Dogs, Mushrooms and “Kill Darlings”

Yesterday I felt Ill and stayed in bed but today I´m back in working condition.

Have a little more than a week left here so feel it´s time to focus on making all the experiments and test into some full scale objects, so there has been some “kill your darling moments” occuring. At the moment the thought´s are on what to make of the crack-experiment (notice, I only work with cheramics here, 😉 ).

Have had company by another anmial today (now a dog without a master) wich both felt nice and sad, poor dog. They say people leave unwanted dogs here in the park cause they know nice artist will take care of them (wich they seem to do).

Have also got a visit from the vice director of the center and got some mushrooms that we both think is what we in swedish call “Stolt Fjällskivling”. We talked about mushrooms earlier and I asked him where he picks them; he answered in the same way we do at home, “in the forrest”.  We´ll wait until tomorrow before eating them though and ask Ula wich have great knowledge in mushrooms.

“Kent” is rolling on the Spotify list and it´s back to work, see you!

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Time flies

A few days since blogging. Just realised half of the time here have past, the time really flies!

Yesterday me, Eulalia, Veronica and Heinric visited a close situated city (Kielce). It´s in south of Poland but it´s desribed as “the Hearth of Poland”. We visited the City Art Museum and took part in an opening of an installation; a robot-like, or transformers looking art and technology hybride, made to clean the poluted air i Kielce with the possibility to broadcast polution levels live on internet.

First it didn´t look so impressive, but then i liked it much. It was like giving industrial and technological design a soul and some playful elements. Afterwards we ended up in a vernissage party and had some good food and I took my first steps on a polish dance floor 🙂

The day before yesterday I worked with taking forms of objects and surfaces with wax. It was the first time to try the technique so didn´t succed everytime, but some 🙂

Made some small sculptures in wax aswell, some small bird and a sunbathing woman, who will be one of the parts in a “Tourist”-project wich is in process.

During the evening I followed Heinric to Radom, wich is the nearest city and we watched his favorite band from his youth Pink Floyd, who played a special concert in the amphiteater in Pompeji when they returned to the exact place they recorded a classic record in the 70s.

 

A Day of Work and good Focus

The morning started with watching a hot bronze casting session and then the day continued with own hard work, though not that fysical.

 

Did experiments with cracks on ceramics and made some experiments with geometric forms in paper with movable joints. Have been very focused so didn´t put time on so much else outside the studio. Have got good company with nice music from Halmstads own Hampus Carlsson and Emil Jensen, Iris Viljanen among others and a beautiful thunderstorm came and visited and had a lighting show outside.

Tomorrow we will test glazes and burn some of the ceramics; step by step it goes forward.

 

Sculpture Archive and Student Vernissage.

Today I tagged along with the student groups visiting the center. First while they had a vernissage and presented their sculptures they´ve been working with and afterwards when they had the chance to visit the sculpture museums archive.

 

It was surreal going around in such a tense space filled with objects othervise left with a lot of space around. Almost like a fleemarket filled with valuable things usually found in auctions. The guide namedropped up to 50 names in Polish wich couldn´t catch, but I realised and noticed it was some of the greatest contemporary sculptors in Poland.

I had som time to work, but with head full of impressions it felt better to contemplate and talk with the others about their thoughts and ideas instead, wich gave a lot.

Took also part in one of the students Phd work and read a sentense in swedish “Trots förhandlingar, har ingen vapenvila uppnåtts”. The same words had been recorded in many languages and will be presented as a audio version of Babels Tower. Will be interesting to see/hear the result.

 

Tomorrow I´ll meet Ulla and she will show me around in the palaze here, looking forward to it. And tonight is the last night the student groups stay here, so I´ll take the chance to go out and join them by the campfire. Very open and friendly people, will miss them!

 

 

Birthday, Casting and Collecting Materials

One year older, or one day depends on how you see it. But i´m 35 on paper now at least and are happy for all condolences I´ve got.

Today Ulla intruduced the metall workshop and the workers there for me. It was fazinating how to see how they worked with form building and bronz casting. They worked for example with a “lost-wax-method” to create forms and I got some wax myself to play with during weekend so we will see if there is any forms to find and capture!

Started to make a little collection with materials aswell. Found beautiful waste materials from the stone workshops for example. Have also continued the work with mobiles and tried some experiments with metal spirals.

 

Now it´s soon time for joining the others at the campfire. I think it´s their last night here and it´s a quite warm and clear night so there will probably be nice!

Lecture, Campfire and Mobile experiments.

Today I´ve been experimenting with a mobile project (moving square). It´s was fascinating to play with balance in structure and material and see how it reacted to forced motion. The inspiration was waves and jellyfishes but it made me think about forms, symmetry, asymmetry and deformation of forms at the same time. We´ll see how it continues, have thoughts about scaling it up!

Yesterday it was a lecture that a professor from the Art Academy in Szczecin held for his students about inspiration in sculpting. I was invited and participated and luckely I got to know Katarzyna who translated from polish to english for me. They where very friendly people all of them and invited me to their fireplace where we talked all evening and had a nice time.

Got to know the director of the centre  alittle bit aswell yesterday. It turned out she had been working at school of Fine Arts in Umeå where she got a network that in the end led to the establishment of the residency scholarship. Hope to speak more to her about art and her viewpoints.

Now it´s time for campfire this evening again and to try some polish beer!

 

Ideas and Work by Hand

The head has been full of ideas all day and I´ve worked a lot with the hands doing textures and material experiments. Have tried to work parallell with several projects so have made some progress in a cheramic-mobile-project, a jellyfish panting and the park-worker-images.

Are now still in the studio and have listened to some “sommarpratare” from swedish radio. Have heard Ruben Östlund, Sven Melander and now Tarja Halonen. All of them interesting in their own way.  Liked a song Tarja Halonen played called “Jag vill tacka livet” by Arja Saijomaa, a beautiful song! 🙂

Hear some wisdom words from the radio and it plays “Muminmammans song” and put an end to the program. So will I,  my eyelids tells it´s time for bed.

So long!