The Wondabrella - a medal

Another Friday.

The weeks are simply flying by and contrary to my getting ahead of myself as in yesterday's blog (and almost wishing myself to the end of the year) I am actually desperate to hold the years back.

Like any other person growing older, i count the wrinkles and the grey hairs and imagine that if I feel and behave like a sixteen year old i may actually still pass as one! Actually, when a 49 year old behaves like a sixteen year old they generally pass for a twit!

Still, i live in the vague hope that one day one of the girls in the Vinmonopolet will ask me for some ID when making my alcoholic purchases there. In actual fact, they generally meet my hopeful gaze with that sort of patronizing smile you generally reserve for your slightly demented granny.

Ooops! Like a demented old granny I seem to have rather got off the point:

It is Friday and here is your Friday artwork.

I have decided to finish off the week with another medal - I have been very busy in the medal department lately - This one is called "The Wondabrella" - you may remember the study I did for this and posted a while back (May 31st in fact). So you can go back and look up the concept as I described it then - which is, succinctly, a comment on deforestation and global warming. of course, you will get a more rambling description if you go back and investigate - but then you might not want to risk that.

You will notice that the last three medals i have posted are spray-painted gold. This is only temporary and is not the intended finish. After getting these models cast up in bronze i will consider the patination very carefully and at that time I will choose more suitable and less garish colours. The only reason they are gold is because that is all I could get at the 'pound' shop in Stavanger - I say that reservedly, because there is really no such thing as a discount store in Norway!!

Why do I bother to spray them at all?

Well, the Super-sculpey does sometimes get smudges from dirty fingers or pencil marks etc on it which distracts from the form. Also in the baking process it seems to bubble a bit just under the surface - it does not come through, so the surface is not spoiled, but again you cannot quite make out the true form. By spraying it it pulls the surface back together as intended.

So now, that is it - the week is over and i will have to think about some lovely new surprises for you for Monday - i think i might need to trawl through my past catalogues on Sunday afternoon as I am getting a bit short of prepared JPEGS to post.

Have a nice weekend - I will

Nature Contained and Nature Escaping - or Knights and Dragons

Oh Dear!

Another rainy Stavanger day :-(

Everything is so wet and everywhere you go you get wet.

One small blessing is that I have no workmen outside crashing and banging, so it is a reasonably peaceful day except for all the excitement going on in this house.

I have been very busy today and very encouraged by the work that is really starting to grow beneath my fingers. I started a new medal late last week and I can't wait to finish it now and show it to you - it is still not ready but being me I already have the idea for my next medal fermenting in my brain. i won't tell you what it is about just yet, that will be a surprise. But I am really happy with the development at the moment.

Because of my lack of facilities, the medals I am making here are only a model - made from a wonderful modelling material which i discovered a few years back, called SuperSculpey. It has a really nice texture for getting fine detail and then when you have finished your medal you can bake it in the oven and it cures to a hard plastic which still has a bit of flexibility in it which works very well for me.

I make each medal in two halves - that is, the obverse and the reverse. After they are baked I glue the two sides together and gently sand the edges back to smooth them off. However, when they bake they tend to curl up at the edges but owing to that flexibility, when I glue the two sides together they can be bent back and cancel each other out - if you catch my drift!

I will take these medals with me when i move to Spain and the first thing I need to do there is find a good art supplies shop where I can buy some silicon rubber to make moulds with. Once I have moulds of the medals I can start casting and editioning and hopefully selling my new body of work. I will also have something new to take with me to the next BAMS conference (which is in Cardiff next year.)

I used the image above in one of my previous experimental medals (do your remember the ones that i cast in clear resin) - it was initially an idea for a large sculpture to be sited on a motorway somewhere in Ireland (i did not win that commission) - I cannot remember the location now. I rather liked the idea of nature escaping from the man made landscape. It contrasts the rather untidy, organic forms with a more angular, tidy form to represent how man tries to contain nature, but rarely succeeds.

I like that - I like the fact that nature will be the eventual winner over man's stupidity and shortsightedness. Unfortunately i will probably not be here either when the battle is all over.

But right now i am here and feeling very optimistic for my immediate future and the next phase of Mary at Large!

The Source

Today I have chosen something quite experimental.

It is a medal, but not this time made out of traditional materials - eg bronze, silver, aluminium etc.

It was in fact made at a time that I was experimenting with various casting resins.

Like most artists I love experiments - I think it is one of the definitions of an artist - in my humble opinion of course but I did say most artists very carefully at the start of this sentence.

Speaking with other artists we often admit that it is the same as playing. We try things out but not always with a complete end result in mind. We just try out the medium and see what it can do. Or we mess about with a technique or in this case the boundaries of what a medal actually is.

We ask questions and then we answer them, but not always in a serious way. Often we play with the answers, playing with the words and through them, the ideas.

We love to push boundaries and see how far we can take things, whether it be the subject matter or the paint. We love to mess things up and then tidy them out again and it is even more fun when they don't tidy out quite right! That is when you get something new and exciting. We often refer to this state as the 'Happy Accident' I just love happy accidents. Some of my best work has contained several HAs or even been a complete HA!

