissions.
At the same time The Affordable Art Fair also had a preview last night and my husband has work there. This morning he rang me and within the conversation he said a friend of his had ‘tweeted that he was talking to Bob Gelllloffffff whilst looking at his work. Did I know who he was…?? No. I was a little perplexed, how would I know who he was. “The Guy who sings for Africa” he said Oh Bob Geldof!There have been numerous messages of support on twitter @SamShendi. So a really HUGE thank you to all the lovely support. I am so proud, really is an understatement.

To see work at the moment they will be showing with Stark Gallery, stand K8 at the Affordable Art Fair ,Battersea Park, London
7 – 10 March 2013

The Result……

17.20 Interview gone well…….
17.50 Not long to wait…..
18.00 I get the boys ready for bed, we pray, we sit in bed waiting for the phone……
……waiting….
18.46 I text him….Any news?x…..I can’t settle, I can’t focus on reading stories and my plan of bedtime is not working as youngest child fell asleep on the school pick up run. My parents are coming so I can go to Pilates class with my mum and dad can put eldest to bed.
19.00 Parents arrive, too hyper boys downstairs and I receive a text….’ Not yet its too busy’
19.01 He sends another…. ‘Lets hope that I win’.

19.02 I text him, The waiting is unbearable, Inshallah x

19.03 Doesn’t look good habebe, he texts me. What does that mean. Ahahah I leave the boys with my dad and mum and I rush out. We are late.

19.25 Still no message so I go into my pilates class. Its my hour of relaxation. I can’t relax. I can’t think straight.

19.35 The room is at a local Methodist church and usually nothing else is happening. Tonight there is a local preachers meeting so the room has been split and should be self-contained. However, the microphone is switch on and linked in. We here everything. They start singing. We start laughing.Total distraction.

19.47 I hear my phone ring. I add to the distraction. I leave the room and call back. There is no reception.

19.53 I ring and it goes to answer machine grrrrrrrrr I ring again and again. I have to go and stand outside the church in the cold in my socks.

19.55 . HE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I squeal with delight. I ask him how he feels. He wants to run. I am shivering.

He tells me what happened but I am so cold and excited I can’t focus. When he couldn’t get through he rang our landline and spoke to my dad and then to our son who tells him not to worry he will tell mama. He says he has to go back in. Congratulations. So happy etectetc.

20.05 I go back into the room. I give my thumbs up to my mum who is trying to do the plank. I lie on the floor and I am so happy. I do the plank (so Pilates position that makes you feel very virtuous) I can’t focus. I lie down.

I spend the next 30 mins in a mind buzz, my body trying to be still.

20.25 I drive mum and I home, not sure how I am soooooooo excited.

20.35 Both boys are still awake. One crying because I am not there to put him to bed. Our eldest, ‘Guess what mama, Baba won’ He really won’

20.40 Boys so tired they go to sleep. I start to text everyone I know and sit down to write this……… I am still buzzing……..

21.25 What happens next……….I need to phone him. Click Publish.

On being, ‘The Sculptor’s Wife’ (Part I)

A few months ago I was at an exhibition with my father and we met a lady, she was the artist’s wife but when I told her that I wrote a blog called ‘The Sculptor’s wife’ she was disappointed in not asserting myself as an individual other than being attached to someone else. She said she always introduced herself by her name rather than ‘the artist’s wife’. Anyway, ‘The Sculptor’s Wife’ had a good ring to it when I named by blog and it gave me a definite purpose and direction to the blog. Otherwise I may be waffling even more so than I am already. I have titled this entry (Part I) as I feel I could write on this topic in much more depth and I have been working on this for a few days now and have the need to click the ‘publish’ button…

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between living with the Sculptor, the artist or the Egyptian, or just simply maleness. What I mean is, I hear other woman talk about lives at home and I think, ‘oh that doesn’t just happen in our house then!’. So what are the unique things about living with a sculptor?

