i have a little group that was set up as a result of the ATS that meets about once a month. set up to make sure we all keep on making and drawing and crafting and playing, in theory to maybe do an independent exhibition together in the future (although we seem to always avoid talking about that bit!). there’s only 5 of us, and we had our first get together of the year on saturday, which was lovely. janine had being playing with layers again, which looked gorgeous. alison had just been working on more of a diary so words and drawings all mixed together. mel had been working with grids from maps and making them more 3 dimensional into little beacons – which we all liked. but we all felt she was getting wrapped up in the lights she wanted to use within them, and so there was a little bit of a pep talk from us all to not get caught up in the technicalities as they seemed to be blocking the creative side.

I showed my sketchbook, mainly skimming over how i had moved on from last time, and more showing the photos of meaningful places i had collected together. they were well received, but i was surprised to hear how alison felt they were very lonely images, with janine and mel agreeing. hadn’t really considered that as an element, although i did spend a lot of my teenage years on my own. the images for me are looking out from specific places i lived or loved. not sure if this will become a key element in where i go next with this, as i still need to resolve the cubes i intend to do, but interesting none the less.

i’ve decided to try to bring another element into my work; taking the basis of the 6 sides of a cube i have decided to focus on 6 places that have great meaning for me.

i grew up in blackheath, and spent many a sunday walking through greenwich park. my grandparents lived in rock, overlooking clee and we holidayed with them in moelfre, anglesey. time with my dad when i was younger centred around hastings, where my dad now lives. and now i have abbey fields on my doorstep.

i managed to find numerous pictures in mine and my mums photos of clee, moelfre, blackheath, greenwich and hastings so I am working with them at the moment. simply photocopying them to blow them up huge, or shrink down. both work well. with the really large ones i’ll make a simple paper cube, and with the tiny ones i’ve done a folded book which is based on squares and folds up to make a cube.

ideally i would like to make a ceramic cube with images on all 6 sides, but still working on the firing of this.

referring back to the cubes; certainly would like to try them on different materials such as wood, plaster, resin, glass, and fabric.

A creator who isn’t seized by the throat by a set of impossibilities is no creator. A creator is someone who creates his own impossibilities, and thereby creates pos-sibilities. It’s by banging your head against the wall that you find an answer. (Deleuze 1992)

i’ve have now become completely and utterly obsessed with cubes – will work through making them in variety of materials. both with plain sides and embossed/carved sides of cube based patterns. 

had a distraction over christmas seeing all the family. decided to only take square photos from here on, to further development of cube based ideas. happy to use my lomo, polaroid and hipstamatic only. photos of anything appealing/inspiring/surface etc. 

i have moved on from the square, circle, triangle combination and have begun to concentrate on just cubes. Taking the idea of a hand built ceramic cube, approximately 20cm sq, which would signify the “space” and then could be either filled haphazardly or neatly laid out like a room, with dolls house furniture, either that or full of specific items that are neatly layered until the cube is full, this would require viewing points in the sides of the cube but these could be either simple squares or windows. the whole idea is based around “creative block” as a play on words, being stuck for ideas, but also being literally a block of a creative space.

and then leading from this i have decided to look at cubes made of all different materials, not as an end product, but just to play with texture, light, weight to see where it goes from there.

wood, plaster, resin, clay, wire, paper, card, fabric

spent the day in the print room cutting mount board in different cube patterns to do some blind embossing, went quite well until i rushed it at the end, by which point my paper had soaked for too long, so it stuck to the board, and on two of them i completely misaligned the paper, so have redone it a couple of days later.

(photo of cube needed here)

i’ll come up with some more designs, just as a drawing exercise, but may try to translate them on to the materials listed above to see which works best.