Drawing from the space between wilderness and city, these sculptures explore light as a parasite in a natural environment. The piece of gorse bush wood was stripped and carved into, creating holes which the glow sticks worm their way through. This is a work in progress.
When given the challenge of making a booklet out of one piece of paper, I thought a lot about the folds that were needed. I also didn’t want to make all the pages the same, so I spent a day just folding and refolding paper to find a template that would work. However, the contence is pretty important and I wanted it to reflect some of my previous work. At the moment I’ve been thinking a lot about landscapes and travel between city and wilderness. The line came from Environment which I worked on last year, where I played with shadows and wire to create an animated image. Here I took the line and made it 3D through the manipulation of material. The title ‘Linescape’ incorporates the two elements that make this simple booklet work.
I find it funny how our paths often lead us back to places we visited in our childhood. For me Iona is that place, which every time I visit I get that feeling of freedom and careless happiness associated with childhood memories. But it always seems unreal or false in someway because it is in my past. This summer I visited Iona with my parents who met, married and lived on the island before I came along. It felt like such a special moment to be back on the island and yet when I think of all the people who visit for a few hours everyday, it reminds me that each of them probably have somewhere that is equally special. Somewhere that enchants, inspires and drives them to return. The rough and winding paths created in these images caught my eye whether made of stone, sand or water they represented a path forwards.
Four months on the beautiful Isle of Mull, working essentially on my own, has been an amazing experience. It tested how comfortable I was with myself and has been surprisingly relaxing. As an artist it gave me lots to think about and plenty to develop. Along with song writing, sculpting, carving, writing and sketching I also took a fair amount of photographs. Photography has become a tool for every type of artist, from fashion designers to painters and has been used in so many ways. For me it is both development and product of my work. Turning the camera on the artist, I have used it as a way of accepting the me I see in everyday. I have never really been one for taking selfies, maybe because I was never that comfortable with how I looked, but the less I have thought about looks the better I have felt and the healthier I’ve been. Too many young people are caught up with looks and don’t see the natural beauty of every body and every person including themselves. So, this is how I am on my own, this is me, just me.
With sustainability in mind, as that was the title, I revisited balance within nature. Working with recycled materials gathered from scrap bins in the university workshops I started this project recreating some of the shapes and ideas I created before. I explored different materials and shapes formed solely through balance. The final culmination of this was “Unnatural Growth” a balanced sculpture showing the progression or digression from plank of wood to natural tree.
Portraiture isn’t my specialty so this was a challenge. The initial idea I’d had was a full head with a ‘functioning’ mind. I wanted to show the process of thinking; the information going in, around and coming out. This piece reflects my dyslexia, showing my slower processing and how what I’m thinking often comes out differently. The ‘information’ or marbles in this case are dropped into the ‘mind’ (the dish), here they circle until they ‘form’ and drop out the mouth. At the point where they ‘form’ and drop, the ‘thought’ or marble changes. Inside the piece is a mechanism that stops one marble until another hits it, swapping positions. This means, if there is already a white marble in it and you put a blue marble in, the white one would come out.
Gwyneth Machin 