I came home the other day to a pretty foul smell in the kitchen, the back door open so it was freezing in the house and my Wellington boots were involved in some strange procedure. So I am now ‘welly’ less! Which on the positive side means I get to buy a new pair and that my sturdy old rowing wellies get immortalised in the next piece of art work. The backyard had become the make shift studio and the wellies were being filled with a hairy fabric which is scattered over the paving slabs and occasionally getting dragged back inside. From what I could see through the window the glass fibres were stuffed into the wellington boot and then a kind of liquid resin was poured in. The process of Fibre glass. Once it had hardened there was some sawing and sanding going on. To which our toddler said he didn’t like the noise that Baba was making. It’s not the first time something of mine has been used in a project. The umbrella used in ‘Shelter’ was a very smart designer umbrella my husband had bought me in Denmark, but after several purchases of umbrella’s and stripping them of the fabric. Mine apparently was the perfect shape!

Living with a sculptor is unconventional. For a start there is no 9-5 or fixed working hours and I am very aware that my husband lives in the ‘present’ when I first met him think I was often preoccupied with worrying about the past or anxious about the future and it has been great for me to be with someone who is very focused in the here and now. Although now with children I think the fact that I do plan a little is helpful. The need for an artist to be ‘I the present’ I feel is a lot to do with observation and being open to what is happening in the moment giving rise to inspiration. He is by nature a rule breaker so anything that would be seen to be ‘normal’ is abnormal. Like Dali, he believes he is from a different egg. Perhaps all artists are?

He is definitely complex and my husband is just that, people are but artists do seem to be on more of a roller coaster, an extra layer of. There is constantly ideas spinning around in the air, ideas for next sculptures and projects and dreams. There are constant ups and downs in self belief. He won’t ever stop working, drawing and making. An artist doesn’t really have time off. It is a way of life. I have visions of what it will be like when he can be a full-time artist and not juggling our own business too. At the moment, the juggling of business and the art world means he is working none stop, not that I think that will change much if he was only sculpting but he would be a little bit more relaxed!

I don’t understand why people have a problem with ‘being a wife’. There is a saying behind every great man is a great woman’. I guess there could be the argument that you shouldn’t be behind. I don’t feel that. I feel at his side. I am not so much the ‘muse’ but the ‘voice’. Little bit ironic as my voice is not strong but I am the voice of the sculptor. So it feels a definite ‘we’ and ‘us’ working towards the dream most of the time!

We are currently waiting for March 6th …two days time…eek, when the interviews for the public Art award will be held. The anxiety means we have been having daily conversations about the maquette, the idea, whether there is a chance of him winning and what it would do for his career. The waiting has been almost excruciating, I just hope we are not putting too much emphasis on this award and that all the hard work will have paid off. We just need to stay hopeful and pray that Wednesday will bring good news.

VOTE

To VOTE click here and then scroll down The RBS page, unfortunately you then have to click onto ‘see more recent stories’ then there are images of the five finalists. As it is in alphabetical order my husband’s image is last, lots of scrolling down I am afraid but we will really appreciate your vote. The theme given to sculptors to work on was ‘Transmission’. The concept for this maquette is below. Huge THANK YOU to all those who have voted already.

So if you could PLEASE VOTE by clicking ‘like’ on the image of my husband’s maquette. It would be great to get it to 250 likes by next week. We are not sure how much the ‘public vote’ counts towards the winning. He still has an interview to put forward his proposal. The rest we have to leave to the jury. A prestigious panel of five. Who next week will have my husband’s career in their hands.

Maquette for FIRST@108 award, titled 'Evolution' — Maquette for FIRST@108 award, titled ‘Evolution’

This sculpture is under the name of ‘Evolution’, showing the development of the changes to our body caused by the powerful effect of life’s energy transmission inside us. My idea is presented by 7 individual sculptures, each piece representing a minimalistic shape of the human figure in seven different stages of life.

Each piece is represented in an individual shape, height and colour, enabling the viewer to separate every stage but still seeing the whole concept as one piece. As though it is a single wave depicting the energy within us, a wave of transmission.

The individual stages show the physically changes our body goes through in order to maintain or contain this energy. The 7 stages are: Infancy, Childhood, Teenage years, Adulthood, Maturity, Elderly and Death. These constructions will be made from steel, and by using high gloss colours makes the sculpture appear weightless but remains strong to withstand the elements.

