Open Casket - where next... Facing the idea of starting over

 I had a long drive today, and as usual I used it to reflect on my art. I've now attached the cotton cover onto the plaster impression, painting diluted PVA onto just the areas that form the impression. I've left this to dry for a couple of days - I'm currently away from home, so I'll see what this looks like when I get home. I've also discovered that the impression looks better when  loose sheet is thrown over the top.

But....

Driving and reflecting, I reluctantly admitted to myself that I am not happy with what I currently have. It might yet redeem itself, and if it doesn't, it's not awful.

But...

It's not what I wanted to make. I wanted something raw and indexical.

I think I'm going to have to have another go. I think I'll work in a much less planned way. I wont' attempt to make a 3d shape, I'll just cut a rough 'grave' slot in foam and fill it with polystyrene balls. I'll then lay rough cotton soaked in plaster direct on that, and then a layer of damp rough cotton on top of that. The idea is to see if I can make a shape that's more organic, more raw, more... honest and interesting.

And then I'll decide what I want to do next.

Full-body impression test for Open Casket

 Today I finally got some time to do some more tests on open casket (tentative final name "Gone"). I put a double thickness of sheet over the foam/beads and climbed in. I did a literal 'dry run' first, but the result was unconvincing. Next I tried spraying the sheet with water first, so it was damp. I'm still not happy, but I'm a lot happier:

Smoothing down the areas that are not under me seemed to help a lot as it gives a much better contrast between the body and the surround. I could do this to a limited extent before I got in, but having a second person  to do this while I'm lying there should give even better results - hopefully they could also smooth the slightly weird raised edges around the limbs. Tucking the sheet underneath the board definitely looks neater and makes the thing look more integrated. Adding more beads might give a shallower but more natural looking impression too (some of the edges are still quite square)

In general, I think/hope that the shape will only improve with each attempt because the beads will continue to settle more into the right shape... But maybe I'm just being naive!

Next thing to test is plaster-soaked fabric, for a small area. I'm hoping it will take the shape of the body better, and maybe show the beads less - that was also an issue - the beads are showing through in places as a fine set of bumps.

I'm also interested in whether I could somehow 'flow' the plaster on afterwards? It would be great to be able to repeatedly test/tinker and then 'freeze' the best result... I can't see that working though as I think the plaster will sit on top of the sheet, even if wet, and not bond to it... But it's worth a quick test.

Open Casket - deep time further thought

 I can't control what a viewer will see/feel/thing, but I want to strive to make them feel like they are looking at their own death through the wrong end of a telescope - to see how their death is just one of millions that have been, and will be. Life and death are insignificant, so don't sweat the small stuff, enjoy being alive while you can.

Open Casket - first practical tests with foam, beads, and a wet sheet

Freed from the worry about transporting it, I've been making good progress on Open Casket. I bought a chipboard base so the whole thing is (slightly shakily) supported, and I experimented with different ways to form the shape:

• I tried picking out lumps of foam, but there was far too little control (it came out in unpredictable chunks)
• I tried using thread attached to small washers/buttons of wood on either side to pull the foam down like upholstery, but there was so much pressure on the thread it was impossible to tie, and when it was fastened, the force of the foam was enough to snap the thread
• I repeated the experiment with the wood, but using cable ties instead of thread. This worked better, but I felt the wood still gave too little shape, and the 'impression' was too shallow

Finally, I resorted to cutting the entire outline out. This left no padding, and was a bit too deep, so I cut the foam into manageable sections and cut each into thinner sheets using a filleting knife. I think built up the areas using the Blender 'diagrams' as a rough guide:

Aside from looking like the aftermath of a murder, it felt like this went pretty well. The foam was quite hard to cut into thinner sections, so some of them a bit scrappy, but I figure it will all be hidden anyhow... Broadly, the lowest sections around the bum and shoulders are 1/4 thickness from the baseboard, the highest sections (the back of the neck, knees etc) are 3/4 thickness. The outside is full thickness. Full thickness is half a mattress thick (the mattress contained to foam blocks) so about 5 cm.

