Clay

I went directly from the end of the Second Module to the beginning of the Third one. No waiting period, not “let’s take a break” event. The working rhythm continues steady what changed was the materials I used for the sculptures. It was fantastic to work with wood and discarded objects, and I’m going to keep using those materials in the future, but now, is clay time.

First impressions

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” Wow, this is massive,” that was the first impression I had when I unpacked the 10 kg of clay. After working with pieces of wood and discarded objects, the big block of clay has a lot of body, and it was really heavy. In just one second, I felt my hands full of materiality, it was wild.

A soft deep density: clay

I think the creation of sculpture has to do with the delimitation of new contours, new edges and limits and also with displacing and upsetting one inhabitant space with another. Rosalind Krauss says: Lessening asserts that sculpture is an art concerned with the deployment of bodies in space, (Krauss, 1998:3). Working with clay gave me a full sensation of implementation all the time: is constant action in place. Clay is deep, heavy and dense and at the same time is very soft. However, I did not really appreciate its softness until I sliced it.

The first thing I did before start working with clay was to make myself a wire cutter. It was quite simple to create and very easy to use but most importantly super useful: to remove a big chunk of clay, pretty much effortless, slicing it with a wire cutter was fascinating. 

On the same idea

My endeavour in the inquire of what lies between darkness, as something that can cause harm, and human intelligence is still going on. Image 1, Materialization of a hand IV is a representation of the thumb, the fifth finger (pinky), the three bones at the base of the pinky, the ulnar nerve and the palmaris and abductor muscles. This drawing was my guide for my first two clay sculptures.

Sculpture 1 – Materialization of a hand VI

The below galleries show the creation process of this first sculpture. I started from a rectangular block of clay, the same shape the clay came from the store. I drew on the surface the main structural lines of the drawing, and I started from there. Besides the wired cutter, I used a metal ruler and some pieces of wood to help me shape the clay.

In a quick google search, I found that the two most common clay hand-building techniques are coil and slab methods and a tried to use both in my sculpture, I also made holes to add other parts.

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I was delighted with the final result of this first sculpture. However, it did not precisely match the drawing.

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Sculpture 1 – Materialization of a hand VII

For my second sculpture, I started from a round shape of clay instead of a rectangular form. This time instead of using the wire cutter to shape the primary form of the sculpture, I threw the clay onto the working table several times to create a new form.

Once the basic shape formed, I started to take out the excess of material. One thing I discovered was that if I cut out a big chunk of clay with the wire cutter and then rotate it 180 degrees on its same axis and turn it around I could use to construct another level of the sculpture that fit naturally. The last images of the below gallery shows this process.

One of the things that cost me a lot of difficulties to do was the fingers of the sculpture.
So this time a decided to create them from a different piece of clay and add it to the central sculpture.

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The below gallery shows how my progress creating this sculpture. In my opinion, at that moment everything was looking ok. However, I quickly change my mind.

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At this point, I felt that I was getting a real sense of form and space. I was feeling or thinking more in a 3d space, and this makes me do things completely different from my original plan, so I decide to behead the sculpture or to put it more directly to cut the top part of the sculpture and to put the front on the back and vice versa. I have to tell you that in the mood of thinking about darkness and human intelligence, I made some holes on the piece in a violent way. I really believe that violence is one of the main components of those two elements that I have been researching. So what I did was to stick a tree branch on different sides of the sculpture to make holes. At the end, those holes, I think, look like if a projectile had perforated the sculpture.

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The end result looks very good to my eyes. It is a different end result, but it works. Definitely, I will use this technique of cutting one part of sculpture and then rotating it 180 degrees to achieve new results.

Sculpture 3: Materialization of a hand VIII or Moving form through space

Starting point

Again, it is a drawing. I love to draw.

The Galleries

The below three galleries show the whole creation process of sculpture number 3: Materialization of a hand VII or Moving form through space.

Gallery 1: Starting from 2D represent the general action-event-feeling of the piece as one-third of it is the construction process: a general feeling of some kind of flatness.

In Gallery 2: Using only the little finger and thumb as a tool, the flatness sensation starts to vanish.

It is not until Gallery 3: Moving form through space that the sculpture starts being visible on all its sides. Moving big chunks of the sculpture from its original place to other areas of the space was a great idea.

