Cartilage, Glass, Wax

I have connected with an artist working with casting glass, and plan to potentially work with her to make some cast objects. I want to make cartilage; thick and heavy glass pieces, translucent, soft forms but maybe with a rough texture. I made some maquettes from the wax. They are just preliminary experiments. 

cycles in wax

The reason this womb has petals is because it buds, blooms, sheds its seeds and petals, and changes its form, a lot like a flower does. The cervix changes position throughout the cycle. Seeds are lost, so is flesh, so is blood, like sap. But the womb is perennial, unlike many flowers. Maybe more of a shrub.

I want to make a series based off the first petaled womb, 4 wombs- 

1-Menstruation. Many petaled, open, almost wild
2-Follicular phase. Small petals. Budding. preparing itself to open.
3-Ovulation. Still small and soft but ridged and ready to seed.
4-Luteal phase. Soft, smooth, small and thick, like a bed readying itself for fertilized eggs.

This is the smaller womb, the follicular phase. It's almost right but not quite. I want the two wombs to be like sisters; the same size, same sized holes, same distance between them. this one is a little sloppy but at least making it clarified some things about the process for me; I know now that it is important to be in a warm room while making it, important to use very clean tools, important to join the petals in a certain order so that the joints don't show.  

It might be worth thinking about the possibility of really observing the numbers of the cycle; 28 days average. 4 phases. 80ml blood loss average. 450 periods a lifetime average. 1021 eggs lost per period. 

This is very interesting to me. I visualise the eggs like sharp, tapered little pearls. Or like white sea glass, almost uniform in shape. 

Vessels, Organs, Instruments

I started making these small vessels out of crank, which remind me of little instruments, little organs, which got me thinking about the phonetic parts of the body, the parts which make noise, receive or process noise, how the body is just a control centre, processing information, with a filtration system for the information output. This is where 'waste' becomes important and interesting. Our waste is an explanation of our internal monologue. I always examine my period blood to find out the health of my reproductive system. The amount of pain I have tells me how much my blood is clotting. More stagnant months are more painful. More sad months are also more painful. My snot tells me how healthy my sinuses and chest are, and reflects my eating. My urine speaks of my kidney health, urethra, bladder. I urinate more when I am anxious, I defecate less when I am sad or stressed. These things are interesting to me because my body sometimes seems to know my emotional state before I do. On an intellectual level it is sometimes impossible to articulate how we feel, but the body paints it for us in our effluvia, sculpts us into the shape of our joy or misery or grief or excitement. So I think THAT is what I want to make. Those moments and feelings and bodily explanations of the emotional life. 

Carole Seborovski

Carole Seborovski was born in San Diego, California. She received her BFA from the California College of the Arts in 1982. She continued her studies at the New York Studio School and received her MFA in painting from Hunter College in 1987.

I'm interested in her work because it seems to have such a big presence, so handmade and tactile but in a way organic and holy, as if it rose from the ground. The sculptures look like temples to me, and her use of gold leaf and aluminium leaf is exciting for me.

Intestines being worshipped

Feeling good about this shape. Feels like the more of them there are, the more power there is in them. I was thinking about seed pods and about intestines. I'm not sure if it feels entirely right for them to be intestines. The reference to the digestive system makes it feel as though they could be seen as shits. I could more visualise them hanging from trees, like seed pods, or fruit, or even like wind instruments. Whatever they end up being, I like them right now.

I like the fact that there is a long process to them. It's alot like working with clay for me- make, fire, glaze, fire, or in the case of the bronze- Make, arrange on sprue, fire, clean, dry, polish.

Womb

Womb like the many petaled flower, waxing and waning like the moon, changing position and colour and function throughout the month and seeding, then shedding, then regrowing to seed again. Nothing truly stagnates in the body, even after death, and the womb reflects the growth and grief that the month brought to the agent of the body.
The womb is an agent in and of itself, expressing its own primal desires and functioning, animalistic.

wax petals and wax vessel.
Thinking about how the body is deceptive; it seems like we are filled with a series of vessels; stomach, bladder, womb, ovaries. But these 'Vessels' don't function in the same way as we might visualise- these fleshy and soft membranes are somewhat solid, opening when necessary, but never truly empty. So my sculptures are like a body in bloom, a body that isn't alive but is almost calcified or fossilised some mid way through the blooming process, caught in its secret moment. That's why nothing is true to its anatomical size. things bloat and bloom at different rates, like the bacteria or the life previously led was a catalyst for some strange and unpredictable reaction that changes its form.

Wombs

I made this womb today, trying to make a round form but it ended up being more elongated than I wanted, looking more like my idea of a stomach. I like it though, and I might let it be as it is. It's a satisfying shape. It's harder than I thought it would be to create a smooth texture. I would love to have a very smooth and thin wax membrane, but it's very difficult to achieve that with this type of wax. 

Wax Sculpting

Thinking about bladders, thinking about forming a thin, almost fatty skin and a vessel - like object that looks like it could stretch and change form. Something that is translucent and can hold liquid.

I warmed the wax chunks on the stove until they were as pliable as clay and pinched the wax as thin as I could. Made a 'bladder' and 'ovaries'. Not entirely convinced that they are what I want them to be, but I will try out a few different forms. 

New tasks, New material

At this stage I need to bring new materials into this project; I can't accurately describe the sensations I am thinking of with just bronze, crank and porcelain. I think that I want to avoid working with terracotta because it is so messy and has a quality to it that I want to avoid. I have ordered paper clay and will try that out for some of the larger formations like lungs, but it is very much an experiment. I also bought some PMC  (precious metal clay) which is clay impregnated with silver, which is left behind when the body of the clay is burned out. I have been experimenting with that but so far found it very hard to work with. It has the texture of porcelain, which is already hard to work with, but my intentions are to work with it on a very small scale, which is difficult without specific tools. I have made a few small tester sperms, and I will fire those before I continue to work with the PMC because it is hard to really know the limitations and potential of the material without seeing the fired results. 

Liminal spaces in the body

Lauren Kalman is a jewellery designer and performance artist working with gold and investment casting to explore the liminal spaces in the body, and the abject. I'm interested in the idea of reverence with the body, I like her observation of the abject, including dribble and tears in her images. There may come a point in my body of work when I start to need to explore these liminal spaces, the small impressions and marks the skin has.

Fetal Skeletons

I had planned not to look at any medical text books, not wanting my imagery to be informed by an anatomically accurate perspective, but I couldn't help but look at this book on fetal development.
Particularly the arrangements of the fetal skeleton interests me, and feels like it could influence how I show my work.

Producing and reproducing

These are my recent sculptures,  thinking about the male reproductive system and seed pods, and something in-between, like a reproductive vessel that is partially animal and partially plant. I also want to make a womb, uterus, sperm, bowels, ovaries.

The two parts interlock, and will be hung together.

Thinking about reproduction

I have recently been thinking about the reproductive system, sperm, ovaries, eggs, falopian tubes. I can feel it when I ovulate. The eggs bursting through is painful, particularly on the left side. My cervical mucus has a quality that interests me, translucent and sticky and thick like egg whites. I know when i'm fertile, i know when i'm just about to bleed by the feeling in my hip and lower back, like the bones are opening slightly to accomodate for the shifting flesh. I want to make tiny little seed like sperms in silver or gold, bead like, and quite large translucent ovaries, eggs like pin pricks or silver dust. It doesn't have to make sense, because it's feelings based. I want to bring in a new material for these little beings, maybe silver, gold, maybe more casting in aluminium. It's important to me that these objects are well made and detailed though.