Once everything was glued down, I partly filled the impression with polystyrene beads. The thinking behind this is to 'pack' the areas where there's poor fit. 

I think lay a wet sheet over the top section and carefully climbed into the impression and lay down.

Getting myself correctly lined up was quite difficult, as was getting in without trampling everything... I think using a wet sheet is a good way to practice without using a tonne of plaster... I tried with my top on, and again with my top off. I feel like the top-off impression was better:

It's quite hard to see as the sheet is translucent. I've left it overnight and I'm hoping the shape will be clearer in the morning when the sheet is dry. I'm not super-happy with the impression - as JK predicted, it's a lot more 'organic' than I hoped. That said, I think there's definitely scope to experiment with different quantities of beads and different fabrics, as well as different ways of getting in, adjusting my position etc etc. I think it would be better with a second person to spot when the beans are getting piled up by the movement of my body and push them down... That said, I was worried it would be a case of 'lie down and you get what you get' but I think there's definitely ways to improve/influence the impression made.

Removing the sheet showed that the beads were doing exactly what I had hoped, and accommodating all the imperfections in the foam e.g. curving out the stepped sides of the head:

I do wonder what would happen if it was JUST beans, but I'm loath to use that many... I feel like the fit will only improve with time as the beads tend to get pushed into the places there are needed and away from the places they are not.

So, basically, it WORKS, but it doesn't look great... Yet... But there's plenty to try before I settle for what I have...

Open Casket - Blender modelling of mattress shape plus discovering Gormley's Bread

 I'm slowly gearing up to the idea that I'm going to have to create the shape of my body into the mattress by hand. Given I think I will cover the whole caboodle in paper mache, there are a few of ways I could do this:

• Carefully tear out small lumps until I have a good approximation of the shape (destructive build)
• Use thread to pull the foam down in strategic places like upholstry (reversible build)
• Cut out the whole outline and then fill the hole with shaped wedges of foam or indeed anything I can put under the paper mache (constructive build)

The second approach is an obvious one to test out as I can cut the thread after and the mattress will spring back unharmed... Although it does run the risk that the thread might snap mid-show and the foam will spring back screwing up the paper mache... The first one I can try on a discreet corner, or even on the spare. The last one is a go-for-broke-its-all-sort-of-going-to-shit-anyway approach - but might actually prove the most robust and versatile!

In preparation, I decided to do some renders in Blender to try to give me a better sense of the shape. I tried just rendering the 'raw' shape:

And then tried again using a cloth simulation:

The images, especially the depth maps, look kinda cool ;) I think my key take-away is that the shape isn't hugely important - as long as the outline is good (and I'll do that by drawing around me) and the shape is a bit more deeply excavated around the back of the head, the shoulders and the bum, pretty much anything goes... Of course this isn't exactly right because it represents the 'impression' of me standing up, not lying down, but I think it's near-enough for jazz.

While helping an art friend de-install her sculpture, I mentioned my idea and she mentioned Gormley's Bread. I don't think I had come across it before, and I was a bit thrown at first. Ironically he describes his process and it's very similar to what I described above! However, having looked at the piece a bit more, I'm less worried - there is definitely some similarity in appearance, and my work is clearly inspired by Gormley generally, but I think the intention and the presentation will end-up looking quite different, especially as I intend to fill the depression with something (maybe ash?) and I intend to get people to participate in writing on the 'sheet'. Overall I think I'm moving away from a 'bed' aesthetic towards more of a 'slab' aesthetic - more practical, but also less loaded with connotations of sleep, and passing similarities to Emin (who is also an influence!).

Open Casket - lessons-learnt from first (unsuccessful) experiment to cast the shape of my body

 My plan is was to use plaster-soaked cloth to record the imprint of my body, lying as though on a bed. I did my first test of that today. 

