Persona and the masks we wear

     http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/we-wear-the-mask/

Having decided to base my work on persona inspired by a poem by Paul Dunbar "The mask we wear " I started making Modroc masks to capture the essence of a face.I had a mask of my own face made which is a strange and poignant experience as it sets quite quickly making you feel trapped and I found I had to really focus and concentrate on my breathing.

I was quite pleased with the results and set about changing the surfaces and joining some of them together to portray the many masks we wear in our daily life.

St Andrew`s school Wootton invited myself ,Barrie Hughes and Sue Riemer to help the school create a piece of artwork to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of Church of England schools to present to St Andrew`s church. Three candles celebrating the 200th anniversary of Church of England schools were lit from the new Paschal (Easter) candle at the dawn service at the cathedral on Easter Sunday.
The candles will now start a journey around all church schools accompanied by VIPs and lit
as part of the bicentenary celebrations. Each school will be presented with their own candle
and a commemorative clock.The candle spent the day at the school on 24th November 2011.
We decide to keep the candle theme alight and use a candle as the basis for the piece of work which Barrie and Sue cut out of marine ply to prevent it from rotting should it get damp in the church.

The Childrens`s own designs to be painted on to the candle.

 The relief work all sprayed gold.

The school were really proud of it and presented it at the church Christingle service.It was a good experience working  with the children at the school and great to see it presented to the Church.

Utterby St Andrew`s Church, Christmas Tree festival

 Silver birch branches bring the outside, inside with reflective geometric shapes similar to the glass panels.

Using elements from the tree to make a minimalistic panel on the wire mesh inner door is my contribution to the tree festival 

Natures bounty 2011

London trip day 2 After a hearty breakfast we set off for the Saatchi gallery on Kings road Sloane square area I particularly liked the spiral minimalistic tree and spheres which were in the trees too.

Looks like Lighworks crew were here too!

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/

We came to see the exhibition of New art from Germany, the exhibits were very varied in medium and display and were very well curated in the expanse of the rooms in the vast gallery space. I particularly liked the sculptures because the artists had used found objects and raw materials.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/germany_art/

Alexandra Bircken’s unmonumental stretcher frame sculptures are informed by her background in fashion design and interest in the radical aspects of handmade culture. A fragmentary array of irregular objects and organic shapes, often coloured by the artist, is hung and displayed on strings and aluminium rods. Saaitchi gallery

 Leibhaftige Malerei (2007), an elegant large-scale painting, harnesses abstract abandonment into a dark forest scene depicting figures performing a mysterious act in the foreground. The painting fuses Koether’s interest in experimental technique with the primal, raw power of self-consciously primitivistic imagery. Saaitchi gallery.

 Georg Herold’s arching and stretching anthropomorphic sculptures from 2010 suggest an ambiguous, self-aware state of tension. The crude stick figure minimalism of the two reclining bodies contrasts with the visceral nature of their poses. There is something fetishistic about these figures: one looks like it’s being dragged along the ground with its hands tied up; the other exaggeratedly bends its back in an overtly sexualised and gendered stance. The viewer is left to take in the weird conceptual paradox they embody: the objectifying dehumanisation they point to and the very human artifice of their construction – they are made out of roof battens, canvas, lacquer thread and screws, materials which the artist has been working with for decades. Saaitchi Gallery

Thomas Kiesewetter makes elegant abstract sculptures in which an industrial material, sheet metal, is playfully bent, folded and imbued with organic, almost human characteristics. Bolted together and painted in bold colours, his sculptures are reminiscent of modernist architectural shapes, as much as they make us conscious of the solidity of their single material. These angular works, unified by their material and their colour, look as if they have been frozen in action, caught mid-stride in their slightly neurotic articulation. Saaitchi Gallery

Even the scaffolding looked good! 

London visit Day 1
Grimsby> Newark> Kings cross > check in at hotel our whistle stop trip to London then began with a visit to the Tate modern to see Gerhard Richter`s exhibition : Panorama which is an amazingly diverse collection of his lifes work. The figurative and abstract paintings were stunning as were the glass sculptures and photographic studies.Fascinating and inspiring.
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gerhardrichter/default.shtm

By this time it was dusk which threw a nice atmospheric light on the rippling Thames with St Paul`s cathedral in the background.

We were fascinated by reflections on the polished steel spheres in the street too.

Now seemed like a good Lightworks photo opportunity too splendidly modelled by Sue Riemer http://www.lightworks.me/                http://sueriemer.blogspot.com/2011/11/london-week.html

 St Paul`s Cathedral illuminated against the darkening sky.

From a different perspective through the railings.

I really like the effect of the flash in this one.

Was this the inspiration for Space invaders? A strange face like  appendage on the railings!