General speaking. It was an intricate sculpture to translate from a 2D drawing to clay space, especially the 3D depiction of an odd form on the paper. 

The photographs in these galleries are self-explanatory: they just depict the constructions process of the piece, a linear succession of events.

Gallery 1: Starting from 2D

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Gallery 2: Using only little finger and thumb as tool of molding

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Gallery 3: moving form in space

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Final piece

Sculpture 4. Untitled

Starting point

At this point in the process, I wanted to create something quickly. I spent a lot of time on the last three sculptures that I had the feeling that I need to move faster. I spent between 4 and 5 hours in total with this sculpture with no clear plan. I just wanted to construct something from a big flat block of clay. I thought about it as a picture plane to bend.

The Galleries

The three galleries show the whole creation process of sculpture number 4.

Gallery 1: Materiality to shape, depict my decision of having a big block of clay to bend and to twist.

Gallery 2: Materiality to rise. Clay is flexible, but it can fall off from its own weight. There were some “poses” of the sculpture that were not feasible to maintain.

Gallery 3: Materiality to anthropomorphize.  It was in this part when I went into the path of my current research theme, and I use one more time the idea of darkness and human intelligence along with the image of the two most distinguished fingers on the human hand: the pinky and the thumb.

Gallery 1: Materiality to shape

Gallery 2: Materiality to rise

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Gallery 2: Materiality to anthropomorphize

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Sculpture 5. (Not done yet)

I really enjoy working with clay, and I think I did a decent job. It was my first time working with clay. However, it was quite a disappointment to use the same clay over an over to create a new piece, destroying the previous one.

The construction of Sculpture 5 needs to wait until I get a new clay, paper clay this time, to work with.

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Plaster

Working with plaster was a bag of mixed feelings. First, because gypsum is quite a problem if your breath its dust. I was using the proper gear however I work on the garage of my house, and sometimes I was too worried to bring dirt inside the home where I do not want to put any plaster at all. My wife suffers from asthma, and I have 4 cats that smell everything.

I like the final plaster sculptures, but I think I did not really get precisely how plaster behaves. I guess I have a better idea of two things that went wrong: 1) in the first sculpture, I did the mix for the scrims to thin, and it was on some areas too fragile. And 2) when I put the second layer of plaster on both sculptures I made too much mix that started to dry very fast and granulate. I really do not mind the result: the course surface on the sculptures, but that was not what I was looking for.

Gathering and glueing the styrofoam

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Plaster sculpture 1

Starting point

A big styrofoam protecting enclose of a computer: a ready made to discover.

The Galleries

The below five galleries show the whole creation process of plaster sculpture number 1.

Gallery 1: Discovering the already-there forms on the styrofoam. The first time I re-saw that big styrofoam cube I noticed right away is utilitarian forms: curves, holes, depressions, spaces that were made with a purpose to protect something. It was too much temptation not to use them, so I decided to carve them out and let this preexisting forms to guide me in the creation of this sculpture.

Gallery 2: styrofoam is a ready-made. Once the forms were carved out, the final assemblage of the piece was natural. I had all the time in my head my recurrent theme on this course: what lies between darkness and human intelligence. So for me, it was easy to see a big tongue coming out from a being that looks like a rabbit. A prominent tongue that licks everything and is insatiable and devours whatever it encounters.

Gallery 3: Joining the pieces.  A self-explanatory gallery, nothing to add except that those pieces of wire work perfectly.

Gallery 4: A thin scrim. This is where things started to go not so well. At this point it was not that obvious to me how bad the situation was until I put the rest of the plaster.

Gallery 5: Disaster 1. The whole back part of the mouth fell as soon as I started putting the thick layer of plaster. It was frustrating, as hell for a few minutes. I had no idea what was happening. Because it was only that part, I continued’ otherwise, I would’ve been forced to start all over again. Later I realized that the first layer of plaster with the scrim was too diluted and that a plaster structure all around the sculpture was not being formed.

Gallery 6: Disaster 2. To meet the height requirement for this sculpture, I mounted it over another piece of styrofoam. The width of the thick layer of plaster makes it very unstable, and it broke from one of its feet (yes, the feet are actually fingers, not difficult to guess which ones).

