Hollow Forms

Worked all summer on the daily composition series. Soon enough they became multi-day compositions as I inevitably began to do more designing and started to enlarge the parts. Enlarging required laminating multiple pieces of plywood and that takes extra work. My goal was still to maintain a freshness that came along with not really knowing where they were going until I got there. If your a creative maker you'll know what I mean.

I made a lot of them, a lot. Then I went even bigger, I needed to really push where I could go with the line weights of the edges and the relative volume of the forms. Juxtaposing thin and thick forms is really starting to add some excitement to the pieces. It also means more planning with the construction, but I love the engineering part; problem solving is the best part. The solutions are even better. I also did a curved plywood shape. Love it! Will do more soon but I have some additional construction design to master.

Rim Fire, 52" tall, 2013, wood. Currently at the USM faculty show at Oddfellows Gallery in downtown Hattiesburg, until the closing of the Fall Art Walk on October, 16.

Cloud Atlas, 28" tall, wood, 2013, will be at the Train Depot Show, starting on the Fall Art Walk, in downtown Hattiesburg, October 16.

Just a few days ago I started to work out the fabrication process for hollow forms. I really want to go bigger. Although the last two works are made to come apart as a whole I am reaching the limits of what some of the smaller scale materials will handle without permanent attachments. I can't ship big pieces like this, not without winning the lottery, so they need to be modular. Waste also comes into play; a quadruple thick lamination of 3/4" thick plywood is not only wasteful but also heavy and expensive!

Hollow forms have a huge advantage, once I master the making part. So far they are coming out well. The first one, a true prototype, went together pretty fast and skinned really well. The second one is much better as I leaned a lot about what will make gluing the skin on faster and easier. They do go together pretty well, but perfecting the engineering for that part will have to wait until I have more shapes to work with.

The shapes must be perfect copies of each other.

I winged it with the glue blocks, not knowing what I really needed. Turns out I needed blocks in strategic places for the air nailer and clamps to work well.

How to make bendy plywood.

Skin fits well.

Second one has much better glue blocks shaped to fit the corners. Still have to skin this one.

Two pieces slotting together. They fit very tight, maybe too much.

Now to make some additional shapes, I need to master the technique so that I can make them fast and make many. I also need to work out thick to thin shapes. These are about 4" thick, I want to go much fatter.

More images soon!

Color

Construction of my daily compositions, as a friend calls them, has slowed down a bit, as expected. For two reasons; our summer semester started, and I had to slow down as I needed to start doing more composing of the forms.

The first group of works were kind of like 3d gesture drawings, I jumped in not knowing or really planing where I was going. As forms, commonalities, and relationships began to develop I knew I wanted to slow down and make deliberate decisions about where to go next. The hard part is not losing the freshness and spontaneity apparent in the first works. So far so good. I started adding larger laminated sections and fabricated parts that required clear decisions and planning in the construction phase. I like how things are going, and they are getting bigger and stronger. I also decided it was time to start experimenting with finishes. Hand painting was not going to work, too may inaccessible spaces for a brush and many of the works will not come apart to paint individual pieces. So I tried spray paint and although it requires great patience the results have been very pleasing, and I am getting the bold saturated colors that I want. I have an excellent spray system, but right now I am using too small a quantity of paint in any one color to justify the expense of the paint itself, and there are so many excellent spray paint choices.

Right now I will be doing more of my daily compositions in clay, mainly because my intense summer teaching scheduled will keep me in the USM studio pretty much 40 hrs a week straight for the month of June. I will have several hours a day to work side by side with some of my upper level ceramics students and so far it has been rewarding, and they seem to be getting a lot out of seeing me work too.

I'll still work on the wood ones, but at a slower pace and probably on weekends. My goal with the clay and the wood is to get bigger.

My Daily Compositions

This rainy stormy day makes a perfect opportunity to get some writing done. The semester is finished and I have a short break before I have to get right back into it with a double header June semester; two studio classes, back to back will make for an exciting and probably manic start to the summer.

A tornado, a new chair search at work, and a number of other events have conspired to make this a hard semester to get into my studio. To some extent, after being extremely productive last year it seemed pretty natural to slow it down a bit but I was finding that as the spring wore on I was getting meaner and unhappier the longer I stayed away. I had sculptures in national shows in Wyoming and Louisiana in the early part of the year and found I was needing to go a different way with some new work, but which way?

By the time February came around I was jonesing for a fresh start but knew that with my university commitments I couldn't and didn't want to get deep into something large in scale. I wanted to work in my home studio; I knew the time alone would be very important. That on it's own proved be a huge project; with a major squirrel infestation last year it was a giant project to get the space back in order, never mind replacing all the insulation and cleaning out all the nesting material that covered nearly every surface of the shop. I also needed some new tools and had to repair another to get everything in place to get going.

A new Shopfox belt/disc sander, the "big" purchase of the year. Love it!

