So the boys are either blessed or disadvantaged to have a father as a sculptor when it comes to making a snowman. However, I must say I have seen some amazing works of art posted on Facebook of what I presume must be parents constructions from the snow. The boys were given their little tasks or packing and tapping into shape. There was a little dispute over the hat choice. Wonder if you can guess who it was who chose this one, Father or Son? I think if we had been in a garden or field rather than a yard we may have had a more stunning result. It is also far too cold for the Egyptian though. This was impressive enough and is still standing. We did all ventured for a sledge afterwards and then warmed up with soup. Super.
“It’s so exciting” my boy said this morning, “isn’t it exciting, don’t you think it’s exciting, Mama”? He was speaking about the beautiful heavy falling snow. It wasn’t so exciting to start sliding on the hill home. So I parked at the bottom of the hill with a car full of huge shopping bags and then had to heave them up the hill with a toddler. However, it was a bit of an adventure. It was so exciting to go sledging with my eldest boy, just the two of us this evening after school. I wondered if he was overly excited but would get too nervous about doing it but in true child like spirit, he laid on the sledge and away he went. Fearless at falling off and eager to find the best positions. I suddenly had inspiration and got on to and then we were heading down the hill formula one style (almost!) It was great fun!
We got this through today, exciting! However, we are knotting ourselves up with nerves, excitement,hope and worry. I say ‘we’ as I feel I have been infected with anticipation. Gone, has the child like fearlessness. We are sledging into the unknown. If you are in London then do please drop in and take a look. After all, “it is so exciting”.
Years….having said there isn’t such a thing as a new year I am titling this post with years and year as I look back on 2 years of blogging. I have gained in confidence and as I write my 100th post I feel a real sense of achievement. I have had small stirrings of ideas of other things to write, perhaps on paper rather than a blog.
I heard the quote “Blogging is not writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation” in the film Contagion which made me turn a shade of crimson. I think Graffiti is a pretty good art form thanks to the likes of Banksy. Legal Productivity blog has made some very good comments about this quote ‘click here‘ to read more. For me, if it gets me writing then, who cares, my punctuation isn’t that great anyway. If it’s something to do with shelf life then in some ways I am glad it doesn’t linger to long. It makes me a bit nervous to think that things can linger in the web of the worldwide internet for too long.
Blogging has enabled me to ‘practice’ at something. I have become lazy and unambitious in just wanting to see an end result without perfecting the art of practising and talking myself out of doing anything. Odd really as I grew up ‘practising’ the piano, the flute, the saxophone, netball, duke of Edinburgh expeditions. Perhaps I was all practised out. Maybe I have finally found something I want to practise.
My intention with this blog was to write about my husband’s practise to give me motivation to promote his work more. Two years on and his work has really developed, into a definite brand and style. He has up and coming exhibitions. One of my jobs was to fill in the year planner before writing this, I feel I have cheated a bit to use this image in this post as obviously it is not a sculpture and it would have been better to have had all the dates filled but some are not completely finalised and it required another job to search through emails to fill in. However, it is useful to have a picture of the year and know that there are events and exhibitions happening, Nancy Victor Gallery is currently exhibiting work in the show, ‘It’s a wonderful life’ and The Store street , The Curious Duke, galleries and FPS (Free Painters and Sculptors Society) all have work in exhibitions over the next few months and then there is the possibility of The Affordable Art Fair and London TENT later in the year. The most nervously and eagerly anticipated project is the FIRST@108 which we are finishing up this week and will be taken down to London this month to The Royal British Society of Sculptors. So there will be much to write about. 2013 is looking good for sculpture and blogging, let’s see where it take us! 🙂
It makes me smile, mainly because for ages my husband was calling it Mim, not knowing that little rule that when there is an ‘e’ the ‘i’ becomes ‘eye’. I was a bit unsure of this piece at first. I asked him.’Why make a sculpture of a mime artist?’ ‘What is the point?’. I felt that wIth most of his work I could understand the point. He explained that they had always fascinated him, the makeup, the dress code. He showed me some fantastic images you can see and I started to understand. Étienne Decroux, explored and developed the possibilities of mime and developed corporeal mime into a highly sculptural form, taking it outside of the realms of naturalism. My husband wanted to make a sculptural dedication in a way, in his style. A style which is become stronger. The geometric shapes and Egyptian style very dominate in this piece.