I put down two pieces of foam from a waste mattress, covered them in polythene sheet, then soaked a pillowcase in plaster, laid that on top, laid polythene over the top (so it wouldn't stick to my hair) and then laid myself on top and got comfortable. The plan was that the pillow case would harden enough in 30 mins that I could then stand-up and it would retain the shape of my body (in this case my head and shoulders).

Unfortunately it was not a success. The pillowcase did harden, but after 30 mins wasn't stiff enough to support it's own weight. As a result, when I stood-up, the bulk of the area under my back 'popped up', destroying the impression. This could only be avoided if the material was stiff enough to either retain the shape against the upward pressure of the foam, or stiff enough to maintain the shape despite being pushed up out of the foam. It wasn't either, and I don't see an easier way to make it stiffer and/or lighter.

Lessons-learnt:

• 0.5l of water/1kg plaster was enough to soak one pillow case
• Because the fabric is dry, the plaster begins to harden prematurely when the fabric is throw into it - this makes the plaster more brittle and prevents it from soaking into the fabric. I could try wetting the fabric before adding it, which might make for a stiffer end result, but probably not enough-so to prevent problems
• Lying still for 30 mins was actually pleasant enough, despite the cat sneezing on me, and was long enough for the fabric to harden significantly - it probably wouldn't harden much more if I increased the time incrementally
• The polythene probably reduced the amount of hardening by preventing water escaping, but it didn't seem to inhibit things significantly
• The polythene did a good job of stopping the plaster sticking to anything, but unfortunately didn't come off cleanly at the end (it stuck to the plaster in places, probably where it was pinched)
• Despite horror stories about people getting burns from plaster (it can get very hot as it initially hardens), the large surface area meant that while it became noticeably warm, it didn't become unpleasantly hot
• Mixing the plaster with my hands removed a lot of lumps but left me with hugely cakes of plaster on my hands that slowly hardened and crumbled off as I lay there!

I've left the pillow case to further harden to see what happens, but I can't see this working. The damp plaster is too crumbly and too heavy to support itself. It could also be a problem if I choose to make a cast over the top of my body like a shroud - it would probably support itself better, but I'm not sure how I would get out of it as it would be impossible to move it. 

I'm wracking my brains for where I go next with this... Some ideas:

• Carve the shape of my body directly into the foam (using my non-existent sculpture skills, or more likely using data from a 3d scan to know how deep to carve at various reference points)
• A hybrid approach where I cut the shape of my body into the foam to reduce the upward pressure on the fabric then cast fabric over the top (i.e. lie in the 'hole' I've carved into the foam)
• Try something like sculpting mesh instead of fabric
• Find something other than foam that doesn't 'spring back' when I get off (e.g. sand or beanbag filling)
• Try some other sort of potion to make the fabric stiffen (e.g. resin... yuk)
• Use data from a 3d scan to cut profiles into cardboard and then stack them up like contour lines

At the moment, the first option looks attractive - probably because I haven't tried it... But it would have the advantage of avoiding plaster completely (I'd probably cover the foam in paper mache) and therefore being quite light, plus it would give me more control. I'm not sure what to try next... I need to lick my wounds first (and wipe the cat snot off)

Open Casket - virtual mock-ups, a bit of a break-through? Excited again!

 You will recall dear reader(s) that you left me mulling over a few ideas for Open Casket. At some point between then and now, I had the good idea to try mocking them up in Blender... 

I say 'good' - it proved to be a GREAT idea. I wonder if part of my struggle was working at 'scale'? My planned piece isn't huge, and will definitely not look it in the exhibition, but it is a lot bigger than anything I've done before. I think maybe that was a sticking point? It's fairly easy to make a rough prototype for something you can hold in your hand.

I made my mock-ups in Blender, and deliberately made them 'lo-fi' tests, not glorious works of photo-realism. I made sure to get proportions vaguely right, and to get some half-decent lighting, but I made sure not to sweat the details too much...

