From 11th-30th June (minus 1.5 weeks due to covid) myself and four other students (Alis Avenue, Abi Edwards, Naomi Hadfield and Izzy Lawrence) had a residency at CAST, Helston. For me, this residency was perfectly timed between moving out of my uni studio/degree show at the end of May and moving into my studio at the Quarry House at the start of July. In this way, too, it bridged the gap between the finality of finishing university and the beginning of starting to make work more independently – it felt as though it gently eased me back into making, with the short time period providing enough pressure to get me making, but without the overwhelming pressure of a big uni hand-in at the end.
I took a limited set of materials (mainly drawing materials and some clay), in the hope of bringing my practice right back to basics, exploring what might emerge/what core themes remain when stripped back in this way. I started by responding to the space we were in – CAST’s building is an old school, slowly being renovated and re-purposed for artist studios, and the walls retain traces of its past with layers (strata?) of peeling paint and plaster. I traced some of the paint patches and began making them into ‘things’ (reminiscent of my thing drawings). These felt a little forced, however – I was simply applying a tried and tested technique to a new shape very arbitrarily (nothing wrong with arbitrarily, just in this case nothing seemed to grow from it). I then focused down purely on the shapes, treating them more as masses, exploring how this mass might be translated to how it sat on the page (potentially reminiscent/exploring similar themes to my older tangly drawings). They became more sculptural objects in this way, sitting along a strange two dimensional shelf, so from there I began to experiment with cutting them out, breaking the two dimensions out into a three dimensional world, releasing them from the flat plane.
Something else that fed into this was a visit to Helston Folk Museum. I used the shapes of some of the found pieces of Bronze Age ceramic pots with the paint flakes from the wall. They felt like they were similar randomly-formed shapes from years of human and nonhuman weathering, which equally sat between drawing and sculpture. I had a chat with Lucy Willow during the residency and she described the paint marks and strata as capturing the ‘geology of the building’ which is a wonderful phrase, and one that holds potential for future exploration.
Helston Folk Museum as a whole felt as though it captured the complete geology/history of a place, from remnants of more recent social history right back to local rock formations. The breadth of disciplines and artifacts that it spanned in this way therefore felt relevant to my own exploration of museums and taxonomies in the degree show. The somewhat chaotic nature of local museum collections such as these I feel holds conceptual potential for the breaking down of conventional knowledge-gathering and ordering. This is definitely something that would be good to research more into on a theoretical level – ethnographic research is coming to mind as a potentially relevant jumping off point but perhaps I am misremembering the definition?!
Alongside the exploration into these shapes/forms, I grew more interested in the marks themselves that I was using. In pairing down the textures on the shapes to their basics I began using a tiny tally-like mark which I have used before in pieces like time-stone. I am yet to work out exactly what it is that draws me to this mark – I think it is something about accumulation, detail, stitch, strata, and marking time that it evokes, and that intrigues me. I developed a small series of A5 pencil pieces further exploring this mark, and specifically the idea of strata – I found that aesthetically I prefer the more delicate, minimal marks, where differences between lines are subtle and only just apparent. I am currently unsure as to exactly why that is, but again perhaps it is something about the need to come in close to the paper, to slow down, to be curious, to investigate the surface.
Combining these two parallel explorations – one into strata, building up and layering pencil marks across the paper, and one into shape/form, lurking between sculpture/drawing – I then began to consider layering vertically out of the paper, invoking ideas of 3D drawings, mining, positives and negatives, paper strata etc. I had some paper that I had made at a paper-making workshop with Hester Ellis (and some of hers I had bought too) which added an extra layer of layering/accumulation – that of the plant matter and paper pulp that is visible in the grain of the surface.
Alongside all of this, I was creating ceramic pieces. These were predominantly growing out of the body of things that I created and displayed at the degree show – perhaps unlike the thing drawings, my work with ceramics still feels very new and unfinished. I feel the degree show was a strong start, particularly the choice to curate found objects alongside my own work, but the ceramic pieces themselves still feel they could be refined and developed significantly.
I focused again, perhaps somewhat inadvertently, on the idea of accumulation in the ceramics I made over the residency. The first piece I made was created from lots of small flakes of clay, built up to the size of a hand-held pebble. I’m not sure the accumulation was quite as effective in this piece as in the drawings – it felt a bit clumsy, and the overall sculpture quite static and oddly rounded. Perhaps it was missing the element of nonhuman agency that I introduced through firing found materials.
