work in the studio

There will be some more poetry related stuff here soon I promise. Probably.

I mentioned that I've been working on a large piece in my studio, and that I would let you have a look at the process. There will be more than one post on this, but I feel sufficiently confident of completing to let you have a look at what I've done so far.

As I think I wrote a short while back I thought about presenting the street cutlery suspended from the ceiling, or embedded upright in wood, or arranged in a daisy wheel. I felt all of these were too obvious. These were, incidentally not the first ideas I had - an earlier idea may yet be made.

I then started to arrange the street cutlery on the floor of the studio, and suddenly had a bright idea. Two images sprang to mind. The rock-cut graves at Heysham, and plan drawings of archaeological sites - especially those containing burials. When I was younger at my parents house we had a number of issues of an archaeological bulletin from the early 1970s covering activities in York. A few years later in Cardiff, and after moving to Manchester I enjoyed reading archaeology books covering specific digs. I liked the combination of speculation - or informed conjecture - along with serious science, and all qualified with reminders that the authors actually couldn't know the truth. And alongside that an element of art.

So you would have a sketch plan of a dig site. Then some of the finds would be discussed. Pot sherds, bone, seeds, burning, tool marks. Dating evidence would be discussed. The different pieces of evidence would then be brought together, though usually with a warning that this was just one possible explanation.

I conceived of a piece - I initially thought of something made from wood - with grave forms cut into it and scorched, in which the street cutlery would sit. The first layout was similar to that shown below. In fact there were more pieces of cutlery. If you enlarge the picture you may see in places grave forms that are empty and shaded in. Originally there were pieces of cutlery in each of these too.

There were practical problems. A large single piece of wood was likely to be expensive and heavy. And although admittedly I had the wrong tools, and it was a first attempt, it became very apparent that cutting around twenty grave forms was going to be extremely time-consuming. I may yet attempt to work with wood, but not for this project. The photo below shows the beginning of work on a piece of scrap wood I found.

The next one shows the same piece of wood, barely scratched, but showing how the cutlery would fit.

At a meeting with friends I discussed materials. One suggestion was clay, which I thought might be expensive, and would certainly be heavy. I would also have to either make the project in pieces to fit together as a whole, or find a clay that set hard without firing. Another suggestion was to use earth - I'd thought of this, as well as perhaps cement or aggregate, or plaster - although all of these would require me to manufacture a shallow box for them. I was really not confident of making a box that would be adequate for the job. But the idea of plaster set me thinking. I would need some kind of armature for that. An armature seemed like a good idea, and might make the project lighter.

I researched the availability and expense of clay, and while doing so kept seeing papier-mâché as a material. That seemed a lot cheaper, lighter, and potentially much quicker than any alternative. I decided to try papier-mâché. I had plenty of newspapers in the recycling, and it was easy to buy wallpaper paste (which has the advantage of containing fungicide), a bucket and spoon, and only a little more challenging to find a roll of chicken wire.

The first job was to make a raised surface of chicken wire around 165 x 116 cm. I turned the edges over, and had to join pieces together to make the surface wide enough. Of course it sagged in the middle, but I knew I still had to sink the grave forms into it, and could then find ways to support the rest, perhaps by filling in the underside.

The grave forms were made by marking the shape on the wire using a permanent marker, then cutting down the centre. The wire was then pushed down at the sides, making a rough shape. A piece of chicken wire a little larger than the hole was cut from the roll, and folded into shape, placed under the hole, and the two were brought together by folding ends of wire about each other. You can see the first two grave forms with their cutlery below.

I may already have posted this photo, it shows the gloves and pliers without which the job couldn't have been completed. Although that said, the task of bringing together the separate grave form with its corresponding hole had to be done without the gloves. They simply don't allow enough fine control.

The photo below is the sketch on which I've based my final design for the arrangement of the grave forms. In itself this is based on a much more complicated drawn plan of an archaeological dig with a large number of burials.

The photo below shows the basic armature with the first five grave forms created. You can also see how the edges are turned over, and how it is created from several pieces of chicken wire. And that it's quite clearly not straight.

Here's another view of the top corner with four of the first five grave forms visible.

In the view below there are a number of new grave forms that have been created down the right side. This was primarily taken to show the remainder of the roll from which the sections used to create the grave forms were cut.

Below is a close-up of some holes where the wire been cut and bent down to form the basic shape. On one of them, in the bottom left corner of the photo, is a part formed piece that will become the grave form for that hole.

And below, the same hole and the same piece on the floor to its side.

I had already decided that as well as using fewer pieces of street cutlery, I would have some empty grave forms in the piece. Until the armature was complete, and I had sketched a plan of where the cutlery would go I marked each form that would be occupied with a wooden skewer as seen below.

There is a lot more to tell about this, and a lot more photos to take. It may be a week or two before I post on this again. I have only just completed a first layer of papier-mâché on the top, and now need to cover and fill-in the back, and then add some more layers to the top. After that I will have to paint the piece, add some marks and text, and fix the street cutlery in place.

Until then, here's a close detail of part of one of the completed graves, giving some idea of how the hole and grave form are integrated.

One of the liberating things about this project is that it remains really a way of beginning to occupy the space, and getting used to working in a different way. It doesn't actually matter if the work is shit or never finished. Besides which, as already mentioned, I have other ideas about how to present some of the other street cutlery. It's an ongoing process.