‘MIME’
Last week my husband’s sister stayed with us for a week for christmas. It was lovely to have the sounds and tastes of Egypt in the house. She brought lots of well liked and missed Egyptian treats and the sound of the arabic and egyptian language and laughter filled our house. It always gives me a window into another world and another dimension to my husband to hear him speak in his mother-tounge. Watching them made me think about this piece a bit more, how communication is not just with the tongue but with gestures. I often think I am understanding a conversation now, my ear is in tune and I understand some words but I have a way to go before I can grasp it completely.
It is always fascinating to learn something new, discover something new. When Art can challenge the way you think then I think that makes all the difference. This piece will be on show from February for four weeks at The Curious Duke.
I am setting myself a little challenge. In 3 days time I will have been blogging for 2 years. It is amazing and confusing as to where those two years have gone. Swept up in the daily life of being a full-time mama and ‘Sculptors wife’! Not only that, I have three blogs to write to reach 100 blogs. So I am giving myself a bit of motivating to try to write every day, which isn’t something I usually can do, but must, in order to hit 100 blog posts on my 2 year blogging anniversary, if I can use that expression.
‘Uncertainty’
mmmm………..The uncertainty of it is finding the right images with writings and relevance and having the time to sit and write!
‘Uncertainty’
This piece, so aptly titled was one that was well and truly lost in the fire ,as unlike most of the other work it was made of recycled materials. I could create a competition to ‘Guess what the sculpture is made out of’ …The rest of the work is slowly being recovered and a busy schedule is starting to look promising for this year ahead.
‘Uncertainty’
This time of year can create the feelings of uncertainty. The year ahead lying before us unknown. Why it makes us more prone to renewal and rethinking I am unsure. For the first time the ‘New Year’ had no real meaning for me. I was in bed early and I didn’t have a feeling of expectation or disappointment. After all, it is just another day. The marker of time is not really that significant, it isn’t actually 2013 now, the world has been in existence for far longer. ‘Today’ is really all that we have, yesterday is gone and can no longer be changed and tomorrow. Well, we have to wait and see what unfolds.
I will be honest, I had to look up Aleatoric. I can’t even pronounce it properly.
Aleatoricism is the incorporation of chance into the process of creation, especially the creation of art or media. The word derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling of dice. Isn’t that all creation though that there will be a bit of chance that it works out alright?
Ray Cabarga writes, “Sam Shendi is an Egyptian sculptor, educated at Cairo University, his work has been exhibited in numerous countries throughout Europe and the Middle East. Sam’s modern approach to his Dadaist influences demonstrates an old-school philosopy with a futuristic feel. In a recent interview, Shendi reminds us to keep in mind that Dadaism spawned in the time of war and war still exists in our time, adding how this has had an impact on his work.” I think some of my husbands conceptual pieces are in tune with this but I am not so sure about the geometric, minimalistic human figures.
‘The words’‘Patience’
” A small group of international artists have formed a group called MAMA or the Movement of Aleatoric Modern Artists, a worldwide collaboration of chance-based artists who promote the principles and techniques of aleatoric methods in the execution of contemporary art in modern times.
The movement pays tribute to the DADAists of the early 20th century among the many other artists throughout history who have bravely chosen to relinquish partial control of their creative processes to the hands of fate, the laws of physics and the continuum of perpetual chaos which prevails over our universe by design. By learning to value and preserve that which we can never own, to respond and yield to that which we can never predict and to respect and trust that which we can never control, the aleatoric artist inherits the divine principle of acceptance, the creative process becomes a cooperative collaboration with the forces that govern the universe, and thus the aleatoric artist transcends the limitations of the mind
and body to reach artistic plateaus previously unattainable.”
