Collections

'Borrowing' a few pebbles from Kilve Beach on the north Somerset coast gave the most wonderful rounded forms around which to wrap and melt strips of found plastic materials - a collection of coloured plastic bags gathered over the months and not found on this treasured stretch of rocky coastline.

Making the plastics 'special' by sanding, perforating  with machine stitching and rubbing with gold crayons to make more interesting surfaces.

Strips of plastic were loosely wrapped around the pebbles and with careful melting with a hot gun, the plastic shrunk and gripped the pebble shapes. Judging the timing allows you to control the amount of 'shrinkage'.The plastic looked as if it was gripping the pebbles so tightly as if to strangle - which I found a very appropriate symbolism as you might imagine.

 

 

 



The pebble that 'escaped'. The pebble used to form this shape was gently slipped out from its strangulating plastic: an idea from nowhere and an exciting discovery that meant that several pebble shapes could be made from the same pebble and without stealing it permanently from its home on Kilve beach.
The hollow form added very apt symbolic connections with 'disappearance', 'skeleton', faded existence - perhaps alluding to the disappearance of the planet or, more hopefully, the disappearance of discarded plastic materials.

Questioning

Ideas circle, disappear and return. Successful thoughts come together, disperse and often re-assemble in a different form. I find it very difficult to identify where a successful idea actually comes from and when the realisation that something is going in the right direction.  Although thoughts that wonder can also be useful in looking around a theme, I try to discipline myself to write down words that help me to focus and not to drift away too far on a tangent. This continually brings me back to the raw elements I wish to focus on and question whether my story or 'angle' is still evident.

Noticing that my fragmented and distorted plastic bottle shapes have evolved from a functional item that was originally designed to hold water into a mutilated bottle form that could be said to resemble sea creatures from the deep - perhaps quite fanciful but the idea caught my imagination.

A dip into Charles Darwin's books - 'The Origin of Species' carried this thought of evolution into the world of how plastic packaging and bottles where this material lasts forever, perhaps modified in some way as it insinuates itself into the environment in unwelcome forms; perhaps an optimistic idea of how the natural world could make slight effective changes.

Ironically I felt that the distorted forms created by fragmenting and re-forming the plastic bottle shapes could take on a slightly organic form. The linking threads add a sort of tentacle element to its character.

Using only portions of a bottle with lines to complete the shape suggested a sense of disintegration giving a surreal link to wishful thoughts of disintegration and gradual disappearance.

Story development

I'm continuing to experiment with my chosen materials to test ways in which I can use them to make a whole variety of fascinating sculptural configurations. It's a challenge to persuade myself to notice new things that happen as I work - to allow a fresh thought to emerge - as if for the first time.

It is important to me to give my art pieces a connection with an idea, thought or story. I hope this suggests a thought or idea that engages the viewer beyond the visual presence of the art work.

I have been very aware of the polluting effect of the mass of discarded plastic thrown out in the seas that have been damaging life in the oceans and coastlines. So I was keen to make this current work with plastic materials reach out further to the viewer than the immediate physical fascination with my use of plastic materials.

I tried different ways of transforming the plastic surface by sanding down the shiny surface to a matt effect that was then receptive to to marks made with inks such as made in the sketchbook with a feather dipped into inks.

Cutting up the plastic bottles in different ways gives numerous pieces that could be stitched or laced together. I hoped this element would add an element to an underlying message related to a shape that was broken down, fragmented, discarded, cracked, dismembered, dissolved and disintegrating: maybe a list of words that could relate to how the ecological system was breaking down.

                        
Playing with the fragments of plastic bottle gave me the chance to look at ways of re-joining these shapes into the original form with associated meanings of 'mending' or 'making better' perhaps. I'm intrigued by ways of suggesting the idea of 'change', forming a gradual movement of one state to another. 

This ecological project seems to ask the question of how changes will occur and so I am keen to try to make my materials show changes by adding or subtracting, modifying sizes, intensifying colour. I need to observe what is happening in my hands - not wanting to miss the accidental, unpredictable and probably the most intriguing part to the process. I find this a more rewarding and creative way of discovery than to anticipate and guess what I think should happen.

Making rows of small holes around the edges of the cut shapes allowed me to thread or lace together with the debate of whether to make perfect or whether to allow spaces and gaps to form distorted or corrupted versions of the original.

