Sculpture Workshop Day One

It's day one of my sculpture workshop, and I thought you'd like to see how far you can get in a day.

I started off with the idea of several pieces that I've seen that all had elements that interested me.

I liked the simplicity and surface texture of this very feminine piece, with its painted plaster surface

Barbara Hepworth, Single Form

I liked the exciting pitted surface marks of this huge Henry Moore piece, which looks like a whale bone, although I didn't like the clumsiness of the shape.

 

Henry Moore, Three Way Piece No.1: Points 1964-65 (plaster with surface colour, hessian on wood support)  Photo: Jennifer Hicks 

I liked the organic, coral-like sway of this marble, one of the final pieces by Michelangelo in Milan. It's quite abstract, especially as it has the remains of another sculpture still visible as part of it (an arm on the left hand side).  On the back, it has a variety of exciting mark-making.

I decided that for my week-long workshop, I wanted to do a plaster piece, with lots of surface markings, contrasted with smooth painted surfaces.  I wanted to do something fairly abstract, with an organic feel.  Other than that, I'd let the object become itself, and rely on found objects and odd lengths of welding rod in the studio, so I wasn't going to be too prescriptive.

I started by using a found piece of steel for the base plate, and welding together an armature of found and cut rods to make a roughly bicuspid shape, like a seed pod.

I placed the structure on a wheeled trolley, so I can easily move it around to work on, and cut long lengths of scrim which I draped on the armature.  I then prepared buckets of casting plaster, dipped the scrim in, applied it to the armature, and then applied handfuls of plaster to the form to create the volume.

I think you'll agree that so far, it looks absolutely nothing like anything!!