Gallery 7 : Final piece. After all those accidents I finished the sculpture. I pour over the top of the tongue the rest of the plaster to make it look like if it was grotesquely devouring something. Definitely, I will try to make this sculpture one more time, I think it is very interesting.

Gallery 1: Discovering the already there forms on the styrofoam

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Gallery 2 : styrofoam is a ready made

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Gallery 3 : Joining the pieces

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Gallery 4 : A thin scrim

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Gallery 5: Disaster 1

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Gallery 6 :Disaster 2

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Gallery 7 : Final piece

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Plaster sculpture 2

Starting point

For this final sculpture I tried to duplicate clay Sculpture 4.

The Galleries

The below four galleries show the whole creation process of plaster sculpture number 1.

Gallery 1: A different kind of foam. The raw material for this sculpture was a different kind of foam. It was not styrofoam but something different: more comfortable to work with as it was more manageable and somehow softer. I had to glue the pieces of this foam to create an initial working block

Gallery 2: One single big shape. To carve this block of foam I use a bread knife, it was a fantastic tool to work with. It was quite easy and less messy than styrofoam.

Gallery 3: Gaining height.  A self-explanatory gallery, nothing to add but those big bases of foam work great.

Gallery 4: Final Piece. I did not have the same setbacks with this piece as the previous one. The only thing that happened was the course surface of the sculpture. As I stated previously, I really do not mind, but it was not what I was looking for: something way more smoother.

Gallery 1: A different kind of foam

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Gallery 2: One big single shape

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Gallery 3: Gaining height

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Gallery 4: Final Piece

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Building three-dimensional structures

Collecting materials

For this new part of the course, I did the same as the last time: I collected all the materials from my own home: pieces of wood, discarded objects from towels hangers, scrap metal, old magazines, tree branches from my yard. I have to admit that I was tempted at the beginning to go to the hardware store to see what kind of things I could find there especially to see what type of wood they sell. I’m quite happy I did not go to the store because I had plenty of materials at home.

There is a movement in photography that says that there is no need to create any more images because the world is full of them. I think this concept applies quite well to the sculptures I created for this project: there is no need for new materials if you want to create a sculpture, the world is full of discarded objects to work with.

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Easel for the large Drawings

One task I did just after collecting the materials for my sculptures and before starting working on them was to construct a large easel for Project Four. Also, Project Four requires that the drawings need to be created at the same time as the sculptural process.

Again, the power of reusing things took place: with a sturdy tripod, a large piece of chipboard and the folding mechanism of an old studio photography light I built a big easel in less than 30 minutes. If I take into consideration the prices of a new easel, my DIY easel is fantastic!

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Small first sculpture

The first thing I decided when I started the construction of this first stacked sculpture was that I wanted to do something simple, to begin with, I did not wish to just stack random objects, one on top of another, and have my fist sculpture ready in less than five minutes. Yes, it was a challenge.

So, I started with an old dry tree branch that I cut in half and drew it on my new easel.

BTW I live in a small town, and we do not have too many choices when we want to buy art materials, in this specific case: big sheets of paper, like the A2 required for some of the drawings. However, yes, we have internet of course, so I bought two big rolls of Strathmore 400 medium (36″x10ft) online. As you can see on the photos I had difficulties cutting the paper to the size of the chipboard. I can’t believe how hard it is to deal with such big rolls of paper if you do not have the proper equipment (a roll paper dispenser, I guess).

Anyway, so after drawing the tree branch and thinking a little bit about what I was going to do next I decide to use the old saying of “divide and conquer”, and that is what I did: I divided the drawing into small pieces by erasing some parts of it, and I did the same on the branch, I cut it off on the same number of pieces my drawing states. Once the brach was cut it into pieces, I needed to stack it to make it a sculpture, and for that, I used wire and glue.

Going from a drawing to sculpture and vice-versa is a quite fascinating process of creation. The drawings I developed for my three first pieces were very helpful but not revealing. Those early drawings taught me that sometimes it is not possible to go from the sketch to the sculpture and is necessary to make the necessary adjustments to the materials to look as close as possible to the drawing.

