Things are clicking into place…gradually

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted about progress on here. Months have been flying by as if they were days, and now it’s November and I’ve only got a couple of months left of my internship at LPW. My ideas have been gradually developing over the last few months, and I think now are finally beginning to form into new work.

This year, more than ever before, has reminded me how precious time and space is – both to think and to make. Some days I can spend a good few hours intermittently standing and staring at bits of work, thinking about composition, colour, intention, etc. Other days I can be intensely immersed in doing – printing, graining stones, drawing. Both of these sorts of days are essential. Too much thinking, especially with lithography, means that I can think an idea through to an end point, but when I try to replicate it, it can never materialise into what I want it to be. Too much time spent making, and there is never an opportunity to stop, look, and re-evaluate the work.

During the summer I was at a mid-point in the internship – having learnt the basics of the lithography process, It was now time to start thinking about how I could apply these techniques to my own work. I was a bit stuck with this. Everything I’d done so far was just to test out particular techniques or materials, but I wanted the work I made to have more substance to it than that.

At the end of July I spent a few days at the house where my Grandad used to live in Weymouth. It’s a place I used to visit ever since I was a kid, and have fond memories of. The house has remained in my family since my Grandad’s death, but this year it was looking like it was going to be sold. The house was lying empty during the summer, so I went down with a few friends for a few days to make use of it. During that time I realised that this was possibly the last time I would be in the house, and I decided to return a few days later by myself. I didn’t really know why or what for, but it I decided to just take some photographs and do some drawing while I was there. This became almost a process of documentation. The house had hardly changed over the years – it was exactly as I had remembered – all the same furniture as when my Grandad had lived there, even photos of him dotted around. But no bodies. No people. None of the originals. Only memories, all fuelled and prompted by inanimate objects, sitting there just as they had done for so many years. But it wasn’t sad, it actually filled me with a kind of peacefulness which I rarely experience. A sense of time passing, slowly but surely, but also a strange sense of permanence.

I also ended up taking some film footage, which has actually become the basis of the work I am currently making. At around 5 or 6 pm each evening, the sun would bounce off the water in the harbour outside, and come in through the window, creating a constantly moving image on various walls in the house. So I set my camera to record, and sat back and watched. Sometimes the sun went in, and the dancing lights disappeared, then they came back stronger, and then faded away again. Sometimes a boat would pass, agitating the water and making the light move faster and jump around. But the dancing light was always kept within the confines of the windows which it passed through – contained within shadows.

When I got back to work after the break, I was preoccupied by the film footage I’d taken of the dancing shadows, and decided I wanted to incorporate them into my work. So I started to project still images from the footage onto stones, and trace them using rubbing block – a lithographic drawing material which creates very soft, subtle marks and tones.

During the summer I had also been doing quite a lot of drawing, some of it very detailed, and some of it very scribbly and quick. It was whilst I was drawing one day, that I realised I had been contentedly scribbling away for over an hour. All I was doing was filling in a shape with HB pencil. But I loved it. The sense of peacefulness I experienced during this was not dissimilar to that which I’d experienced whilst watching shadows on the walls. A feeling of total immersion in the moment, in the present, the right now. I realised that these scribbles were the physical manifestations of that, and so was the film footage I’d taken. So it seemed right to try to tie these two elements somehow.

It’s all made me realise that time spent researching, practicing, experimenting, documenting, playing, thinking, exploring, is never wasted time.

Below are some image of the work I’ve been doing. I’ve got an exhibition starting on 8th January 2014 – ‘Momentary Permanence – Works in progress’, at the LCB Depot Print Room, so the next couple of months will be busy! Looking forward to it…