One piece I created purely by accident, pulling a piece of clay out of the bag to discover the form felt growth-like and thingy – I can see it pairing well with the more chaotically (entropically?) formed pieces I gather. Maybe this is something worth exploring further – how can I push the aspect of chance in forming the clay itself? Could I leave lumps on a beach to be rolled around by the tides? The other pieces I created were all very intentionally formed, deliberately trying to mimic aspects of natural forms and minerals. I am unsure whether this is overly successful – I think potentially the explicit intention to mimic aesthetically clashes somewhat with the attempt elsewhere in the same work to mimic through process.
One ceramic process which I was able to continue exploring through the residency was the use of paper in building the clay pieces. I find the process of this holds a lot of potential – the idea of clay accumulating around a paper structure, the paper even being intrinsic to the form of the piece, and then the paper burning away to nothing in the kiln, is deeply reminiscent of trace fossils and the comparative ephemerality of materials (such as stone and flesh). I am still yet to find a physical way of using this process that aesthetically captures this; previous attempts at incorporating paper all seemed a little clunky, and it wasn’t obvious paper/something that is now absent was even involved in the making process. I am yet to fire these ones but even with these I don’t feel as though I have developed it much further. Maybe it would be useful to start quite literally with the idea of trace fossils – making forms out of paper and impressing them into a flat surface of clay? Maybe interweaving them a little so it doesn’t just appear to have been pressed into the surface pre-firing. Perhaps I could use the paper to suspend the clay in some way, and then the clay falls during the firing?
At the end of the residency I organised an open studio. This felt like a suitably relaxed way to end the three weeks, with a chance to talk about what we’d made with some new people, but without the pressure of curating an exhibition and therefore trying to resolve the work when it was still so fresh. I found it really refreshing to talk to people about my work in a setting completely outside of university – it felt more open, more responsive, knowing that not everyone who visited would necessarily be from a similar fine art background. Unexpectedly, I also sold some work during the event. The experience taught me a lot, both logistically (in terms of signing work, having prices in mind, giving out contact details etc), and also emotionally – I’m wasn’t sure whether or not I was ready to give away the work having not ever been put on the spot in a situation like that before. I made sure to document the work so I can still reflect and respond to what I was exploring, but it obviously isn’t the same as still having the original.
This is something I have been thinking about a fair amount recently while moving studios and being confronted with the sheer volume of three years’ worth of work. Do I want to keep it all, either as it is or just materially to be re-used? Do I want to get rid of it, and if so how – by selling or just disposing of? At one point in the residency I popped into Ben Sanderson’s studio, and his way of constantly feeding his work back into itself is an interesting answer to this dilemma. It feels suitably sustainable to work this way – I don’t like the feeling of creating only for it to be sat in storage, or even sold just to sit passively somewhere. In this way, too, I need to consider how the sale of a piece will direct my practice – I don’t want the fact that a work has sold to in any way influence the work I make next, or impact on the level of critical engagement I have with my work. I am aware this may be easier said than done though, so perhaps allowing myself a little time and space after a sale, particularly if there is an urge to make more pieces in the same vein, may be useful in questioning what it is that is driving the creation of that work.
In all, this felt a really useful and exciting starting point in the next chapter of my work, drawing on many themes that I’ve looked at before, but also finding some new ones. Once I am settled in my new studio I imagine I will pick up where I left off with these works, perhaps pushing the drawings to a larger scale, and continuing to experiment with clay in the ways outlined above. I would also like to learn more formally about clay so I can really make the most of the alchemic process of firing – Brickworks, which is soon to be opening at CAST, might be a good place to do this.
Notes from paper journal during residency:
- the idea of growing drawings – Helena and Hester
- how do these overlap? weaving and surface
- pencil lines and mark-making – accumulation and strata
- thread and water-soak paper?
- hag-stone: hole through paper
- building up graphite layers
- water-soak/warp strata drawings
- small rock maps
- collage different marks
- could have lines correlating to actual data in some way?
- collage – positive and negative spaces
- like underland/quarries – buildings being the positives of quarries’ negatives
- try layering cut/ripped pieces of clay
- clay drawing?
- how to make paper-like trace fossils?
- draw on poem
- processes of moving mass and erosion
- handmade paper – each sheet individual, more sculptural to draw/press into
- should add marks to underneath of paper and clay parallel pieces
- cutting out paper w text on – use to make a text in some way?
- paint strata and the geology of the building
Anna Harris 