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The stacked process of the pieces was quite straightforward: I drill a little hole at the end of the wood pieces, both ends, and I stuck a piece of wire in it. Easy to do but not what I wanted, the parts were not fixed, and they can rotate 360 degrees freely. So, yes! The hot glue gun came to my help. I like this kind of glue since the last module when I discover it, it is excellent.

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Once all the pieces were glued and fixed, it was time to create the base where the sculpture can stand. As you can see in the last picture on the below gallery, the sculpture is complete: stacked elements in a vertical position that can stand by itself on a stable base.

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Pareidolia

Pareidolia is defined as “the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music. Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations…”
(Wikipedia.org, 2019)

I think I’m as good as everyone else when it is time to see faces in objects. After I “finish” the first sculpture I was not precisely pleased and I had the sensation that I needed to do something else with it. I did not want just to paint to perhaps differentiate the elements that comfort it. I want to do something more. When I consciously noticed that bump at the front of the first piece I immediately though of the work of Hannah Hoch, the amazing german Dada artist from the ’20s of the last century. I always have had a fascination with her photomontage work. So, I decided to go that route to add to my sculpture something meaningful to me.

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One last thing about this sculpture is that the images I choose to glue on the surface of it where selected kind of randomly from old magazines. In the end it was clear that the images selected are related to concepts I have been researching regarding intelligence and darkness.

The below gallery shows the last steps for this piece and the incorporation of the word “monsters.”

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First larger sculpture

What triggered the initial intention in the construction of this sculpture is the same concept as the one in the last piece: Pareidolia.

Funny enough as soon as I started to inspect the wood pieces for this next sculpture the firs piece of scrap-wood that I choose has a “face” on it, as it is possible to see in the first image from the left on the below gallery. What intrigued me the most was not the eyes but the mouth. It was like if it was saying something. So, I went back to the drawing board to make a visual representation of a sound.

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I used wire to construct the sound waves, and I dit it as curves stacked one over another in a vertical position. They intersect and have been glued at the ends. It was a complicated task, so I create a device to hold them together while the glue solidified and they became stable. See the last two photographs from the gallery above.

The gallery below shows the sound waves emerging from the mouth of the sculpture and moving forward into space in front of it.

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Before I went further into the development of this piece, I took some time to play with the “face” of the sculpture. I cut out some elements from old magazines to give the sculpture a more “human” appearance. I quickly realized that the possibilities could be endless.

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Once I decided on the “face” of my sculpture I added more wire pieces at the top and the bottom of the sounds elements to make them look more robust.

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The last part that I needed to tackle when the sounds and the face were done was to make the sculpture taller. At first, I tried with whatever I had in hand to create a base, but it did not work, as you can see in the first image of the gallery below. Later I decide to make things right and attached other elements with proper materials, like the big screws on the below images.

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Finally, I decided to create a significant base for my sculpture, gluing some pieces of wood together.

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Small second sculpture

For my second small sculpture, I wanted to do something with rocks. One of the coolest sculptures I have seen here in Canada is an inukshuk: “An inukshuk is a structure made of stones piled on top of each other. Inuksuit or inukshuks (which means more than one inukshuk) were used for navigation in the frozen north where, in the snow, everything could look the same.” (cbc.ca, 2018).

This was one of the fastest and easiest sculptures I did. Although it did not resemble the my first drawings the resulting sculpture is quite cute. It is just a rock at the bottom, a long piece of wood, a flat rock, and finally another stone.

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The final touches for this stacked sculpture was an inspiration of the works of Hannah Hoch. This time I used just a couple of eyes that I got from an old magazine and the effect it has on the whole sculpture was fantastic, and I think the head shape rock is as with the eyes: a good match.

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Small Third sculpture

For this sculpture, I returned to my ongoing research of intelligence and darkness, focusing this time on the humans’ hands and fingers.

So I made a new drawing (image below) with only three fingers: index, middle and ring finger. The other two, the ones missing in the picture, are the thumb and the pinky and it just happens that this two are the most crucial fingers in terms of evolution.

It is a common knowledge that humans are at the top of the chain because our opposed thumb, however, we are not the only ones with that feature in the animal kingdom. “Most primates (humans, apes, and Old World monkeys) and some other animals have opposable thumbs. Humans can move their thumb farther across their hand than any other primate.” (Damonte, 2014).