I started with the 'cut-out' profiles idea:

Clearly the shapes are not really visible as a coherent whole - the wood is either too far apart to really form a 'shape' or it's too close together to see the holes. I tried a few variations, but I was very underwhelmed by the idea once I had a sense of what it might look-like.

Mocking up the idea of nails hammer into wood in the profile of a body was immediately instructive too:

It's very clear that the effect is more 'outline' than 'profile' - the nails (which would be quite buff in real life) are not long-enough to give any meaningful shape. It as also interesting to get an idea of just how many nails might be involved (admittedly the 3d model of myself I used is in a 'T' pose, but still). I tried a few other variations (convex profile, white background), but I wasn't getting excited... I love the ability to really see and reflect on the idea and whether it's working.

I turned back to the original idea of making a 'body' by casting plaster-soaked cloth over myself, and it immediately felt more exciting and promising:

I didn't take this one too far, but I'll probably come back to it - a few things to come out of it - 1) cloth simulations in Blender are SO MUCH FUN and 2) a single sheet works much better than lots of 'swags' of fabric, since the fabric shape struggles to give the sense of a body when it's broken up.

Part of the reason I didn't get too far is because I got excited about an alternative version, when instead of casting the body, I cast the impression of the body in the fabric - like the depression left in a mattress when a body has been lying on it:

I like this because it feels more subtle, and removing the face also opens up the possibility of adding back the participatory element (surprise!) by allowing people to write on the 'sheet'. I tried mocking this up:

It's interesting that even with a 'lo-fi' mock-up, it's clear that the shape of the body is largely drowned out by the writing... So I'm now experimenting with ways to make the body shape clearer - in this mock-up, I filled it with 'water':

Which is (probably) utterly impractical since I'm sworn off the epoxy, but is cool as it does two things at once - it outlines the shape, but also prevents people writing on it (too hard to show in the 'lo-fi' mock-up). However, some alternative way of 'filling' the depression might work (e.g. sand, or dust, or lining it with something like pages from 'Time Management').

So I think the wonderful thing is actually that I am EXCITED again by the project! I'm currently braining away on some ways to do this technically - lots of interesting problems like how to cast the depression, how to make it light-enough to transport etc For now I think Plan A is the 'depression' and Plan B is the 'body under a sheet'. I feel confident enough now to start some large scale experiments!

Open Casket and the five-minute video - the (non-sexually-gratifying) grinding continues

 I'm deliberately not formatting this as a 'versioned' update as I think the format isn't really helping my current 'stuckness', and actually this isn't really about the content so much as the process for deriving it... 

I'm making slow, but very painful process on both the five-minute video and Open Casket. As correctly predicted by JK, by making them feel like my final word on the subject, I've made them un-birthable... I've created a situation where every idea is not quite as good as the idea I haven't had yet... But no idea I HAVE had is quite good enough.

Squeezing My Nuts

I think this is all very good for me and character building and all that, but it's also not a lot of fun, and in grave danger of inadvertently proving my own theory that art is a 'free activity' like play, and the more I force myself to do the art magic, the more artistically constipated I'll become... That said, some of my better/weirder ideas have come from the process of forcing myself against seemingly unmovable constrains - I think of it as a bit like a Zen koan - by squeezing the nut sufficiently hard, I will eventually succeed in breaking my fingers in some artistically interesting way...

Five-Minute Video

I think for the 5-minute video, I am still in a good place. I just need to walk the line between making a weird art-video and making a boring conventional video about my practice. It needs to work as both or I need to abandon my fun challenge and make something that definitely works as a conventional video about my practice... My original plan had been to lean toward the weird-art-video side fairly heavily. However, I'm coming (through the process of careful planning) to realise that five minutes could be a very painful long time to watch something that (at first blush at least) doesn't make a lot of sense... It also requires a rich seam of visual material that I'm worried I may not have. I think I therefore need to keep pushing in this direction, but be ready to start diluting things down with some more conventional narrative if needed - i.e. let the narrative take more of the strain if the video material isn't quite up to the load. One fun potential 'twist' I did think of (because it wouldn't be Tom without some stupid twist) would be to get someone else to narrate it like it's a posthumous documentary.

