Steve Dixon

Impatience

05 February 2010

This week at the V&A began with a car journey from Manchester to London, to deliver the timber and plaster armature for my large head sculpture. I started out late after a hurriedly arranged appointment with the Indian visa office in Manchester, and arrived late afternoon following an interesting (albeit unplanned) tour of North West London. I’ve begun to model a third head, this one based on a small terracotta temple sculpture from Northern India.

Open studio day this week was the busiest yet, the highlight was a visit from first year ceramics students from Central/St. Martin’s, researching in the museum for a project on identity. They readily engaged with the Frankenstein project, adding some great portrait drawings to my rapidly expanding ‘archive’, and posing for a spectacular group photograph.

With my enthusiasm getting the better of my patience, I decide to have a try at constructing a 3-dimensional hybrid head using pressings from the moulds I’ve taken from the first two modelled heads. This proved to be a bit of a struggle, as there aren’t really enough options/variations to experiment with yet, but I did manage to produce something head-like with the fragmented qualities I’m looking for. Its not a great piece, but its given me the confidence that there is some real potential in this line of enquiry, and I will persevere with building a collection of modelled heads, to serve as a ceramic ‘body farm’ for the next composite head pieces.
 

Frankenstein Project

22 January 2010

Continued with the Frankenstein project inviting the visitors to my usual Thursday open studio day. Not everyone chose to participate but enough did to keep me busy running between camera, computer, printer and light-box, and they have produced some fantastic drawings and Frankenstein collages. I’ve begun the second modelled head, this one based on a cast iron sculpture of a Chinese Buddhist monk, with the most amazing ears! Also been on the look-out for more vessel-forms to add to the growing alphabet of ceramic skeuomorphs, and I’ve found an interesting pair of early medieval two-toed socks from a burial at Oxyrinchus, in the new medieval and renaissance galleries. (Not strictly a vessel-form, but a container of sorts! I’ve been experimenting with ways of adding some of the archive material, particularly the text, in relief as ‘decoration’ on the skeuomorph forms. Tried incising the reversed text into the surface of plaster press-moulds by hand, which works ok for hand-written text, but not for the stamped and typed text (this will require a more technically sophisticated solution; photo-etching or lazer-cutting the image perhaps?)

Snow!

08 January 2010

Planned to bring the armature for a large clay head to the V&A this week, but am unable to drive down due to the severe weather. Instead I have press-moulded the six generic clay heads. Earlier in the week, in Manchester, I screen-printed a series of ceramic transfer prints (head drawings and archive text material) and fired these onto some test tiles and small plates.

I’ve experimented with both the original and identikit drawings, and with overlays of text from the ceramic archives.

Second visit to Blythe House

16 December 2009

In my second visit to Blythe House I trawl the Asian showcases for skeuomorphic vessels, and turn up dozens of examples; mostly forms emulating Chinese ceremonial bronze vessels, but also pieces which copy rhinoceros horn, and a Japanese wall vessel which takes the form (and even the wood-grain texture) of a carved wooden Noh mask.

Returning to the ceramic studio I begin to explore this idea, selecting a Byzantine bronze vessel to ‘copy’ in porcelain paperclay. This is something of a digression from the heads project, and I’m not sure where it will lead, but I’m happy to have a second project on the go.