On the other side of the hand lives the fifth finger also knows as the pinky. This little finger provides half of the force of our hand, so the question is: how does it do it? In the words of Frank R. Wilson, the answer goes like this: “is probably no exaggeration to say that the final biomechanical change at the base of the pinkie may have conferred an advantage to the hominid hand comparable to supplying its owner not just with gunpowder but with the biomechanical and computational infrastructure for an entire ballistics technology. Considering everything else that was already present, there was nothing this hand could not do if it could learn how to do it. And apparently with time, and with other opportunities and challenges encountered in new environments, the brain did rise to the challenge, and greatly modify itself in the process,* since there is very little now that this hand, which makes tools that make machines that make computers that make machines and tools (and so on), cannot do.” (Wilson, 1999)

Hamate, Pisiform and Triquetrum are the bones at the base of the pinky, and they are part of the biomechanical changes that Frank R. Wilson talks about it in his book. I did the above drawing to help me visualize this information. On it, you can see the ulnar nerve, the big red swirl lines, resting on the hook of the Hamate bone.

The below gallery shows my construction process from a drawing to a real object. Unfortunately, the result is not exactly what the drawing shows. This is my first time carving, but despite my low results I was still able to use the carved wood piece to make a sculpture.

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Once the frustration has passed, I decided to do a simple stacked sculpture. I joined the carved piece of wood to spring steel and then I joined the two parts to a base. I painted it red and attached a black aerosol cap on top and some wire pieces to the side.

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Second larger sculpture (shape shifting)

For my second large sculpture, I had the fortune to be able to use an old Ikea drawer that we weren’t using anymore. I was very excited about this new kind of wood: all black and ready for being recycled into a sculpture!

One of the first ideas for this sculpture was to create a tall column with other wood pieces and attached to its side, something like an obelisk: tall, static and ugly. However, after struggling a bit, fixing the first piece of wood to a base, I changed my mind.

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Fixing that first piece of wood to a base was complicated: I wanted it to stay in one place, but it moves in different directions all the time, so after this experience, I decided that what I wanted was to create a shape-shifting sculpture: something that moves on all different directions.

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I cut the wood in small pieces and then I joined two pieces at 45 degrees with another piece on top. I built 4 of these structures, all different, and a stacked them together joining them with a long wood screw that was a bit loose to allow me to rotate the pieces in almost all directions.

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To finalize the sculpture I painted all the areas where I have sawn the wood black.

I have to say that I’m quite happy with the final result: the sculpture moves on all different directions adapting a different “pose” each time a piece of it is moved. However, the gravitational centre of the sculpture moves each time some part of the sculpture it is moved making it quite unstable at some “poses.”

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Small four sculpture – Materialization of a hand III Pinky

After my first and failed attempt to replicate this drawing into and sculptural form, I did not give up, and I came back for a second round!

This time I learned from my previous mistakes: first I knew that a more significant piece of wood was need. I also knew what the tools I was working with were capable or not of doing. As you can see in the below image my second attempt started this time with the right foot, I was trilled.

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In the next step, I deeper the space between the fingers to make them look a little bit more rotund. Even though the nails are very badly done they look ok, I think they give the fingers that missing element that makes me recognize them as hand digits.

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(Please refer to the section “Small Third sculpture” in this document for more research notes.)

Next, I cut them in half to make legs. To make this decision, I mimic with my hand the movement of a spider running at full speed in a straight line. The index, middle and ring finger do most of the job; the little finger helps but thumb not much.

Even if these three fingers are not as important in evolution term as the thumb and the pinky the action to transform the fingers functionality into a locomotive one was correct.
Everything was it is the right place.

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For the last part of the sculpture, I added the two other fingers somehow to the sculpture. The thumb is the section just after the legs finish and the little finger comes right after. And of course a little Dada influence at the end with the eye.

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Bibliography

Wikipedia.org (2019)  at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia  
(Accessed on 019.07.19)

Cbc.ca (2018)  at: https://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/do-you-know-what-an-inukshuk-is (Accessed on 023.07.19)

Wilson, R. Frank (1999) The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture” Toronto: Random House of Canada. Kindle Edition.