Hair in wood

South African artist Chris Soal combines concrete and other industrial materials with found objects such as toothpicks and bottle caps to create conceptual sculptures. Often set in contrasting textural elements, thousands of single-use objects take on a new identity and aesthetic as part of a collective. The works are a commentary on the destructive relationship humans have with nature while also reflecting notions of value and perception.

Birch wood toothpicks are held in place using polyurethane sealants on ripstop fabric and board. The toothpicks, some raw and others burnt, fill spaces in concrete slabs and appear to form soft dripping patterns as they snake down to the floor. The artist tells Colossal that his use of these “mundane everyday objects” began after he snapped a photo of some in a jar while having dinner. After initially dismissing the toothpicks as “stupid and worthless,” experimenting with them a couple years later changed how Soal perceived the material. “I was immediately amazed by how they transcend their appearance as hard and sharp objects to appearing soft and luscious when arranged in mass,” he says. “I then began to question the fact that I dismissed them upon first encounter, and the work led me to interrogate notions of value and perceptions through the works.”

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From ThisisColossal.com

At this stagnant point in my work, I have been thinking of the introduction of different materials to broaden what I am making. The idea of natural materials like wood and latex kind of appeals, as well as the possibility of imitating the natural patternation of the body, like skin cells and strata, hair follicles and strands, systems of veins ect, the natural rhythm and sequencing of the forms that make up the human. The danger is being derivative, because these materials aren't entirely natural for me to be attracted to, because clay and wax are so much more familiar to me. 

Too Phallic

I smashed this and reclaimed the clay from it. My intention was to make something vessel like that hung from the two side holes, with the 'head' of the penis functioning as some kind of lid. It's just too literal and phallic, and i'm not interested in directly referencing something so explicitly. It takes the question out of the work completely. That's not how I want to create.

Still Don't know what I'm doing....

And so, still making pots. Thinking about the potential of working with latex to mimic skin. my first thought is pouring out a thin film and letting it set and playing with the idea of sewing three dimensional forms from it, or potentially making a form with folds and layers to imitate the minor detail of skin.

This pot is a continuation of the 'mobilizations' of the blind drawings that I was making. I don't feel particularly excited about this....

Alexi Williams Wynn

I love this piece by Alexi Williams Wynn. She went to Abbatoirs and cast the bronchial tubes of cows in wax. It interests me because it directly references what I want to reference in my own work- the echoes and similarities between nature and the internal landscape. Even that word- landscape, echoes across both of our work, although hers has definitely reached a refined and strong point in its delivery. My work is still slightly frenetic- in a way I feel like i'm over-producing to try and mitigate my feeling of being lost, like trying to say something that takes 3 words, but using 15 because I can't find those specific precious 3.

Vessels/Organs

 I was thinking and drawing the similarities and nuances of organs, vessels, seed pods, gourds, budding flowers, and thinking about making some kind of 'strange fruit' to maybe hang on some kind of vein-like tree formation. I also really like the ideas of refining the sculptures that I have been making to smoother, more streamlined forms that look tactile and soft and heavy.
I made one porcelain reproductive 'Bud' and one crank stomach 'Gourd'. I could see a series of these sculptures made in a variety of different clays in different sizes. It's important to me that the sculptures are actually representative of organs for me, even if it's only me that can see it. subtlety is also important. I don't need to make work that shouts, I want to make work that talks. 

I'm pretty happy with this sculpture, but it could be thinner and more rounded and smooth. It feels like a progression from the work that I had been making before. I want it to really bring a gourd or fruit to the mind of the viewer. Crank changes so much when it's fired though that I can't really predict how this sculpture will look. I am still not completely familiar with glazes etc. 

I want to bring the work to a place where it feels like a collection that can be presented together, instead of just a constellation of related sculptures.

The nuances of the porcelain sculpture aren't really visible in these low-quality pictures, but the finger marks are visible, which I like, but the form is less than perfect- it could be smoother and more uniformly bulbous. This is really hard to achieve with the technique that I am using (pinch forming) but maybe I could manage if I coiled it instead. 

Questions for Rhine Bernardino

For my dissertation, focusing on the role of menstruation in feminist art, I emailed Rhine Bernardino, who's work 'Regla' has felt very important to me in my thinking around bodily fluids and the abject, to ask if she would be open to answering a few of my questions about her work. 

Thinking about what I might ask her-

I see some religious imagery in your work, such as the concept of the reliquary in your 'Regla' series, or the echoing of greek votives in your 'self cleaning' performance. Is that an intention in your work?

What do you think the function of utilizing menstrual blood as a material could be for the socialisation of menstruation?

Are you influenced by any of the 2nd wave feminists who worked with menstruation, such as Judy chicago or carolee shneeman?

Do you view menstruation as a spiritual/ritualistic experience or purely as a bodily function?

Do you think that menstruating has an influence over your work as a whole?

What has made you feel like you operate in an environment where it is safe enough for you to perform your work?

What has the general reaction been to your work around menstruation?