Open Casket

Open Casket is a trickier beast... I think I'm still on the right lines, but I keep adding new constraints then removing all constraints, then adding in more constraints, etc in a bid to get to some sort of breakthrough... 

As detailed previously, I think I need to work out if it's participatory or not. Bereft of a great idea for a participatory work, and wasting many cycles grinding my gears on one, I decided to make the decision that I will NOT make a participatory piece - by taking that off the table (knowing I can always put it back on!) I'm hoping to narrow my focus.

Some things do feel fixed now - it's definitely a sculptural piece, almost certainly featuring some sort of life-size 'corpse', almost certainly featuring life casts, almost certainly featuring three props (wedding ring, time-management book, acorn), probably featuring some sort of natural materials too.

What IS shifting is the realisation that my original grandiose gesture of 'burying myself' at the final show is... well... a bit wanky. I guess the problem is raises is that that is the 'motivation' for me, but what meaning does it have outside of a grand self-serving self-therapeutic dump? Sure it feels good to get that load out, but what benefit does it serve the poor people I'm inflicting it on?

So the meaning and motivation need to shift... Ugh... Because now I am in danger of backing meaning and motivation into something that I'm already designing... Which is sort of arse-about-face as my dear old dad used to say. Except I have learnt that in art, arse and face are fairly flexible things. I'm ok backing up, adding meaning, then 'forward fixing' the resulting mess... At least, in principle.

So I think the broader meaning I extract from my 'death' is that you don't really understand what you have until you are about to loose everything. I sort of sum this up as "as evening draws in, how will you wish you spent the day", although now I think about it, that is something somewhat related, but different. Nevertheless, I think the purpose would be to encourage people to confront their own mortality, and realise that the 'answers' are already within them. You won't really appreciate how good the morning sun feels on your face until you realise you've had your last morning on earth. The trick then is to grasp what mortality gives us (and many eastern religions also preach) and try to enjoy 'now' fully and for it's own sake. Notice and enjoy the feeling of the morning sun on your face precisely because you believe and embrace the knowledge that you might NOT get to see tomorrow's sun. It's the world as it is. It's the null point... Huh.

So how to create a piece of sculpture that conveys that? I think I need to use the impulsion of my experience (Tathos) but processed through (somewhat objective) reflection (Tomgos). I think I keep the elements above, but I seek to anonymise them (if my face appears, it has to be clearly 'a face' not 'the face') and harmonise them (it needs to be one statement, not a mish mash of elements). I need to create something that clearly conveys the emotional charge of my experience and it's meaning to me (Tathos) but presented in a way that the viewer can see themselves in it (Tomgos).

Easy yeah?

Weird plaster cubes... Or the return of the reliquary...

 For a few weeks, I've been driven by an urge to make little plaster cubes with glass windows. Getting nowhere with thinking, I swapped to doing, and made a prototype:

Weirdly, making a prototype helped me to see that I needed to place small objects inside... Small fragments of nature. Originally I thought these would hold my miniature thickets, but this felt right. I think I might try miniature thickets too - perhaps take my string and plaster experiment from before and enclose that, or make a web of threads. I'm in free-experimentation really.

However, one interesting thing that did come out, was I was thinking about my 'cubes vs corpses' post, and Tathos said "but the cubes are corpses", and somehow he was right. I wondered how they fitted into my practice, but I think they are actually a return of the reliquary that I made for "All my heart". They are sort of the love-child of "All my Heart" and "Reaching Through". Somehow, in my soul, the contents of each cube is a corpse, but so is the whole object. Weird shit.

