finds

July News by Fiona

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Life's become a bit hectic once again with an influx of work, making films for online workshops and the #onlinesculpturecourse2020 I’m running.   

As a result, my own creative output has slowed down considerably in the past few weeks.  The glut of found objects (nails, ceramic remnants, glass, bones, metal components..) I excavated from digging a huge mound of earth in my garden became the focus for a new piece (currently untitled). The finds - each with their own history - have been attached onto a 3d net construction.   Loving their wonderful state of decay. Like fossils, they have fired my imagination. The digging is to make space for an outdoor studio area - still in progress! 

I’ve also started making a film for @life_intheundergrowth and hope to have this completed by September, when I open my studio (by appointment) for Somerset Open Studios (19 Sept - 4 Oct).

My pond's finally been cleaned out by garden designer Mark Belcher (after 14 years!) so the fish, frogs and newts are happier now. The complex root systems of the pond plants had taken over. Such a mass of interconnected lines. 

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There’s still time to visit the following live exhibitions:

Royal Society of Sculptors Summer Exhibition (Dora House, 108 Old Brompton Rd, London SW7 3RA, til 18 Sept, Mon-Fri, 11-5).  This year’s show has been selected by Nicky and Robert Wilson of @jupiterartland 

Incendiary at Pound Arts, (Corsham, SN13 9HX, til 7 Aug, open Tues, Thur, Fri 11-4; and 

About Trees at Heritage Courtyard Gallery, (6 Heritage Courtyard, Sadler St, Wells, BA5 2RR, by appointment).  

My work has also been selected for Hauser & Wirth's Homegrown online exhibition now live.   10% of gross profits going to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization as part of #artforbetter,  

I’ve taken part in Somerset Reacquainted - a creativity-in-isolation project for Somerset Art Works members.  The project encourages artists to refresh their engagements with the locality, using the ideas of reacquaintance as a starting point to discover and re-discover the excitement and purpose in their artistic practice. 

Online Workshops:

Creativity Works 30 Day Challenge (19 Aug)

Art UK Home School (coming soon)

Somerset Art Works Family Friendly workshops (19 Sep-4 Oct)

Make the Sunshine - The Happiness Hunt challenge (end of Aug)

Coming Soon:

This year’s Somerset Open Studios (September 19th– October 4th) will be a digital extravaganza, with some venues (including mine) opening by appointment.

Egg Sacs and Louise Bourgeois by Fiona

Eggs on wire grid drawing The arrival of Louise Bourgeois’ exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, coincided with the first weeks on my MA course.  I had been looking forward to visiting her show, being a huge fan.  A few days before, I had been looking at my collection of ‘finds’ (all sorts of natural phenomena) for inspiration.  A dried up fish swim bladder and a sponge-like form found on the beach grabbed me as starting points.  I want to investigate similar forms in nature, sometimes micro in scale – their form and function.  I’m also interested in drawing more – whatever shape that takes – 3-d and 2-d.

Bourgeois’ work struck a chord.  Of course I love her Maman Spider, crouched eerily, over-powering the first barn.  I was hoping for more sculpture, but strangely it was her etched drawings of plant forms, bodily parts and egg clusters that fascinated me most. Largescale and awkwardly drawn, they have real emotion, enhanced by repetition.

Her forms resonated with my ‘finds’.   I have since looked up my sponge-like object on the internet.  It seems to be whelk egg sacs!  Serendipity, though not so surprising that I was drawn to Bourgeois’ seductive egg sacs.   So I have been drawing the sacs with a view to creating 3-d pieces (drawings?) with wire, paper pulp, fibres and other mixed media based on them.  Relic of little lives, now entered into the greater cycle.

Whelk egg sacsLouise Bourgeois Swaying 2006