Louise Bourgeois - Cumul I 1969

I'm interested and inspired by this piece because of its subtle explicitness- It infers the bodily, the genitals, the sensual qualities of skin, but it's sanitized by the white material, and it also is laden with other interpretive potential- it could almost be anything in nature, from frog spawn to a fungi formation. I found this in the great book - Art and Feminism.

There is a quality to this work that I would like to capture in my own- this kind of balance of ambiguity and explicitness. I want to explore the textural qualities of material in a similarly sensitive way as she does- the marble so effectively infers the draping skin of a scrotum that it is undeniable, yet in the context of the sculpture, it maintains a mystery that leaves the work open to interpretation. 

More mobilization

More results from the glaze firing of my work around 'Mobilizing' the blind drawings that form a ritualistic part of my practice. I like the pots and I feel like they are effective as objects, but they require little thought to understand them, and equally, they excite little thought. They don't seem to 'Mean' very much. I am still interested in the idea of moving the blind drawings off the page though, and just bought some baseplate dental wax, which has the potential to become my own interpretation of milagros or tamata. The wax is soft enough to engrave with an image, so maybe I could do blind drawing at a life drawing class and use the images to cast the baseplates.

This is the baseplate wax

Vulvas

Not knowing what to do with myself and feeling lost, I coil built these two large vessels from Black Clay, which is a rough and groggy stoneware. The qualities of the clay reminded me of African pottery styles. I am perpetually attracted to and interested in the idea of the vessel, and I think also the vessel like quality of the body. There is some irony in this concept, however, because there is no negative space in the body. The lungs, stomach, bowel and womb, organs one might think of as 'empty' or 'full' are fleshy masses that collapse in or expand out to accommodate their contents or lack thereof. So this kind of poses a problem, or question when it comes to the work that I make. But I don't think that I am quite ready to unpick that just yet. 

There is a quality to the clay that made me think of the vulva- not because of any textural or visual attribute, but because of the abjectification of the vulva, and the almost abject darkness of this clay. It will fire rough and dark, and it looks so much like shit when I work with it that it is almost too obvious to focus on abject concepts. But I was thinking about the ritualistic associations with womanhood, cycles, the secrecy of the female genitalia, and also the echoes of its form in nature- flowers, leaves, ripples of water, as opposed to the masculine counterpart of the seed pod. 

I started making these vulvas with a mind to mimic the moist quality with liquid metal- maybe getting some silver or gold grains and melting them into the crevices of the sculptures with a blow torch, or pouring liquid molten metal into them, or possibly even firing the sculptures with glass grains. Metal would be preferable however. The idea of glass is less appealing to me because it is a more literal representation of moisture. 

Maybe there is a way to give the vulvas some kind of 'function'. If the work could be hanging together and expelling something, that would be exciting to me. Blood, urine, something resembling cervical mucous. Like a traditional water feature but more representational of an actual female body, as opposed to the sanitized version utilized in art, more appealing to the male gaze. It's also important to me that the vulvas aren't penetrated, that they are expelling something. That they are removed from sexuality and placed back in the actual function of the body.

Eva Hesse- Contingent

I was thinking about the qualities of skin and how to bring them into my work, and I was looking at work by Hannah Wilke and I found this installation by Eva Hesse, which I see as a beautiful description of skin-

'Eight sheets of fabric dipped in latex and suspended in fibre glass hang from the ceiling. They are all roughly human scale, varying between about nine and ten foot in height. Some hover just above the floor whilst others just tickle its surface, one bends at the base, seemingly under the force of its contact with the floor. The fabric dipped in latex tends to reach from about a quarter to three quarters of the sheets entire length. At each end, therefore, is a crumbled, transparent area of fibreglass, which allows light to flood through. Light is able to pierce the more opaque central sections, occasionally working its way through chinks in the fabric or occasionally glowing through an area where the surface is stretched like a membrane.'

https://www.tomdefreston.co.uk/artist/5135/eva-hesse-contingent

Maybe I could think about using latex in my work to mimic the skin- maybe dipping a sculpture into liquid latex to form a thin membrane over one of the phallic shapes.

Anus flower

Anus and rectum in wax. I'm not sure if I really like this sculpture. So much effort and time went into making it and I like the rectum, is has a realistic quality, but the sculpture as a whole reminds me of a cartoon flower or something. It isn't fine or beautiful.

Anus and Penis in clay

Have been thinking lots about the abject and the sexual, reproductive organs, and the interesting cross over between the two. There is a seed pod, vessel-like quality to the penis, the anus is almost like a flower bud or a knot. I liked the penis that I made before and the potential for it to mimic or even be an instrument in some way. I made a new penis, thinking about ancient drinking vessels, like camel bags. The holes and impressions in the 'testicle' of the sculpture are me thinking about pubic hair, about the way it feels at the root, or to pluck one out. I am interested in the idea of forming some kind of skin like sheath over the penis sculptures, maybe out of silicone or wax.

The anuses could be lacquered gold or silver or maybe pearlescent, I like the idea of turning the sculptures into something opulent and precious. I also want to explore the idea of making a small plug-like form sculpture of an anus to fit into the terracotta, maybe out of silver.