Logos

The various components for the small scale model are completed. The work has shifted from the ancestral vertical Oracle to is horizontal descendant. I know that the actual large scale work it is modelled on will not be finished before the summer. It does not have the incised words and was much much easier to make and assemble. The large scale work is going to be quite a beast to complete but I am nearing the time for tackling it as I complete other tasks.

Logos has fewer components than Oracle, and its coherence and simplicity is a function of the way it will work once completed. Oracle was an ensemble of disparate pieces that as such creates an interesting collection, However, assembled it would have presented a distinct incoherence and inbalance. Not an imbalance by choice, imparting a dynamic articulation of parts, but one where the consideration for each part takes precedence over the whole. I think the synthesis that has arisen in the form of Logos, the simplicity, is the result of over a year’s process of distilation and understanding.

 

Today I continued with the modelling of Logos in miniature. I can see how this can translate for the online show. The actual large scale work would be too uncontrollable to capture in the studio satisfactorily but the model could be placed in a more manageable environment where I can control the lighting, surfaces and so on. It would be in effect a diorama. It is also comparable to what can be done virtually only a) I have a tactile object at the end of it b) it takes a fraction of the time to put together giving me more time to do other work c) making it functions as practice for finishing the large work.

 

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I remade the smaller spheroid in proportion to my original intentions which seems to work much better, more balanced. I started making the connectors and still have to make the anterior components.

Supporting the pieces with wooden blocks gave me an insight into how I can find alternatives for supports. In the case of these blocks, a more architectural approach, or perhaps as a conceptual landscape, Logos perching, roosting, surveying its domain. As for the scaffolding, that is perhaps a more formal solution that isolates the sculpture in space. This has yet to be tested. I shall have to wait until all this COVID-19 business is over and the pieces to be fired to find out how it works on a large scale. However, in the meantime I could experiment with the model, time permitting.

 

Logos begins to appear not as a departure from Oracle over a year ago, but an extension. The two titles speak of language, the former of ritual, mystery and prophesy, the latter of reason, order and creation. It seems almost as though Oracle foretold what would come in Logos but I did not know it at the time. There is a kinship between the two sculptures with the current one being a more evolved synthesis of ideas, materials and process. It has incorporated Oracle beside other notions weaving together words, form, myth and ritual with the potential for freedom to evolve into new interations in the future.

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Video showing a detail of the lettering impressed on the various components of Logos. It is taking some time, but once done I shall be able to continue with finishing the connecting, and terminal parts of the sculpture.

In the meantime, I shall finish some other works and fire smaller pieces in addition to making models of the large works, developing sounds, writing the script for Symposium 2 and planning online presentations… amongst other things.

 

 

Inscribing, pressing, carving the words on the porcelain surface has led me to develop a particular technique and this, in turn, put me to thinking about creating a font. The main tool I am using is an angled, moderately sharp-edged box wood tool. I chose this tool because it is not the perfect tool to use. The difficulty of handling this tool ensures that the text does not become too even and crisp, more in keeping with the largely informal making of the porcelain forms.

 

 

The font has very many similarities with cuneiform writing, runes and classical stone lettering found in Ancient Greece and Rome (not forgetting ancient graffiti). The first made with a wooden, wedge-shaped stylus, the second a knife and a chisel for the latter. The respective tools and materials dictate to a large extent how the font evolves. The above font is a first draft distillation of the lettering I am using on the porcelain. It forms a very decipherable cypher, which is easy to read and based on the principle of two strokes per letter. I shall rethink about this in view of some of the letters being made up of three strokes. This is a relatively straightforward development. It is just that I wanted to document this now while the idea has some momentum. Subsequently, I may also include minuscules, numbers and symbols.

 

 

I intend to convert this into a font that I can use as type on the computer. I have opted to use Font Forge software which, although not the simplest, seems to offer a wide range of features. There is also a large number of tutorials online to help with learning. I can then use it to type documents and on sculptures. As for a name? I am currently thinking of Porcelana although this may change.

 

 

 

Today I started incising the sculptural pieces with the words in the previous post. As I start on this long task I know that the script will change along the way. This is only one aspect of how I envisage the surface work of the sculpture developing over time, altering in response to its making.

It quickly became apparent that there was the danger that the lettering might become the principle and overt aspect of the work. However, this is not necessarily the case for two reasons. Firstly, as I handle the heavy pieces, the inscriptions will become eroded in places affecting their legibility. This allusion to the effects of time, loss of form and meaning, may invite an a posteriori interpretation of the partially hidden or cryptic content.

Secondly, the repetition of the text over the length of the sculpture, creates at a distance, a texture that does not resolve into discernable words or their constituent characters, until curiosity draws the viewer sufficiently close for those words to play their principle intended role beyond an aesthetic one; that of context. The degradation or disappearance of a particular part of the text in one place, only to reappear somewhere else, again invites the building of a narrative that may be quite different from the original. Somehow, this brings to mind the Rosetta Stone and how the stele changes from hieroglyphics to Demotic to Ancient Greek in a three-way translation of the same pharaonic decree.

The work of writing, inscribing, carving, the words creates an archaeology, a partial fossil, a cypher. These are all subliminal, at times overt, influences on my aesthetic horizon. Beforehand, I was concerned about losing the clarity of the words. In the doing of it, I have lost that fear and am perhaps more concerned with too much clarity. Erosion and loss in the handling of the pieces during work is a precious process that transforms meaning in a way that is not wholly under my control. Knowing this has loosened my hand in writing the words as they are converted into sculpture. The words resurrected in stone, live in the imagination.