"Reaching Through 1" submitted to "Awakenings" at Peckham Safe Houses

 So having said "yeah babes, I don't do open calls, yah", guess what... But... but... But it was a weird one, and it looks so innocent, and it's at the Safe Houses (where I did "Where You From") which I love, and it was only a tenner if you are selected... 

The theme is "Awakenings", which I like, which put me in mind of awakening from grief (which I feel I have a little, my art is less angry now). I was inspired by an Instagram post (it does happen) of an old pump. The street level had raised, and the beautiful old rusted iron lion's head spout was now half-embedded in the tarmac. I love the idea of things being partly hidden or submerged (fuck knows why, I just do... maybe a topic to reflect on some other time) so I really wanted to do something like that using a life cast of my hand, half 'embedded' (but actually uncast) in a plaster plinth.

Having decided to do the open call, I racked my brain for a way to incorporate the theme of "awakening" and "awakening from grief" in a way that incorporated the half-sunk hand. Eventually, having walked in a local nature park that I adore, I was inspired by the prickly sweet chestnut husks. I imagined a block of plaster, with a prickly carpet of sweet chestnut husks, and fingers reaching through them, bringing together themes of sleeping in nature, awakening, pain, reaching, and my own hand.

For anyone who might actually read this, and doesn't want to read a tedious description of my process, I'll get to the chorus - this is the finished piece

The more astute of you will notice, those are NOT sweet chestnut husks... So read on...

Having gathered the materials, I had a lot of grief casting my hand. The actual life cast came out amazingly, with stunning amounts of details (so much so that I worry people might use it to steal my fingerprints...). 

I decided to make a silicone mould from this so I could easily cast more if I needed them - prototypes and spares! I was lazy, and made a big block mould, rather than making a plaster support. I used the nice blue silicone I just got on Amazon, and then the trouble started... 

I could not demould the original for love nor money... I admit I didn't use any release agent, but I've never needed to... Eventually it came out, but the fingers broke off in the process.. Bugger. Somewhat bothered, I cut some of the HUGE chunks of unnecessary silicone off the mould (such a waste of money and resources :( ) and cast another, giving the mould a good layer of release agent before... And bugger me, THAT wouldn't come out either... Long story short, I looked on the website of the company I got the silicone from, and the nice blue colour silicone is completely different silicone from the boring green silicone I've been using so far... And yeah, it's for use if 'bigger projects that need more support' - basically it's FAR less stretchy than the green, hence all the demoulding woes... Drat... (yet another) Lesson learnt... I bit the bullet and just cast myself a fresh life cast and used that directly...

I knew I wanted to embed the whole caboodle in resin, to protect the spines from people (and people from the spines), but also to represent the sense of a moment, frozen in time. Plus, I like the idea of people peering into the depths to see the fingers. To embed them, the husks had to be bone dry (or they will rot inside the resin). Unfortunately, when I dried them out and prototyped them in the mould, they started to look more fuzzy than spiky

At this point, I was trying to think of something with more robust spines, and I thought of gorse, which I love, and which has long associations of childhood (Cornwall) and grief (the local heath). I gathered some in a carrier bag that was already obligingly cut down by the local rangers and dried out nicely in the September sun. I worried it would look a bit 'weak' against the white plaster so I decided to paint it black....

Generally, I think I need to have a rule not to ever paint shit! That said, after a lot of faffing, I ended up mixing the painted pieces with unpainted pieces, and it actually worked quite well - it makes for a much more interesting colour gambit than just white and brown. 

Pouring the epoxy went well - deep pours, but robust materials so I wasn't bothered by heat. I learnt my lesson and mixed and mixed until I thought I was going to die of boredom, and then mixed some more... I had a panic when I came down the next morning and the surface was still slightly soft, but then I remembered it was a really chilly night (epoxy needs heat to cure), so I gave it a bunch more time on a warm windowsill, and it hardened up beautifully. I also used brown ink to dye the first layer of resin, but put in WAY too much, so it looked like brown puddle water...

Final decision was the finished piece looked odd because the layers showed and the light shining through the sides of the brown first layer looked really... well... brown.. Blocking the light with my hand convinced me I needed to cover the base in something opaque. I hit on the idea of putting the whole thing BACK into a slightly bigger mould, and casting a think plaster 'mount', to hide the bottom layers and stop the light shining though. This worked really well, and gave the whole thing the feeling of being like a 'nest' with the fingers emerging through it.

I was really pleased with the piece, so much so, I decided to submit it to the open call without doing the sweet chestnut version (plan A was to do both and compare). However, I am now working on that one, which I will share in a later edition of this sinterlating read... I like the fact that this pieces is less angry, and I like the fact that I kept to a mostly monotone palette. I feel like this could be a new way forward for my art in a 'post-rage' world...