Bouncing balls

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Bouncing balls

I suppose with the increased use of cards fewer of us leave the shop with change and consequently are far less likely to insert coins into these excellent machines to receive, from a metal, shuttered orifice,  our bouncing balls. 

This is a pity as these bouncing balls are superb. They are in a wide range of stunning colours and patterns: striped or marbleized or even weird faces or skulls. Most have a smooth surface, but others are lightly mottled.

 And they have the loveliest smell, a rubber-plastic chemical scent so divine that the first thing I do on getting mine is to hold it against my nostril and inhale. For those moments I feel utterly at peace with the universe.

And...they really do bounce extremely well, reaching phenomenal heights and then bouncing repeatedly with hysterical unpredictability over and over so you have to be careful about bouncing them outside the shop as, for sure, they will bounce onto the road and you`ll feel compelled to run after them, perhaps (alas!) into the bumper of an oncoming car.

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Dancer and Unicorn

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Dancer and Unicorn

Tableau: it might be nice to suggest simple narratives using these toys.

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Four cardboard toys: knight, emu, unicorn and horse

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 Knight-Errant

 Emu, perhaps.

Unicorn

Horse (detail of neck and head)

Some questions

At what point is a representation so abstracted that it ceases to convey the thing it purports to? Using only cocktail sticks and corrugated card, and limiting oneself to glue to join elements, what can one come up with? 

Would it be a good idea to paint the pieces? Or would that be to take them away from that playful abstracted area where the mind is teased into the area of mere imitation?

They are not refined. Does that matter? Is it nice to see how simply they are constructed?

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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.

Cardboard fish, realised.

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Fish, above, made into cardboard manquettes from the designs of yesterday's doodle

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The figurine is there to show how the pieces might scale as playground sculptures. The clean shapes have something of the quality of tin-plate toys, and the next thing might be to experiment with painting these in the sort of bright patterns that colour such tin-plate toys.

The trick is in treading that line between the mimetic and the fully abstract: if the fish are too realistic, like Britain's toys, then they lack a certain mystery, because they fail to engage the imagination. If they are wholly abstract, they simply become as building blocks, and would inspire only the most imaginative.

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Doodle showing fish block sculpture idea

This is a doodle, again made thanks to the longeurs of teaching beginners' English lessons.

It depicts various fancy fish, which have the forms, I now realise, suggestive of pastry-cutters, and a definate de Chirico-esque quality. I suppose their appeal is to do with the way in which something flexible and fluid becomes something rigid and highly geometric.

They would be carved out of hardwood and left to lie about on a coffee table; or they might be very large, also carved from wood, and suitable for a playground or town square. I shall perhaps make some manquettes later tonight from card.

Three characters in search of a tableau

These are threee drawings of characters who will one day become made into cutouts, and set up as a tableau.

What I really need is a jigsaw and some light hardboard. Then I can cut out profiles to paint with the characters: doing such cutting work in this apartment just isn't feasable. But perhaps it will be some day: what I can do now is store up ideas for that day.

Another option is to use these characters in a painting: though what I like about the idea of having them as cutout two dimensinal "dolls" is the toy-like aspect that they'd have (I am extremely fond of children's toys, and there used to be produced pressed tin soldiers called "flats"; I'm also a big fan of the toy theatre).

I have had these ideas for many years, but often felt deterred not just by lack of a workspace but by my lack of a narrative within which to place my figures. I have decided not to care too much: the narrative can look after itself.

Wire faces, masks; toys and art; labels

Earlier

Later

It is quite hard work shaping his copper wire to form an armature, which will be the basis of a mask: the wire ends are sharp and can cut your fingers wickedly. I think these armatures need a bit more tweaking, especially around the moth.

It is also quite hard to work the wire in three dimensions to make a good face shape. I think perhaps using wire netting might have been an easier option.

I find with these craft pieces that often in their earlier stages they are more striking, weirder, and as they progress they become less suggestive and more like mere toys. I intend this mask to be quite realistic. I think the more realistic masks are, the creepier.

What is the difference between a toy and a work of art? I suppose a toy is necessarily restricted in intention, while that of an artwork is diffuse, though its purposes are first of all aesthetic.

I love the interactivity of masks; they cross and confuse the boundaries between toy and artwork, between serious and silly like nothing else I can think of.

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Regular visitors will see that there are now labels at the bottom of the page, making it much easier and fun to find things on this blog.

Papier-mâché birds - stage 2 - leg surgery

Bird with leg implantations.

I am using polyfilla to help make the birds' surfaces smooth for painting.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Bird

The birds observe the leg surgery: Woodpecker's abdomen has been opened: he will subsequently recieve the wire implantation, which will then be bent to form limbs.

The Consultant Surgeon and Assistant Surgeon discuss procedure.

The Birds do not always balance easily. This Hornbill has cheated using blu-tack to hold on. Perhaps I will need to made a little base for him- I hope not, as this strikes me as inelegant.

Papier-mâché birds; toys and sculpure

Here's a collection of papier mache birds I've been working on over the last few days.

The thing is to find the right degree of anthropomorphism: the right balance between bird and suggested human characteristics for them to be fun.

They need to dry a little before I can work more into them, making their surfaces more even and improving their tails and beaks. Later they will be painted.

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At what point does a toy become a sculpture? At the point at which it is too precious or serious looking to be played with, I guess.*

Play is regarded with tremendous suspicion in our culture though it lies beneath so many artistic endeavors. I suspect play is regarded with suspicion because it is regarded as the opposite of work, and Western societies are very much in thrall to the Protestant Capitalist ethos, whereby all activities must have a known, profitable end- to the extent that people are encouraged to feel bad about themselves when they aren't working, no matter how unfulfilling the jobs available to them are.

*Alexander Calder is an exception to this. Paul Klee, like Picasso, is playful but you couldn't really play with his works. Perhaps readers have other examples?