The Big Head



February 18, 2010

The Big HeadWow, what a day! It’s half term week and South Kensington is awash with families and small children, most of them in the ceramic studio at the V&A. What a great week to host my swan-song public event, the group modelling of ‘The Big Head’. 131 visitors throughout the day contributed their enthusiasm, imagination and modelling skills to a weird and wonderful portrait head, christened ‘Albert’ by one of the children. It’s always a joy to see young children revelling in the direct tactile experience of handling wet clay, and some of today’s helpers were barely out of their push-chairs.

The head itself is four-faced, each one facing towards a point of the compass, north, south, east and west, again reflecting the multi-cultural ethos of the museum and its collections. I think I’d expected it to evolve into a robust and earthy, Easter Island kind of a head, but early on it began to take on its own identity, more akin to cartoon, graffiti and street art. The head is modelled over a plaster armature, designed to shrink and crack as it dries, and to break up into manageable/fireable pieces. I’m not sure how this will work now, with such a rich, complex and detailed surface, but it will be an interesting experiment whatever happens.

The earlier part of this penultimate week at the V&A had been spent finishing off a number of studio jobs in hand – casting and cleaning up plaster moulds, packing and unpacking the kiln, and applying ceramic transfers to various pieces. Another head, based on a Japanese No Theatre mask, was modelled and a cast taken. Once again Lisa’s help was invaluable.

I’ve also started another series of collage drawings, this time combining elements of my own drawings of the V&A heads with the self-portrait drawings of the studio visitors. This gives an interesting mix of the historical and the contemporary, of ‘high’ culture and popular culture. Perhaps I should now model and cast some of the visitors’ portrait heads too? This project could run and run!

The Big Head

About the author



February 18, 2010

Stephen Dixon was the V&A’s first ceramicist in residence (September 2009-February 2010). Stephen received his Masters in Ceramics from the Royal College of Art and has written and lectured widely....

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