WITD – Resuming and Continuing

30 May
30 May

I have resumed physical work after making the symposium video. The sculpture is nearly completed in its raw stage waiting to then be finished in detail before the first firing. I have regained a rhythm and resolved how the underneath works with the parts above. A layering of scale and detail, manner of making and process.

It will have to be dried very slowly to minimise cracking and mitigate those that will appear after the bisque firing.

It is clear to me that the process, the making and the outcome are one and the same thing. There is no separation, there is no instructional illustration, I imbue myself into the work mentally and physically. I also have to keep a certain distance, which is not easy, to reflect and to evaluate: that is why the work takes time, particularly since I have not worked with this complexity in this way. While I work I reflect in one way, when I rest, I reflect in another. The first is absorbed, focused, unseparated, the second detached and emotional or perhaps more accurately psychologically.

I do not finish a session. It is best to leave things unresolved or when things are going well. This is a tried and tested methodology: the brain continues to work when the body turns away. I think about other things and do mundane jobs so that the process can become unconscious, uninterrupted by doubts, fears, ambition, and attachment.

I should finish this stage in the next few days and move onto the defining of forms and selective finishing of surfaces. Then the slow drying to minimise cracking which will have to be dealt with after the first low firing.