Newtown # 03: Myungjin Kim

MJ!! So I am running massively late! YESTERDAY'S tutor was the Korean artist Myungjin Kim, also affectionately known as MJ (as in out of the Spiderman movies "because Myungjin is too hard to pronounce." True story.)

So MJ makes had the double benefit of not only being a massive personality but also makes pieces that have some of the most intricate surface patterns I have ever seen done by hand.

I am essentially going to keep this short as MJ's work mostly explains itself visually. The main thing that needs to be said about her work is that she has developed an amazing method of coil building using porcelain.... which involves wet strips of flannel towels.

I could tell you about it, but apparently its a Kim family secret so... y'know... not going to.

The surface decoration is mostly made by a coating of black slip applied at the leather hard stage which is then carved back into using various tools to produce a wonderfully crisp design. Although Mj has said she is trying to move into more graphical and less overly decorative styles I think the existing work makes her stand out so I am genuinely intrigued to see how the work progresses in the future. Incidentally the colour is then added in during a second firing using a watered down version of my beloved and trusty favourite material; underglaze!

Again I am sadly going to have to keep this relatively short as it turns out that my body is kind of heavily reliant on this "sleep" stuff, so going to hit the sack before I have to get up and do more work tomorrow.

NB: By "hitting the sack" I actually mean that I am going to do my blog entry on Chris Miles to that I am up to date. Double entry whammy, eh?!

Newtown # 02: Gerit Grimm

So I'm running slightly behind schedule today as yesterday I was working until 1AM in the studio. I have learned that not only does this course like up to its monicker of "Work Intensive," but also that I am getting older and physically I need to sleep occasionally, so lets all just pretend for the sake of argument that this is backdated by a day!

"Todays" lecturer was Gerit Grimm. I had not actually heard of Gerit until I saw the list of artists teaching on the program, but she has a truly interesting approach to figurative sculpture, but I'm jumping the gun here.

Gerit was raised in the area formerly known as East Germany. She is an adorably sweet lady with a cheeky Germanic element to her personality and while in E. Germany she trained as a production potter. This has fed back into her work insomuch as she produces wonderful responses to figurines using wheel thrown elements.

Gerit has recently been working on a body of work currently on display at the Long Beach Museum of Art that is a response to the Museum's Staffordshire Figurine Collection. This is something that is close to my heart, being something of a Staffordshire figurine myself, and most definitely being a fellow Stoke-on-Trent export. This body of Gerit's work are all made from one type of clay which is put through a reduction firing to produce a wonderfully rich chocolately colour. The pieces have the effect of looking as though they are still in the state of being wet clay, however they are fired up to stoneware. Although I do not ever throw myself, it was fascinating to watch her process and hear about the technical considerations such as the migration of the various elements. 

One of the running themes I am noticing from the lecturing artists is that you cannot always micromanage clay sculpture and you have to be willing to just accept that things like cracks and slumping is part and parcel of the medium, which is actually surprisingly relieving and empowering.

The sculptures range in size from about 36 inches tall to more than life size, with my personal favourites being those that are somewhere in the middle scale-wise. I don't want to go on too much about Gerit today as I am going to go view her show in a few days and then I will talk more about the work again, so for now I shall sign off, although my next entry will hopefully be tonight to get me back on track!

Newtown # 01: SunKoo Yuh

Today was the first official day of the course I am on, Work Intensive III: Figurative. I will post a few pictures of my work as it develops, however I also want to focus on the visiting artist we have each day.

Today the first speaker was SunKoo Yuh, an artist who I wasn’t familiar with until recently, which is clearly a travesty.

SunKoo’s work is very different to what you would usually expect from figurative ceramics. They display a kaleidoscope of culture through a riot of colourful dripping and bleeding glazes. To me they are reminiscent of a modern day version of the kind of beautiful statues you would find peering out of overgrown vines in some lost Asian temple. The main reason for this is how overgrown they feel to begin with. This is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination; the fact that SunKoo’s pieces display such an intense collection of varying characters means that from whatever angle you look at them from you can take an entirely different interpretation on the piece. Looking at one of his creations from one angle you may see a leering pig sticking its snout out menacingly, whereas from another angle it may be a muscle man flexing in speedos.

The main “theme” of the work is that of the Mundane. He observes the intricacies and subtleties of day-to-day life to create a pseudo-diary of the elements going on around him and this freedom of understanding means that the viewer is free to draw their own conclusions and parallels from the work through their own subconscious filters even more so than usually happens with art.

