Colonies of Clay
I have been playing with clay and the idea of making a fungal colony since our clay workshop with Alexis at the end of the first year. I have taken a course in paper clay sculpture and have found the tools I need to create the sort of shapes I am interested in. I am not sure the clay is the finished product it may just be another way to draw, work through visual ideas and hopefully clear the path for some sort of understanding.
I am seeing art making as less of a medium and material based activity and more towards an attitude and thought cycle process, if that makes sense. Shapes, networks, forms, substances and doing, rolled up together. I do need the materials though so I am ordering a turn table, some scraping tools and I have loads of paper clay already. It will be too much to make the clay and learn how to form it at the same time (lesson learnt from the paper making!) so I will use commercial clay to explore the ideas and then think about developing it. One question at a time.
I am also beginning to realise that Rome wasn’t built in a day and it’s going to take a while to cross pollinate these ideas across so many substances and approaches but the melting pot is starting to bubble and the aroma of progress is beginning to coil and waft into being.
For now I am drawing and getting stuff ready for shows but I hope to start the 3D work in February. I can imagine a little tentacle reaching out from the clay into animation but that’s me getting ahead of myself again. Patience.
This is the course I have done online https://wavesculptureworkshop.thinkific.com/ I am excited about using the skills to form something less predictable and more of a freeform colony of fungi of my imagination.
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