To Reflect

 All right, lets reflect.

Time to sit and think about my work for a bit, what's working, what's not, and why.  And maybe work out why I'm struggling to get going again.

Broadly speaking, my art can be split into two groups.  The work I make to derive an emotional response from myself, and the work I make to derive an emotional response from others.

Within those groups: From the first; I make art based on a person I am incapable of getting over, and cities at night, from the second; more conceptual, larger ideas form.  Installations, lights and sounds.

What links them?  Lights in the darkness.  Vibrant colour in the night.

The outlier? The work based on a person.  A part of the work, yet seperate from it.

Is there a reconciliation?  Or must one strand remain seperate to the rest, as much as that person is seperate to me now?

Where do they connect?  Where does the person fit in the city, is she light or is she dark?  Is she both, the unifying filament?

And an idea presents itself.

So anyway, what do I 'like' about my work thus far? What works about the work? 

In terms of the clay pieces, the hand crafted look to them is working for me.  Ties into my summer work of touch and memory of touch.  My fingerprints on the clay, moulded from memories of her skin.  There's something to enjoy there. I've done a lot of erotic drawings this summer, but the clay pieces are almost erotic to make.  

So, next stage.  I want to make bigger, and extend further down the body.  Bring more of the curve of the hip in.  And then we shall see where that takes us.   I'm not keen on just making a sculpture of the female form, that's a bit passé, but something that evokes the feeling of a Goldin photograph?  Dirty and grimy and sexy and real?  I can get behind that.

A negative however is the scale.  The scale works for me and where I'm working.  But without the advantage of being a more true to life scale the piece edges more towards abstraction.  Not in itself a hundred percent bad, but enough to lose some of the essence of the pieces I'm working on.

Soon I'll start another, with the same general shape as now, but more integrated to another idea, when the things I need arrive in the post.  Further thoughts on that when it happens.

I am no sculptor, and I think that helps.  I'm having to make my own mistakes and find my own solutions, and that's fine, that's fun.  This is better than being given rules, I think.  If I do work bigger and need to use an armature, that's where more expert advice will need to be sought but for now, on my small scale, I think I'm good.

I have stumbled across the Tokyo works of Cody Ellingham.  Work I like.  Lines and shapes and neon and darkness and cities.  I need to get to Tokyo.