I thought I’d take a break from the dynamism of the previous two poses and see what could be found in a stable form with the hands sharing one weight. The subtlety of tension as the body adjusts to the weight of the ball is a dynamic between the sphere / pelvis / head; the forward lean of the pelvis, the tension on the shoulder girdle, the engagement of the core. Now I would like to find a way back to an earlier phase where gesture was more prevalent- always difficult to achieve at this point. If you look at the sculpture following this group you may be able to get a sense of it…
The following images may look familiar; they are the the quick sculpture I created from the final pose of fall semester’s university figure. This is the same model I have worked with for the Feb, March, April figures. This figure was about 5 hours with the model for me, while the students have 8 hours. I spend no additional time on classroom sculptures, but the students are welcome to do so and can use my work as reference. There are gestural qualities captured here that only happen in an open studio environment; part of it is the much softer clay for the students- it just lays up quicker. A big part of the gestural quality is also that the students are relying on me to demonstrate a method and pace.
The model is on uneven footing, and holding a heavy ball in each hand. As with the prior figure, the weight adds tension to the pose. This tension expresses throughout the figure, calling on complex skeletal/muscular systems of balance and counterbalance. Even quieter aspects show internal dynamism because of this. Neither of these figures are finished yet. The first image shows some of the work I do without the model present, finding anatomical function that flare and disappear as the model stands over time.
I hired on a model after teaching figure sculpture at university. I thought I’d only work from life-model at 1/3 scale with no photo reference. In the past I’ve taken photos as well, and worked between life model sessions from the reference images; this favors outcome over process. The model stood for two hour sessions, 3 times. Then I let this sculpture/pose/form rest while I started another pose with model another 3 sets of two-hour sessions (next blog post). Then I split the next three sessions, and worked for an hour on each sculpture for a grand total of 9 hours per pose with the model and about double that without the model. Working on the sculpture without the model present requires more overt knowledge of anatomical function / form; rather than sculpting what I see, I have to rely on what I know.
Over the length of the class the students learned some wire work, integrated refuse, and formed up some insects. The critters are either friendly or adversarial, as bugs often are. These are sketchbook assignments, done outside of class time. This is a mix of early bugs, to bugs from our last day.
University art majors are required to take art survey courses, and for most students this class is their first foray into three dimensional form and media. These pieces are created in plaster and other media. I call them Tumbile (after Alexander Calder’s wordplay with his major forms of Mobile & Stabile); they have multiple positions with no set up or down.
Our spring semester 3-D classes are half-semester long courses. The last time I taught this class was in 2012, back when it was a full semester- so I had to come up with new projects that could fit the compressed timeline. Section one ended today, and section two starts on Thursday. The spring course always includes an introduction to woodshop skills/safety. We started with rough planks from a lumber yard, and went from there. The French Cleat was their first practice run through the wood shop, and is integrated as a base form to hang the pieces from the wall. This represents almost half the class.
A block into walkies for Nora, and E pointed out some pretty stained glass in the back of a neighbor’s car. He stepped out the door just then, and she told him the glass was very pretty. “You want it?” “Yes.” “I have bigger ones in the house, you want them too?” “Yes!” His mother was remodeling her house and had them all pulled out and he didn’t have anyplace for them in his house. He brought them out to the porch, then left for work while E took Nora’s leash and waited on the porch so I could walk back home and get the truck.
Outside Night.
The rest of the day was spent cleaning them, repairing them with glass superglue(each panel had a few cracks from the remodel crew pulling them), then drilling through the lead frame and hooping in heavy gauge stainless steel wire, then a trip to the hardware store for hanging hardware. Then the glue wouldn’t set (a newly opened bottle, but I’ve had it for a number of years), even after hours of waiting and heating with a blowdryer; so E grabbed a new bottle while out on errands. By the time I had them installed it was after dark.