This sculpture will have a minimalistic contemporary and an architectural appeal to connect with the viewer and allow them to see the message behind the concept. It has a child friendly appeal to encourage appreciation from a wide range of viewers.

This transmission within us doesn’t see culture, ethnicity, education, religion or any difference between us. It is within us regardless and we all share this mysterious transmission that is able to change us in a short period of time. Some of us are unaware of it; some of us take it for granted, some of us neglect it. This piece shows how powerful the energy which is transmitted through our life is and that our similarities are more inspiring than our differences.

Love and other drugs.

Sunday saw the start of yet another bug in our household, a really nasty one that has my eldest and I still suffering on the sofa. So, it was nice to see this piece ‘Patience’ back home though restored after the fire and looking highly polished and reflective, looking very different to before. Patience, so needed when you are poorly. Especially as it was the start to the holidays and I had lots of things planned to do with the boys.

'Patience restored' — ‘Patience restored’

This week’s illness has really taught me to be much more patient and gentle with my eldest soon who is ever so often fighting off illness. It has really taught me how to be a bit more ‘motherly’ in my care towards him. I am quite a believer in the body’s ability to naturally fight infection and also that it is our bodies way of purifying. Not in a negligent way. I give the children calpol but when the doctor insist there isn’t anything stronger needed, I don’t really push for it. Although, I am starting to get a bit concerned about how frequently we get poorly in our household. When it come to being poorly I am all for the love and homeopathic approach. Perhaps also because it’s not long since that due to lengthy nursing and two pregnancies i couldn’t take strong medication. However, I have indulged in a Lemsip and a few adol (paracetamol) and that seems enough for me.

My sister-in-law in Egypt who is a pharmacist, really noticed the different approach when she was here in December sent me a message. She sent me a message asking how we all were, so I gave her our weeks account of our illnesses. She wrote to me, ” oh you poor girl, take one of the antibiotics’ I brought you and a pill for flu and an adol pill and you will be fine in an hour, you amaze me you English people with your patience about sickness!!! Move off the sofa and take meds now! I had to laugh I now understood my Husband’s lack of sympathy. He had told me to take medication. If there is a simple solution to a problem then that is the obvious solution. I can understand it, when you see your child particularly suffering you want to just get them better quick. In Egypt they can’t stand illness and suffering and pharmacies are a business where most sold items are medicines not cosmetics. My sister in Law thinks it will require 50 years or more till the medical system is one like here, “Souls are not yet so valuable”.

So I did a little research and here is why we don’t dish out drugs easily here….. “Studies from around the world have shown that between 40 and over 90% of antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary. In many parts of Africa, where antibiotics are commonly available from unsanctioned providers, it will be worth educating the general populace about the consequences of irrational antibiotic resistance.” ‘Antibiotic Resistance in Africa’ (Iruka N. Okeke* and Anibal Sosa†)

The Department of Health in the UK advocates that;

Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness at a rate that is both alarming and irreversible – similar to global warming.

Urge patients and prescribers to think about the drugs they are requesting and dispensing.

Bacteria are adapting and finding ways to survive the effects of antibiotics, ultimately becoming resistant so they no longer work. And the more you use an antibiotic, the more bacteria become resistant to it.”

Antibiotic resistance is not new, but more action is needed now to tackle this global problem if we are to keep pace with its development.” (Professor Dame Sally Davies)

The UK is leading the way in responding to EU calls for action, with the development of a new cross-Government Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy and Action plan, which will be published by the Department of Health next year.
The strategy will champion responsible use of antibiotics, and build on ongoing work to:

slow down the development of antibiotic resistance
maintain the efficacy of existing antibiotics
develop new antibiotics and alternative treatments
investigate the link between antibiotic use in animals and the food chain, and the spread of resistance in people
minimise antibiotics entering the environment in other ways

So I do believe it has reason to exercise patience when poorly, strengthen our natural defences and immune systems but most importantly in educating and developing an understanding into the problems with using antibiotics. Sometimes the quick fix isn’t the best long-term solution. So despite the best laid plans for this weeks holiday and my initial frustration with having to stay put, I also learnt that some times laughter, lemsips and love are the best kind of drugs!

