Sculptural decisions
When I decided to turn my recorded walks into a three dimensional piece of work I wanted to how a sculpture was defined and by referring back to Rosalind Kraus’ - Sculpture In The Expanded Field (1979). How as an artist could I create something bodily created from my body but yet was not of a body. I created the walks by using the lower half of my body but in representing at the larger scale model I was utilising the top half of my body, forcing the shapes using arms and hands something that had been created using feet and arms. Kraus comments that’ The logic of sculpture, it would seem, is inseparable from the logic of monument. By virtue of this logic a sculpture is a commemorative representation.’ My ‘Thinking Loops’, as I like to refer them as, commenorate or represent my walks, they are not an exact replication. Kraus continues when discussing Bernini’s statue of the Conversion of Constantine, which sits at the bottom of the stairway in the Vatican, connecting elements of the site as ‘a marker at a particular place for a specific meaning’. My Thinking Loop sculpture ‘November’ is a marker of a set of walks, of specific places. It is more of a record of the places trod. I have intentions to take the sculpture back to where the loops were created to document the origins of the sites they were taken from.
Kraus also comments on the idea that sculptural work in the 1960’s ‘had entered a categorical no-man’s land: it was what was on or in front of a building that was not the building, or what was in the landscape that was not the landscape.’ My expression of my walks in a sculptural form is from the landscape but not the landscape. In displaying the work I feel it would suit being in the landscape more than the white cube of an exhibition space and this is something I intend to explore after my Masters has finished.
Stacking
On visiting Sean Scully’s ‘Smaller Than Sky’ at Houghton Hall in 2023 I was intrigued by the amount of work that was stacked and not in a uniform way, there was a deliberate jeopardy to way they were arranged. On researching Scully I discovered how much or how little he reveals about his work. There are stories of his past working on building sites, seeing wood stacked, workmen loading cardboard and coins stacked on the barber’s shelf. He also describes the association of his paintings and how he can translate the 2D paintings to 3D pieces of work, almost as if he can see it floating from the page to the site. His work is solid, almost brutal, it’s large, heavy but yet delicate. He admits he plays with the idea of the horizon and how by stacking the objects can also be a way of looking up with a religious twist. In an interview with May Binkin for Art UK Scully states ‘Sculptures don’t come out of sculpture, they come out of hard work,’ (https://artuk.org/discover/stories/sean-scully-sculpture-to-last-for-a-thousand-years).
In the interview Scully asks of Binkin ‘You must read my essay ‘Loading a Truck’,’ which she did, saying. ‘It is a short story of workmen, two are illiterate and sign their wage slip with a cross, who stack flattened cardboard boxes in cold hard conditions. It is a short, heroic poem-like-text of hard labour where the work results in a tower of tan shapes. The memory of the resulting ‘sculpture’ is what Scully creates in his art.’
When I started to realise my drawings into sculptural shapes I was originally thinking of laying them down individually, even standing them up as if they were a tunnel. At this time I hadn’t even decided on the material I was going to make them from, I tried clay, plaster, wire and then thin steel before finally deciding on the 3mm thick 50mm strips I have eventually used.
All my walks are recorded daily and then kept as a digital file per month. It was then that I started to see if could stack them, starting with the smaller maquette (see: https://carldurban.wixsite.com/website/post/interim-show-the-real-thing), which gave me the idea of how it could work but was too small and the finished object was very fragile. It was at this point that I decided to make a larger scale version. I originally thought I would make two or even three but after going through the process and time taken to create ‘November’ I decided to leave it as a stand alone piece. As Scully says sculptures come out of hard work.
Once I had all the shapes for November drawn up the next thing to do was to start creating them from the 3mm thick steel. Having already made a maquette I could visualise how it might look, I wanted to make a much larger, imposing and significantly sturdier version.
The first thing to do was calculate the amount of steel I need and cut it to lengths. Once I had all the strips I could start to bend it to the shape on the drawings, this was something that with the maquette I could do by hand, the 3mm steel was a lot harder to manipulate and less subtle. At times the effort to bend it the right way was quite brutal. I found myself using a lot of bodyweight and having to heat up the steel to bend it on the anvil. Using my upper torso to create something I had made with my lower half. The subtlety of the shapes I wasn’t going to match, as mentioned before they were a representation of the walks, not an exact copy.
Thinking while I made
As I made more and more loops I could visualise more the finished shape but roughly stacking them getting the sort of visual impression I wanted to get. The process of bending my loops did also allow me further think about the work. I could visualise the walks from the loops, the twists and turns, the paths that have certain kinks in them or small loops and likewise when making the walk or continuing to walk I could visualise most of the shapes I was making. Any new walks were making pleasing new shapes and loops.
Trimming, grinding, welding and grinding again
After each session I smelt of metal. Was I becoming part of the sculpture or was part of the sculpture becoming me?
I had never welded before, so had to be inducted on how to create the welds, which took practice, fortunately I had the off-cuts to try out with before attempting to join any of the loops. Some welds were better than others but at this stage I was starting to think about the finish and how visible these would be. I was already considering leaving the metal as raw, it came with marks, colourisation and small amounts of rust. By tidying up the welds I knew these would rust at the same rate as the rest of the metal and give it a uniform feel. As mentioned on page 16 I would embrace the rust for those reasons stated. I finally had x30 loops, one for every day in November.
Stacked
After completing all loops I wanted to see how it would look stacked and how stable it was. I knew I was going to have to tack weld each layer to each other but the contact points are very small.
Weight and height
As I was making it I started to consider how much it might weigh and whether the height would be as tall as I am. It is about 170cm high, I am 190cm tall, it weighs approximately 70kgs, I weigh 93. So not quite taking up the space I occupy but in proportion. It does have a certain bodily feel to it, once stacked. Most viewers will be eye level with it and will be able to circle the lops thereby continuing the walks and completing their own loops. It needs to be seen in the round and I have proposed x2 spaces where this is possible for our GradFest show.
The finish and the finish
The final piece is actually two pieces, one stack of x20 loops and the top stack of x10. This is to help with moving it and to make it as stable as possible. Once it was finished I put it outside to ‘weather’ and let nature take its course. So far the rust is coming along and the piece continues to develop even though I have effectively finished with the making.
Waiting in the wings
The completed piece is currently at the back of 3D, where it continues to rust and will stay until it is put in situ for the show. I shall take further images as a documentation before submission.
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