The natural thing to do next feels like making more and stacking them up into some sort of charnel house... But maybe that's a 'treat' to myself once the MA is over? A thought to come back to, to keep the momentum in uncertain times ahead?

Further adventures in the land of paper mache casting...

Hmmm, I still don't have a working title for my piece for the RA Summer Show... Which is odd... Often the title comes around the same time as the idea. I'm not going to try to force it, I guess. Working titles are usually odd and/or descriptive, and actually "Waiting Place" was called "Where you from submission" for most of it's life ;)

I've been doing further experiments to bottom out the technique for the paper mache, and then try to bottom out the aesthetics of how I will display the piece... "Bottom out" is such a silicon valley phrase... "Once we bottom this out, I know a great steak place in the Sunnyvale Heritage District that does local beers"...

Paper Mache - the text: build in or apply later

With regards to technique, I tried covering the first mask in a layer of written-on paper, to see if I could just apply the letter to the face at the end - doing so has some big pros as it makes it easier to see exactly what text is going where, and what is covering what. The layer went on really well:

However, it did cover a lot of the finer details. It also 'wetted' the lower layers enough to cause the mask to 'sink' slightly. 

In parallel, I've finished a new mask, this time starting with 2 layers of written/printed paper, then a layer of newspaper, then a layer of writing paper. For this mask, I used the technique of rubbing undiluted PVA into patches of paper with my fingers, then carefully applying it to the inside of the mould and rubbing it down to expel the air/excess glue, plus iron out any creases that form (even with using smaller pieces for more curved areas, there are inevitably a few creases). 

I allowed the first two layers 24 hours to dry each, and then allowed top two layers 24 hours together. I discovered that it's ok to lightly mark the first layer to make it easier to see where the second layer hasn't covered (otherwise it's a bit 'painting a white wall with white paint'). 

Demoulding this morning went well save the tip of the nose becoming dislodged, at which point I discovered that the tip was still wet since it can't really dry once it's trapped between the silicone and the layer above. Thankfully I was able to smooth it down, and a few hours later the whole thing was dry and really rigid (although i suspect it will continue to further cure and harden for another couple of days yet):

I was amazed by how well the detail came out, and how smooth the surface looks. 

The major con with this approach is that you have to work 'upside down' - the first layer in will be the surface and you won't see what it really looks like until afterwards. However, I think the pros of not having distortion and not loosing detail really outweigh this. 

Once the surface was dry, I did use a pencil to just slightly darken the creases on the eyes and mouth. I'm struck by how much the colour/surface design of the paper affects how you 'read' the face e.g. the lines of vertical printing on the top lip give the immediate impression of skeletal teeth. Something to try to design for when building up the face later...

How to display the piece

I really like the piece as it is, and I might just display it flat as it is... But I also feel it doesn't look very 'finished' so I've been experimenting with some ways to display it. Firstly I used a manikin head I have to see what adding a full head might look like:

I really like it, but I don't THINK it adds enough to justify the significant effort required to do this for real.

Having done some research, the typical way to display a mask like this is what I have come to call the "head on a stick aesthetic". As you can guess, I have some reservations about it. I did try it (making myself a simple stand from some wood I had lying around):

I don't HATE it as much as I thought I would, but it still feels a bit forced to me. I might still come back to it, but I do like the idea of lying the head down, so I tried various ways of making a 'hood' to give the mask a bit more mass and form:

It's a bit weird, but I actually kinda like it! I am tempted to try combining the 'hood' with the 'head on a stick'... Decisions decisions... 

I also popped to Hobbycraft and bought a couple of posies of fake daisies - I must have looked so cute coming out grasping them in my huge hand ;) I tried playing a few on the hood (above), plus making a simple 'crown':

I kinda like it, although it again pushes the idea of the mask as 'dead' rather than sleeping innocently... Dunno. It's hard ;)

I have two weeks left (eek). I've asked the amazing volunteers to start their letters, and I need to nail the question of how to display the finished thing...