Bird

Fragments

I'm playing more with the idea of making fragments deliberately, chasing Rodin,(and the whole of modern sculpture I guess). And chasing the idea of work which is non-monumental, intimate small work, whose strength lies in ambiguity, almostness and allusion. I'm making animals but trying to avoid the sweetness that this often seems to necessitate.

At what point does a work of art become so slight, so quiet that it ceases to be a work of art, and remains a dormant affecting no-one? Is there a minimal level of physical intervention?

Birdshead revisited

Returning to an earlier set of pieces: the birds.

 I had worked on them and they had become more and more like very obvious toys. I like toys, but the toys I like have a sense of abstraction about them, which is what lends them their charm (contrast Britains' very realistic animals and soldiers and cars with the far more abstracted tin soldiers and cars of earlier epochs).

I'd forced the pieces, making them far too explicitely "fun" and decorative when I should have let them be, allowing the viewer more space to draw their own interpretations.

Thus, in the guise of Redon, I return.

I also began making some horses: again I haven't found quite the equilibrum between a sort of Giacometti abstraction and realism, and they became too cute: I shall persevere.