Inside Daytime. The long panels are precisely dimensional to the window’s height of 56.75 inches! This is our big N facing picture window that overlooks the front yard, then becomes a viewless view of the street, driveways, and urban ugh. These photos struggle with the old issue of photographing a light source; none of them look right, but offer an idea- the colors are warm and vibrant, there are iridescent colors on the hummingbirds, while the flowers are simultaneously metalic/opaque and semi-transparent gold, and the background is cream with yellow swirls. All the colors shift and pop as you move, or as the day moves along.Outside Night.Inside Night. The living room is brighter at night with all the light reflected back into the room, and fun from outside as well.Inside Daytime details: Here’s what I did with my xmas present of a laser temperature-gun from Allison & Peter: it is a thermal map of our entire house for R-Value (insulation) of our outside walls. My sense of the house was that it was entirely uninsulated (or it was blown in and had missed bays under windows and degraded down to nothing anyway), as is often true of houses from the early 1940’s. A modern minimum R-Value for our area is 13 to 17 minimum. I have the ranch house at R-20, with a foam air barrier that brings an exponential increase to the R-value. Our SLC house is rated by our gas company as crossing back and forth between being the most energy efficient or just under within its cohort. This is mostly because of our radiant heat system and the extra work I’ve done up in the attic; as it turns out our walls are completely uninsulated. The R-values came in averaging 1.3 to 3, with an occasional bleed-over from an interior wall raising things up to 8 or 9. The interior walls show R-values of 200, as the heat rises from the floor into them. This could mean big Feller projects in the future, or…not?
The last day for my university class of figure sculpture and we worked from the model for half the class (the pose was 4.5 classes), juried our class’ work to save back a few pieces for the upcoming departmental accreditation review, then broke everything down and trundled it all to basement storage. The class is a diverse mix of ages and abilities, as it is open enrollment- this pulls in people from outside the university, as well as a mix of freshmen through senior level art students. None of the students had ever worked with oil-based clay, most had never worked dimensionally in ceramics or sculpture, while a few had worked from life-model in drawing- but many were new to that as well.
The class juries their work; juniors and seniors reviewing underclassmen, and freshmen and sophomores reviewing upperclassmen.This last 1/3 life size figure was a 4.5 day pose. Classes are 3 hours long, and the model is up for about 2 hours of posing altogether in 20/10 splits of time v breaks. Half of the first day is spent setting the pose, taking measures from the model, and setting the armature to the pose. Clay layup starts about half way through the first class. So that leaves us with 4 solid classes of laying up clay with the model- or 8 hours with the model for the students (who attended all classes). For this final sculpture I help the students set their armature to the figure, then let them roll for two classes without me providing training wheels (their first unsupported span this long), on the third class I go through each student’s piece individually, and on the final day I break out the calipers and measure from the model from key places and set that with each student.Throughout the class I create work alongside the students as an example, though most of my time is spent working with the students. Up to this point my sculptures focus on aspects of working from the life-model to help the students focus on essential volumes, methods of setting proportion, anatomical ideas, and etc. I also break from my work every 3 minutes to rotate the model, with a few students who also help rotate. Part of letting the students roll for two days on this pose is to allow me to work at normal speed for most of two periods. This figure represents about 5 hours of work, giving the students a reference sculpture for their own work and reference for process in the manner I would work normally.The model was a dancer / ballet, so very strong and graceful- and our tallest model as well at 6’1″. It has been 10 years since I last worked from the life-model, and was a good time.Here is where my example work for the class can wind up- the model doesn’t show up for a day, and so we work on underlying structures, then I keep the figure around for more ecorche-esque lessons on bone structure, origin and insertion of muscles, physiological groupings of muscles that allow us to stand upright, the shoulder girdle, the placement of the pelvis / spine / scull, essential mass, and etc. I have the students retain some of these exploded anatomical aspects when the model returns to aid in locking to bony protrusion landmarks, as well as muscular-skeletal function.
She is a bit ecorche-esque, as I’m pushing the gesture and finding where tension is expressed. The ball needs to get heavier again.As you scroll through the images if it seems the sculpture is changing / moving, then it is working.
I have been teaching figure sculpture up at the U this fall, and thought I’d goof around in the studio working from imagination. This is a 1/3 life size fiddle-around. It keeps struggling to find itself, pushing overbalance with overworking, riding a line of failure of gesture and dissolving coherence.
The L side of the body lifts up and back to support the weight of the ball, while the head drops opposite to the ball to find balance, and the R side of the body compresses and pinches the ribs to the pelvis over the weight-bearing leg. Torsion and spin gyre through the form to uphold the ball, and find balance. The weight of the ball drops from the L shoulder through the R leg, sending a gyre through the figure. Finding curvature in bone and flesh, with a feel of bony over-extension in the L arm…still evading what I’m going for. For the weight of the ball to feel imperative, there needs to be a struggle for balance in the figure- even though she has found momentary stability.
DangerHart 