Even as I write this I am playing with the language and trying out ideas in my head about the meaning of being an artist. It is funny how important that is.

Now you might think that I am digressing at this point, but if you look at the title of this piece which is called 'The Source' you will understand that what I am speaking about is a source for inspiration or technique in my work. So rather cleverly, just when you thought that all was lost and I was totally entangled in my tongue, I have brought everything back home again. Without so much as a glimmer of an accident happy or otherwise.

So, as you can see 'The Source' is cast from polyester resin

I tried another clear resin at the same time. Urethane. Now urethane was unarguably a nicer sort of resin to work with. It has very little smell so you can use it indoors and do not need a mask. However, it is not as easy to cast without very expensive, large equipment, such as a vacuum. It is very hard to cast a piece without bubbling occurring. There was some other problem too as I cast my mind back, but I can't quite remember what it was. That was very frustrating indeed and very expensive as yet another casting bit the dust

Polyester resin on the other hand is absolutely lethal. The first time i used it I had no idea and my studio and home were reeking, not to mention the fumes I inhaled! On that first occasion I remember having a small drink when I had finished my work - honestly it was not much - not a whole bottle or anything! But by gum did it take effect! i was swaying and wobbling all over the house afterwards. So the next day I went back to the shop and bought one of those space masks with great big filters on either side and a mouth and nosepiece that sinks into your face to create a seal. Wonderful! I look like a battle scarred warrior when I take it off as it presses great big grooves across the bridge of my nose and down my cheeks. But it is definitely a necessary evil.

I learned a lot about the resins at that time - obviously I forget bits, but another thing I do remember is that when i was casting a larger piece in polyester it turned slightly yellowish as it cured. I solved that in the end by mixing in less catalyst as that was making it heat up too much and literally burning itself and causing the discolouration. Interesting huh?

Ployester also tended to react with the new silicon mould that I was casting from and left a tacky surface. That can be solved apparently by cooking the mould gently in the oven for a length of time. I cannot remember exactly why this is, but there is some residue left in the new mould after making it that has to be laid to rest. But in the end I never actually got that far with them before moving house and as all my equipment is now in storage it will be some time before i do any more experimental casting again.

So, to get back to the actual medal (eventually) I poured the medal into a silicon mould I had prepared with a printout of my image made on a printable overhead sheet. Tadaaaaa!

I am not sure if the photo here shows the medal to the best advantage, but it is difficult sometimes to photograph such things.

Something really nice came out of this medal though, as i took it with me to a BAMS conference that year and one of the other artists took a real fancy to it and asked me if I would do a swap, as I had admired one of her own experimental medals. I was thrilled to pieces because I love Nicola Moss's work - I always have and now i own one of her medals too.

I cannot find her website right now but you can see one of her medals on this link http://www.bams.org.uk/medal-detail.php?medal=190

and may I say once again that far from getting off the point I have once again brought today's theme full circle when I tell you that when i was speaking with Nicky she was wondering whether to call the above medal 'The Source' so there!

Dormant Seed and the Underdog

Obverse Reverse

Over the following days I would like to make a few posts which show off some of my Art Medals.

I have explained previously what a medal consists of (see previous postings on the 3rd and 5th of June) so by this time you will be able to follow quite easily when i explain the meaning of this medal.

It is called Dormant Seed and on the Obverse - or front - of the medal you can see the the face of the little seed sleeping gently as it waits patiently for germination. When you turn it over in your hand you see the soles of its little feet waiting to push down into the ground to form the roots for the plant as it starts to grow.

I like this medal very much because I think it is very peaceful and I like the face of the sleeping seed. i really enjoyed making it. Another thing that really appeals to me is feet - so I really enjoyed making the little feet or footprints on the reverse of the medal.

I have always liked feet. I have exceptionally good feet, that is they are not perhaps the most beautiful of feet but they are such good, strong feet. I get the odd bit of dry skin from time to time that is true and when I get new shoes I often get a blister or two but on the whole my feet have never let me down and they have carried my very successfully for all these years without great pain. In my teens I did experiment with high heels and strappy uncomfortable shoes, (and please do not forget that it was the 1970s so there were also huge platforms!) which really cut the feet, but I very soon found that as long as my feet were happy then so was I. I do sometimes regret not being able to wear really sparkly and spangly shoes when I am dressed up for some occasion but when I have done in the past I usually find that I have jettisoned the uncomfortable shoes as soon as the dancing starts. Now, I love being barefoot more than wearing any shoes, but at a wedding or birthday party, after drink has flowed freely for several hours, it is highly risky to go barefoot. Not all my dancing partners have been as fleet of foot as Fred Astaire!

But I think I might have gone off the point a little bit there. I was talking about feet in general, not necessarily mine. I love feet, they are one of my favourite body parts (well two of my favourite body parts actually) I like Hands too - they are also really cool. They are similar in many ways (I am sure I do not have to explain) but they have a completely different agenda. Hands are so very versatile and feet so supportive and humble. i think part of my fondness for feet lies in the fact that they are so unloved by the general public. But they carry on with their work, quiet and unassuming. The underdog of the body world.

this medal was made in 2007 and is cast in bronze.

It measures approximately 8cm in diameter