A router table for my router

New tires for my bandsaw

So I came up with my sculpture-a-day project. I am well into week two with a series of small works that I am doing out of MDF. It's going really well. Some very good ideas and forms are evolving. A few are less interesting to me, but I see them as exercises. For example the last one I did was all rectilinear forms all at 90 degrees to each other. Less exciting than some others but the idea of an exercise is to force yourself into getting it done and then realizing later the unexpected connections and relationships that have occurred within the piece. I may have to skip a day coming soon, but that is not so important anymore as now I have some really good ideas and am starting to build some that are bit more complicated in their construction. It's only natural to progress to more involved works where I am making more and more specific decisions about forms, relationships and construction techniques.

When I showed these to an artist friend of mine she called them, "my daily compositions", I like that idea.

When my mom viewed them she saw puppies, so I guess they have become part of my pack, my constant companions, like my dogs, that sit on the floor of my shop waiting for another to join the ranks.

Installation

Again, just a bit swamped with work at school and busy making more art, but finally here are some pictures if the install as it happened two weeks ago. My students from the Department of Art and Design did a tremendous job doing so much of the work. USM students really are amazing!

We are still working on the catalog for the whole sculpture show and on the signage for each piece in the show, so not completely done yet!

And thanks again to the College of Arts and Letters and USM for understanding the importance of faculty research grants. The work that comes from these monies is so important for our University. My students were a big part of this work and much conversation was generated from the work going on inside our shops on West 4th Street. It has been a learning experience for all!

More pictures soon!

Progress and Lots of It

Ha, that goes with out saying. Obviously I have been too busy to even update my blogs. It has been a crazy semester so far! Very busy with many projects and all is going well.

First, Homes for Everyone is finally finished. The 16' square pad will be poured next week and hopefully by the 18th or 19th of October they will be up and bolted in place. Right now they sit all shiny and finished just waiting to go.

Homes for Everyone, 2012 copywrite, Jennifer Torres

Homes for Everyone, 2012 copywrite, Jennifer Torres

Next, I have been working on a few other works, including one for the annual Train Depot Show. The theme for this year was Toy. It stumped me at first, I don't have kids and really didn't want to do anything related to childhood or anyone's standard expectation for a toy. I wanted to do a toy for me, something I could play with. After much consideration the idea came rather naturally. I have been doing mostly commissions recently and with that type of work it is pretty prescribed. You make a proposal, it's approved, you make a model, get your funding and do what you said you would do. Not much room for playing. For me I was needing something that would enable me to let go, break loose of all the restrictions, so I made a piece that had slot connections and could be endlessly reconfigured to play with. At the show opening last night, it most certainly was being played with. It's kind of cool (and annoying) to see folks playing with the work and changing it up.

Toy- Storm Configuration, detail, copywrite Jennifer Torres 2012

Toy- Storm Configuration, detail, copywrite Jennifer Torres 2012

Toy- Storm Configuration, 2012, aluminum, copywrite Jennifer Torres 2012

Also, earlier in the semester we had Christo come to campus to do a talk. It was huge fun and he ended up at the 3D Arts building with us just hanging out for about an hour before the lecture was to begin. He was fun to talk to, had lots of questions about our program and the students and generally was laid back and cool. He talked about a couple of his current monumental artworks in progress and all the issues associated with such giant works of art. The big lecture hall on campus was full and for days after everyone was still talking about it. I am so honored to have been a part of it all and that the College of Arts and Letters at USM was able to fund the lecture.

I have plenty more I could talk about but that's all for now, I still have two more blogs to update...

Back to Work

Not that I ever left. But I needed to focus on my furniture class for a few weeks and the weather was ass-kickin' hot so I took a break from the hot shop for a bit too. Two more of the village homes mostly tack welded together. Still have bases to make and plenty more to do. Here are a few images from the past week. Probably will get much more work done at the end of the month when classes are over and I can get in real early to work. It's so hot here in the afternoons.

A Village Comes Together

Another week of good work punctuated by a morning off installing artwork in the lobby of the Liberal Arts Building on Southern Miss campus in town here. The installation went perfect thanks in no small part to the physical plant guys who worked hard to make sure it all went smooth. I also want to thank Dean Steve Moser and the College of Arts and Letters as the project was mainly his idea. Here's pictures of the final install. I really love how it looks and this is by far the best location for this installation, I am calling it Life is But a Dream.

Image by Matthis Piel

Image by Matthis Piel

Work continues on Homes for Everyone and now a small village is beginning to take shape. Lots more work to do as I build additional structures and do all the finishing work.Since I am teaching a morning ceramics class and an on-line Art Appreciation class my studio time to work on this sculpture can be very tight. Of course on Friday evening when working on the piece I sprained my ankle real bad and was on crutches for a day. Bummer. Shit happens and you just have to deal with it. It forced me to slow down an bit and in the end I had an excellent Sunday in the studio and got more done than anticipated even though I was limping around a bit. The ankle is getting better, so no worries!