Sold Sliced to Sweden

I completely forgot to write about the exciting news that this piece, ‘Sliced’ got sold. I first blogged about this piece in Hearts and minds. I think it is one of my favourite pieces. It has gone on a long journey all the way to Sweden, would have been great if we could have taken a road trip and delivered it ourselves but daily life kind of prevented that adventure! Looking into flying or by road we decided it was safer for this piece to go by road, less chance of bumping and banging and less handling. So it is now safely in Sweden.

Challenges, Changes and Chocolate

Short and sweet today as this ‘Mother and Child’ piece has been written about before but it was one of the pieces damaged in the fire. It’s been highly polished to giving a golden shine. Sometimes things happen for the better even after something which isn’t so good. For some reason it makes me think of liquid chocolate. Maybe because it’s gold? Maybe more like golden syrup.I have totally over done the sugar today. Something to do with Pancakes and making a chocolate cake. My boy who doesn’t eat chocolate cake suggested we make one like the one in ‘Matilda’!. Great Treat though for my husband’s birthday which is today. I know many creative people born at this time of year. I wonder why that is?

I had started this entry a few weeks ago, but the challenge of writing and the challenge of running this year has not quite yet taken off. I blame the snow! The snow stage is hopefully ending and spring will soon approach us. It so easy to blame something or someone else but the challenge is to master ourselves. The child in this sculpture is still a babe in arms and I am starting to feel this stage of motherhood is ending. It is sad, but change is inevitable. I love the baby stage but I see the next as giving me a little more time to master the challenge I set for myself. The motherhood challenge, well that is never-ending and answer to that is chocolate!

Curious and Curiouser

‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English. I get away with not speaking good English, living with an Egyptian I don’t worry about being corrected and sometimes I wonder if we haven’t gone and created our own language. Along with spending my days understanding toddler speak I am heading down a slippery slope. A bit like Alice! My connection with Alice is that one of my husband’s courting lines to me was, “why don’t you see how deep the rabbit hole goes”! Well I am well and truly wandering in the warren.

Curiously, Curious George is the favourite cartoon my boys watch at the moment and this week the exhibition opens at ‘Curious Duke‘. This piece is one of five pieces on show in the exhibition ‘Young masters’ running from February 7th to March 7th at 207 Whitecross Street, London.

Curiosity (from Latin curious “careful, diligent, curious,”) is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning. I think my husbands approach to his art, is just that. It is an exploration and an investigation into human behaviour. He certainly makes pieces which are indeed curious. This piece was made last year and I realised I hadn’t given it a showcase in my blog but this week it will be having its first exhibition. My husband said he could have used this for his ‘Transmission’ theme. That may have raised a few eyebrows.

Housed in Curious Duke Gallery a 400 year old subterranean space on Whitecross Street in Islington. “One of the most welcoming and unique gallery spaces you will ever encounter.” You can read more about it at ‘Made in Shoreditch’ Magazine. So, if you are around in London over the next month pop in if you are curious.

The Owl Challenge

So from the heights of previews and openings in London to the day-to-day drawings at home with his boys. Today’s challenge from our eldest son was to draw an owl never seen before. Even I had ago! (though I am not going to upload my drawings on here) This mixes the cartoon designer, the interest in fashion and the conceptual sculptural ideas all in one sketch! Happy sketching:)

Transmission

Finally after several months of making and writing I can publicise the maquette for the FIRST@108 PUBLIC ART AWARD under the theme of transmission. Last night saw the preview and opening of a three-month exhibition for the five finalist. This is my husband’s piece titled; ‘Evolution’

Description of concept

For more pictures of the evening take a look at Sam Shendi Sculptor . Now we have to wait until March For the interview and to find out who wins the prize of making the maquette in full-scale for the forecourt at The Royal British Sculpture Society and a solo exhibition. Of course I am totally biased in believing my husband should win but his idea is inspiring and I believe art should be inspirational. There is a deep message behind the work yet it is playful and appealing. Our eldest son understands it, loves it and people of all ages want to know to think which stage they are in. Yet beyond all that is the mysterious transmission itself. The energy that keeps us living.

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