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30.12.2019 - mono prints with alternatives - soap and wax

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Plaster continues but added to the materials experiments are wax and soap.

Instead of maintaining calm and working methodically through the current pieces, I listen to the inner harbinger of anticipation and trace my way through a cacophony of materials in a fickle search for satisfaction. This remains eluded too. So I pile them, sandwiched betwixt tissue and paper, saved for the next moment of revelation.

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Soap & wax

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Wax melted

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Soap

  • Wax set

  • Plaster

Process writing:

Layering of space
Of people
Compacted
Glued together with
Soap and plaster

                              *casting workshop*

Touch me
Warm me up
Pour me on to your surface
Let me seep into you
Fill your cracks
I’ll search them out
Pick up the dust from your history
Make it my own
Claim you as me
Find the spaces together

                                        *wax*

Sealing the gaps 
Don’t let me leak
Close off my weakness
Fortify my boundaries
Lest you break them
To keep you in
To keep you out
To keep me safe
To maintain a whole?

                                  *casting*

I was too much for you
Too hot to handle
I broke you
Your boundaries gave way
And I leached past
Making you less of yourself
Here in the dark
No one saw
But I felt it
Traces of me on the ground
Taking new shape
As you let me go
Changed by you
Because you let me go.

                                         *wax*

Taking account
Lined up, ready to go
Silenced but speaking so much
The surfaces glint and glimmer in the light
Monoprints of graphite
Entombed in domesticity
Plaster, fragile and grainy
A facade of smoothness
Hiding its chalky substrate
Soap, shiny and glassy,
Slick and opaque
Engulfing the materials
Encapsulated
The protection minimal
Frivolously released with a hint of moisture
Wax, hinting at transparency
Holding the grains hostage
Giving in when the heat is raised.

                                                       *tiles*

You’re under my nails
Under my skin
In my thoughts
This desire is waning
Like the moon
It cycles until
The momentum returns
And there you are
Glowing
Begging me to look at you
To feel you
On my skin again

                                *soap*

Pour me on to you
Let me seep 
Fill the cracks
Claim you as me

                                 *plaster*

28.12.2019 - casting again - process - printing

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I’m not sure what I will do with these tiles. I do know that I’m referring to them, as plaster mono prints now. They can not be repeated. The image is created first before the ground is added and lifted to reveal the ‘image’ or print.

I learnt from the last batch that the consistency of the plaster is better thicker to stop the graphite and charcoal from floating. This means one has to work quickly though which is the issue if you haven’t not estimated plaster amounts correctly.

Currently they sit on my studio desk, crude beginning of more important work. Languishing among the piles of graphite and research papers. I plan to work in to them, but until my nerves are strong enough to sully their unrepeatable exteriors they will sit and wait.

26.12.2019 - Rain room, Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival & Sharjah Art Foundation

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21.12.2019 - home casting

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I procured the equipment needed to cast tiles at home. Smaller frames were found to allow for experiments without using as much materials as its expense to purchase here.

To test the small frames viability I utilised a play date and got the kids involved!

Satisfied with the size I continued with my own casts.

Heady with excitement I lent no time for planning and explored various materials on the Plexiglas sheet. I applied oil and wax pastels, graphite and charcoal dust and allowed the process to decide the outcome.

16.12.2019 - wet charcoal

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Process writing:

Moving through feelings
Longing
Like treacle you slowly 
drip over me,
Suffocating
Intoxicating
Sticky
I claw away
And melancholy subsumed
Gentle dust,
Like talc
Soothing but toxic
Aggressive brushing
It’s removed
Leaving anger
Exposed
Raw
Anger at the presence
At the traces left.
                                   *wet charcoal*

14.12.2019 - drawing watercolour

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Producing a drawing of a watercolour and ink image, scaled up x4

Working with water soluble graphite. It has a delicious density, so intense and grey. Shimmering in the light. Silky to apply with brush.

Process writing:

Stop resisting
I stroke you 
Lightly,
You leave no trace
Pressure exerted,
I layer
Still, you don't succumb
Putty in my fingers
I work you. 
Fragments breakaway
Eventually a little grace,
You smudge
And misbehave
But I know how to work you,
Wet
You surrender
And do as you are told.
                                       *graphite putty*

Your filth calls me
I want to get messy
Cover me
Under my fingernails
Into the cracks of my skin
Blemish my cheeks
Soil my clothes.
                               *charcoal dust*