It was very revealing to see what happened when twisting and making the shapes distort from the bottle shape and exciting to find shadows on my sunny working table.......

..... and dramatic lighting through the translucent materials showing the sanded and scratched surface of the plastic surface.

Stretching

Looking back at previous investigations into plastic surfaces, I re-looked at these samples where lines of perforations were made into black bin liner plastic, stretched on the ironing board and ironed between baking parchment.

Tried it again on a white plastic that I'd printed with a feather.

I found that 'flicking' ink marks with feathers onto paper and plastic made interesting marks

and then onto a plastic bottle which I hoped would give it a suggestion of a feathered surface to relate to a bird.

Control or not

You might think this is a lovely free style drawing of a heap of bottles. It is done without control with my poorly plastered hand and wrist. Not as bad as I'd anticipated but a very different experience from before the accident.

Am I learning the secret of how to draw with more characterful lines and not to make too precise a record? Slowness of working gave opportunities to come upon ideas as if for the first time.

    

Ripped shapes from papers previously decorated by printing with crumpled plastic. Lack of control of ripping process creates loose shapes based on silhouettes of plastic bottles.

  

Marks and rips perhaps suggesting the break down of the plastic shapes.

The incidental effects were food for thought.

While two hands still available

I've been working with two artist friends, Pauline Lerry and Lesley Roberts for several years, meeting together to draw, ponder and explore different topics. Sometimes we chat and sometimes we just concentrate, sometimes we eat cake and drink coffee. Although we all have our own studio spaces in our own homes, the 'coming together' from time to time in a local church hall seems to give us a special bonding atmosphere of mutual creative thinking. 

This working relationship led us to arrange a common project which I've described earlier in this blog based on a study of the newly formed local wildlife and wetlands area on the north Somerset coast at Steart Marshes. We called the exhibition that evolved from this 'Change'.

To continue the idea of working together, a second exhibition topic was discussed based on environmental issues. All three of us wanted to respond to individual aspects of this vast topic. Pauline decided to look at the changing of sea levels; Lesley to look at the disappearing wild flower meadows and I to look at ideas based on the pollution of plastic on our coastline.

So making a start on my own topic, I started to look around for to see where and what sort of plastic items were being discarded on our beaches.

                     


My foraging during last summer and into the winter seemed to produce mainly plastic bottles amongst pebbles and sea grasses in the coastal stretches I visited initially.I had many plastic containers at home too as well as plastic carrier bags I was re-using. An unattractive and unpleasant collection which wasn't at all inspiring, so a lot of thinking needed to be done to come to terms with how I should approach this topic.

This project is in response to the destructive deluge of waste plastic, particularly in the sea and particularly for wildlife.This is a fresh project although part of an on-going passion for conservation, an underlying theme for most of my work in recent years. 

I am filtering ideas to select a particular 'angle' for my research into a new material for me - plastics. I plan to focus on the discarded plastic bottle and its impact on the ea and coastline, and the plight of birds and fish.

I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading rather than my usual approach to jumping straight in to play with materials that then inform and help to develop ideas. Perhaps my difficulty in handling materials due to the broken wrist gave me an ideal opportunity to hesitate and ponder more deeply. The knack of noticing and absorbing small detail feels the right way to make progress within a personal landscape of thinking in which it feels I am able to fit comfortably.

Keep reading.

Returning to my story

It’s been so long since I posted anything. Recovery from my broken wrist is my main excuse and then when I was finally able to use my right wrist in July last year I’ve been so busy producing stuff … well you’ll know the old excuse!!

My on-going passion for environmental issues continued into a large scale project that I exhibited with the 62 Group of Textile Artists in a touring exhibition starting at MAC in Birmingham, moving to the National Centre of Craft and Design Centre in Sleaford, Lincolnshire and currently opening in Scunthorpe.

Here is an image of ‘Rolling out a carpet of hope’ shown at the NCCD, next to a window  that showed how the tree outside blossomed to match my piece.

This 4 metre long installation of dyed cane structures is a response to the major UNESCO project to plant saplings across the desert band of Africa to try to re-store fertility to the dehydrated land.

A few close-up images to show details, starting with a page from my sketchbook where I started to make marks with inks and wires that indicate tree forms. 

The close-up image above shows the early stages of growth and the following stages of blossoming growth.

An intimate connection with materials is always an important factor when evolving and idea for a specic project