As a ceramicist one of the main things I have learned today is that even the best of us end up with cracks in our work occasionally, and on those occasions a combination of filler and the expression “the cracks are just part of my process” is both your friend, and your get-out clause. However, on a serious note the idea that as a three dimensional artist you should be producing work that is interesting from all angles is both absurdly obvious and completely counter-intuitive to what I think is a lot of people’s views on sculpting is. This is absolutely a concept that will stick with me and will hopefully develop my own thinking processes and work (which incidentally currently an albino alligator, but shh…)

Tomorrow the artist is Gerrit Grim, who makes incredible large scale figurative sculptures using wheel-thrown elements.

What do I get?

Ok so its been super hectic for the last week so not really had chance to sit down and write anything, however I found out yesterday that I received my funding from The Arts Council England towards a course I am attending in Long Beach, which means I am now sat in LA and shall be in California until the end of July! Lots of interesting things to blog about here... I am staying with my artist friends Liz (who I did my internship with in 2009) and her husband Morgan, and their adorable and super smart baby Sadie. I arrived Thursday and yesterday we went to The Bunny Museum in Pasadena, but thats another story for another day as it deserves its own post!

But anyway, now that I am officially supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, I wanted to take the opportunity to point anybody else in the direction of the Arts Council if they wanted to make an application themselves or just find out more.

More exciting things to follow soon!

Adventures Close to Home # 01: Drop Men and Stabby Women

After much procrastination I am back! Truth of the matter is I currently cant find the card reader for my computer so transferring images from my camera to my computer is a lengthy process of doom.

Aaaaaaanyway, I digress.

One of the things I want to cover in this blog is some of the stuff I spot out and about. Luckily I happen to work in Sheffield, which is pretty much one giant outdoor alternative gallery space. I am occasionally allowed to leave the city limits, but this is pretty much as a good place to start as any.

Are we all sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Two of Yorkshire's most famous exports since flat caps and Kes are the artists Kid Acne and EMA. The Stabby Women by Kid Acne are just about everywhere in Sheffield if you look long enough. They are metropolitan amazons who reclaim the areas falling into urban decay, and lets face it, what's good about the urban without a bit of decay? A lot of the time these paste ups of urban warriors are accompanied by something completely different and yet somehow strangely apt, the Drop Men by EMA.

The mythology of the Stabby Women was elaborated on last year with Kid Acne's solo show at the Millennium Gallery last year, and there is definitely a cross over between the two mythos of the artists. The most obvious reasoning behind this is the fact that they are a couple IRL, but they also have a working harmony that seems to create its own universe within the real world. I could go off on a tangent about the actual collaboration work, but lets stick to the paste ups for now.

One of the best things about these is that they actually do exactly what they set out to do, they reclaim spaces. There are many abandoned buildings that have Stabby Women and Drop Men peering out of them defiantly, proudly surveying their new conquests. These are clearly not new works but the element of dilapidation to them adds a new element to them. Rather than being beautifully clean graffiti, they are war torn and battle scarred, showing the struggle to keep control of their crumbling bastions.

I don't actually know much about the Drop Men individually, but that doesn't stop them seeming amazingly apt. There's a mural on a wall on my bus route that I assume is by ANA (but I could be totally wrong) that's eyes keep being repainted different colours. I will post about it eventually but I feel I need to get the pictures to prove I'm not crazy!

For more pictures check out my tumblr posts here and here.

Still getting into the swing of this blogging malarky, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated! I also have a tumblr and a facebook. Twitter still alludes me and my word count, but we shall see...

Thats all for now, I shall keep my eye out for more stuff and things, and try to get more regular with my postings!

UP

Give Me an inch

Well lets just dirty this nice clean page up a little shall we?

Starting as I mean to go on, lets break the ice with the new wave notes of Hazel O'Connor in the 1980 EPIC* "Breaking Glass."

For anyone who is curious as to why she is dressed like the Queen of Tron (two years before the latter came out I might add) you can watch the full film on youtube now...

[HERE]

Personally I love H.O.C so the music alone is enough to make this amazing for me, but the whole breaking down of society sub-plot and vaguely faustian dealings of the lead are scarily familiar motifs at the moment.

Well thats that, I'm no longer staring at a blank screen and I have something nice and familiar to start with. Next time I shall begin to get down to serious biznis!**

Oh and if you needed any more incentive to watch the film...

*Not technically an epic, even remotely... but it totally should be.

**Maybe, but probably not. Serious and I no longer get on.