The book itself is impressive in volume, size and collection of artists, to look at the book click here. Whilst I am proud of my husband’s inclusion I feel it is a bit misplaced. His methods aren’t aleatoric, he isn’t rolling paint and seeing what happens. To see him in the creative process I am not sure that his work is a product of chance and that “they appear to be accidental by products of some elaborate process undertaken to produce a thing wholly unrelated to the art he is presenting”. Sounds great but in some ways the opposite is true. It is not such an elaborate process it is almost quite industrial and highly precise with the finished result exactly what he was aiming for , perhaps some will be “compelled to ask ‘what is it’?” however, I may be biased but I think they are very obvious. “Sam Shendi makes an audacious statement” simply put is, I think more accurate. After all, as I have written before nothing in the Shendi’s life is chance. It all has meaning. It is ‘Maktub’.
Just a quick post about the busy evening we are having. Our kitchen is the largest room in the house so is the place we can get jobs done. So this evening I have been wrapping presents for the festive season. Actually re-wrapping them as my husband had kindly wrapped them this morning whilst I was out thinking he was helping which he was, except I had a very creative theme going on in my head for them all. So whilst I enjoyed my creativity and wrapping the gifts, my husband at the other end of the table was making his maquette for the First@108 award. He was literally beading sweat, drilling and assembling but finally finished. My back was aching from standing for so long but we are now all wrapped up.
We are also in the process of writing the proposal and still have that to finish. Tomorrow my sister in law arrives from Egypt to join us for christmas time and this next week will get sucked into festivities with my family. I can’t for obvious reasons put up a picture of the maquette and although my present wrapping is an art form in itself and a funny story of ours I thought this sculpture, ‘family’ was appropriate for the holiday period. Time to spend with family, forgive family, and to remember that family is a gift more cherished than any material gift you give or receive.
My wrapping story, if you are interested and to cut a long story short is that I won a scotch tape gift wrapping competition in London which then resulted in a feature of my wrapping a garden gnome on a daytime TV show using a Scotch wrist dispenser device. The only problem was before I went on to the set live I was told I couldn’t say the brand Scotch I had to say tape. Of course, the main point was that I was there as part of PR to the Scotch brand. Well, I am still surprised I wasn’t dragged off. It would have been great if I had carelessly forgotten and said ‘scotch’ anyway but oh no I said se-lotape all the way through. The local TV news was a slight improvement, definitely not cut out for TV. I will stick to hiding behind a screen instead!
I felt a little bit of traitor today, I piled the kids in the car and drove to hear sculptor Sophie Ryder do a talk about her work. My own sculptor was doing a ‘there and back in a day trip to London’ to collect the work above, really like these two images above of my husbands work, taken by Lili Phelouzat the curator of the exhibition and this comment, “they contrast to the larger and shiny pieces. These are very intimate and has lots of meanings, tongue in cheek”. So I thought I would make the most of the fair weather and enjoy the grounds of Cartwright Hall and take in the talk with the boys. There was a time pre-children that I worked at Cartwright, such a fantastic venue for a gallery and when now when I go I realise I took that opportunity for granted. I knew it was over ambitious with the boys but thought I would at least get to hear a bit.
We explored Sophie’s exhibition quite vocally. Of the older sophisticated audience perusing the exhibits of rabbits some were amused at my two loudly exclaiming ‘Bottoms’ and ‘BumBum’ although when my toddler suddenly appeared on the wrong side of the barriers I felt it was time to leave. At least he didn’t pull his trousers down, we have done that at other inappropriate venues! We ventured upstairs where a large number of people were gathering in one of my favourite rooms of Cartwright Hall Art Gallery. My eldest was fantastic, he had picked up a pine cone on the way in and then sat down with the paper and pencils provided and drew. My youngest however was in his energetic element and was thrilled by the space and his feet could be heard thundering along the beautiful wooden gallery floors. I heard 5 minutes of the talk, barely. We left and went into the glorious grounds. ( I would definitely recommend the exhibition for children though, they will Love counting how many rabbits bottoms they can see.)
