So, I have a LOT of different artworks on the go, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing... It's a good thing because when I am stalled with one, I can pick-up another, but it's a bad thing because some pieces (rivers of silver eh, eh) have been stalled so long they are in danger of being forgotten... I am actually making steady progress on most of them, but I need to finish some soon (for my own sanity, and because I have even more I want to do once I have my face casting back). While there is madness in my method, I do have a system that works:
- For digital stuff, I have an 'in-progress' folder that I have to eye as I search for my current piece
- For physical stuff I have a good/terrible system of leaving it in the way so I have an incentive to finish stuff, if only in the hope of getting my table back, etc
One of the pieces that has been stalled the longest, is "A Month in my Head". This has been an interesting but tough lesson in the importance of display and aesthetics.
At the end of the month I had 30 perspex boxes lined up on my window sill. While that was quite a nice display, it had a few drawbacks:
- It wasn't practical to transport
- It didn't really show the monthly nature of the work
- It didn't serve to draw the work into one piece (it looked like 30 trinkets)
- It was surprisingly hard to study each head separately if the boxes were too close as the reflections off the perspex started to confuse and disorientate
- It missed the change to show other aspects of the work - by pulling it into one, there is space for more meaning to be added
I really wanted to emphasis the medical/pseudo-science/examination angle of the work. My initial plan was to present it almost like it was 'sold' as kit, complete with instructions and fake labels to complete. To this end I started to create a case inspired by the sort of medical equipment cases. My plan was to build these like thin shelves of oak. Advice from my dear Dead Critics was that this was too heavy and would distract and detract from the heads. I believed this, but I knew I had to see for myself, so I pushed ahead.
Sadly, my plan collided with my limited woodworking skills and I eventually ended up with this:
Which I wanted to love, but already knew wasn't working. I was pleased I managed to make something that didn't look ugly in itself, and was build very solidly... Like REALLY solidly... It's nice to know a piece of my art will probably one of the few things to survive the destruction of the planet. However, the reflections from behind were confusing, and the shelves were chunky and distracting as predicted by the Dead Critics.
I was encouraged by seeing this at The Artists Residence Hotel in Penzance:
But the aesthetics were clearly different (how?). I considered adding doors, but stalled, knowing I wasn't sure.
Scrolling Insta, I happened upon an artist making fake butterfly specimen trays using faces cut from magazines, and I was inspired to explore this direction instead. The aim being a big wide tray-like frame, with the heads positions inside. I mocked up a few possibilities:
And I really liked the simplicity, the almost medical starkness, so I built a frame:
Which took a LOT of work... And I think it does actually work - the focus is on the pieces, there's room to add labels if I want (do I want?), there's a simplicity but there's still a smell of examination, of display for inspection, of scientific starkness. However, as Bethany pointed out (and I knew in my heavy heavy heart), if you are going to do this, it has to be perfect - it's clear from the photo, and painfully obvious in real life, that the rows are crooked... So FML, I pulled them all off again and removed the mounting:
And now I'm waiting for the mount board to be laser cut, and yet more expense... But I am coming to understand in art, if you are going to do it, you gotta do it as right as you can.
So while I wait for the mount board... DO I want labels?
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