It was interesting and inspiring if only for the 30 minutes spent today to see a gallery space in action and for me to think of the future. Perhaps with less rabbits, bottoms and running in the gallery.
So it’s not the end of the world that work got damaged in the fire. I don’t mean to be on a negative sounding tone at the moment. There is talk that the 21st December could see some celestial change. “This year, the end of the ancient Mayan long count calendar is said to be The Date. On 21 December either the earth will be wiped out by cosmic disaster, or there will be a profound shift in global consciousness leading to an unprecedented epoch of universal peace. Some of the most dedicated believers in the Mayan prophecy fear for the worst and say that the only hope lies in being whisked away to safety in a giant spaceship currently awaiting its cue under a mountain near Bugarach in France.” (The guardian)
For the next few days however, there is an exhibition running called PROJECT 2012 End of the World. These three pieces have been selected to be part of Project 2012 (End of the world exhibition) They will be shown alongside 32 other artists, the works are intended to unveil the spectator’s inner fears, passions and hopes. The exhibition will be held at Mile End Art Pavillion, Clinton Way, Mile End Park, London, E3 4QY. Private View 11th Dec 2012 6pm-9pm Some of my husbands more conceptual pieces will be on show.
It’s that time of year, it is cold, it is icy. We retreat inwards. Many people I have spoken to of late seem to be struggling with the tests that life brings. If we compare the seasons to the life cycle then this is the season of death. The trees have now finally lost their leaves. There has been a sparkly ice coating over everything and snow in some places. We light candles, people stay warm by the fire. Fire. The element of comfort and destruction. Last night the fire raged havoc over Damside Mill.
“Damside Mill is a furniture workshop,studio and gallery in Haworth. The last working part of the old Lees Mill, it has been brought back to life by Anthony and the Damside team as a place where high quality designer furniture is created, while upholstery and furnishing courses are run in the studio, with an evolving programme of contemporary art and design in the gallery. It is a growing marketing platform for associated artists to promote and sell their work, and just a great place to visit in Haworth.”
Anthony Hartley and his partner Nel and the rest of the team had spent vast quantities of time, effort and finances developing the Mill, finally reaching an opening earlier in the year which I blogged about. This morning it stood charred with the internal damage the heat from the fire. In stark contrast to the cool and icy hills of Haworth behind it.
Most importantly no one was inside, so no one was hurt and ultimately that is the most important thing. However, all that effort, hard work has been turned to ash. Equipment has been damaged and a large skip has already been filled with the debris. A deathly and destructive force has swept through and taken everything.
It isn’t the first time we have lost work. We moved house and successfully moved a huge amount of clay sculptures. Then one evening we heard an almighty crash and the table which we had placed them all on broke and not one of them was left in tact. Today, my husband was unable to see the full extent of the damage as it was dark and they were all tinged shades of grey. They are not totally lost.
The ice will melt, the leaves will grow back and spring follows and brings with it new hope, new creativity, new life. There is always someone else suffering, working through hardship, grieving a loss. Our perspective, attitude and outlook all greatly determine how we deal with the challenges life throws at us. I can easily go down the pessimistic, negative view-point. It is always in situations like this when I am not directly effected that I learn that others have such courage and strength. My Husband is always uncharacteristically calm and measured in these moments, he is very accepting of his fate, when situations are beyond his control. Nothing is lost. Courage and strength can overcome. Buildings, material objects, money can all be re-done, re-made, re-worked. Nobody was lost in the fire.
THE SCULPTOR'S WIFE 