Elephantis

I am very excited to announce that i will be teaching classes in mold making covering a wide variety of materials and methods at the North Head Sanctuary Arts Space School.

Classes will be an initial three week coarse for $105 Monday nights from 6 pm including materials and handouts. 
Then If you want to develop skills further as a casual spot at $35 per session.

For those of you outside Sydney the good news is that it will give me the opportunity to put together a series of tutorials that i will be sharing over the coming months.

There are a couple of places remaining for the coarse starting 9th of March. In April i will be alternating and taking a three week workshop in jewelry or create a creature depending on demand!  

I think one of the most marvelous features of DA is the favorites folder, as i was just browsing through mine I realized i am so proud of the incredible works that i have collected in there and wish to thank every artist for creating the works that make me feel so many emotions. As i haven't figured out how to do features yet consider this my first and if your reading this take a while to see the works that have captured my heart and the incredible artists behind them! 

This last week has seen two of my childhood heroes taken from this earth, Ray Harryhausen the godfather of special effects, and Jeff Hanneman from Slayer, and it made me realise how much both the world and I have changed.

 When i was about 16 these two men among others inspired and entertained me and to a large extent directed my life in a trajectory that ultimately led here. I could go on about their individual brilliance which is largely undeniable but what i find more interesting is the "progress" from that time has been so fast and taken us far beyond what either of them might have imagined.

I saw Rays work First and remember being enthralled and in wonder at the magic of his work even many years after the films were made. Somehow despite the rough edges my childish mind was able to completely suspend disbelief and allow the story and the action to take me on a fantastic ride and to recall those scenes i would still see vivid detail.

When i first heard Slayer was on a cassette with all its graininess from multiple dubs (rips for the youngsters) and i spent a few years torturing myself over the fretboard trying to recreate some of those sounds and dissonant melodies, I never paid much heed to the lyrics but it sounded good to a teenager trying to let out some frustration. In the scheme of things the work of both these men slipped away into irrelevance in adult life but the impression they made remained.

Their death made me question again who are my heroes now, having been through what i have i realize that the selfishness of my youth is slowly dissipating and the people i see as heroes now are visionaries like Fred Hollows, Abe Lincon, Helen Keller and to be honest those amazing deviants i see supporting each other with donations and kind words.

I am interested in your thoughts on the topic and please, please tell me who your heroes are!

So things have been happening i have been very busy but also felt i have had a rare breathing space to take stock and so I am now planning to get funky with latex!

Ok well not so funky as you might imagine, but I have made friends with a very talented puppet maker down my way and we are planning a joint project to create some truely fantastic Puppets that should challenge us both. I am hoping biddley the bunyip might also receive some much needed attention from this relationship.

I have been busting my arse to get into some art prizes, but no luck yet.
I have been planning a new major project for the end of the year about spirituality, cultural difference beauty and I am hoping i might be able to enter it for next years blake prize but we will just have to see how it all pans out. I had a similar time frame set out for the spiders conception and that took three years to finish the first time and it is still not finished. I am unfortunatelly from the school of thought that an artwork is never finished if i can still get my hands on it there is always something i want to fix or continue on with. It is very frustrating as many more of my works would be finished now if i would only let sleeping dogs lie.    

so what else? I am just feeling generally inspired. To do what? It does not matter!
I challenged myself recently to approach sculpture in the same way that i have seen some deviants approaching what they call a speed paint and making lots of sculptures in an evening and seeing which ones made the grade it was quite effective and i will post some pics of the results once i finish the last few. It has helped me shake the idea that i have to agonise over my work i would like to be more prolific but as people keep telling me i have to sell some first but why not make em and flog them all off when i am dead and gone.

There used to be an Irish man work in our foundry he told us of an old sculptor from Ireland that had said when he goes his works are to be buried with him if they didn't want to pay for them while he was alive they sure as hell weren't getting them once he was dead! I like his style and i wouldn't rule out doing it myself at this stage.

I have been working on a commission lately, it is an amazing gate spanning four meters consisting of bull rushes lily pads and dragon flies with these amazing filigree wire wings it will be finished next week and I will be sure to post a pic as soon as they come to hand. I have been carrying on with my Australian natives as well as trying to get the rest of my artworks back into an exhibition state but it takes so much time. I am looking for someone to help me photograph them all too so please get in touch if you can help.

I have been working hard at the foundry despite a slight drop off following the economic situation, but life goes on and work still comes in. Here is the site link for anyone interested australianbronze.com.au/index.…
I have been there for about seven years now and I’m thinking that the number of sculptures I have worked on for other artists must be getting well up into the hundreds. It is quite intriguing to feel your emotions towards a piece change as it moves through the foundry processes, works that have at first have held little appeal to me have really grabbed me by the end of the process being that every piece receives so much handling and intense attention to detail. Just about everything comes out looking better in Bronze. The process can be quite cruel but so rewarding we can cast anything from babies hands with perfect fingerprints right up to larger than life figurative work to monuments.       

I am often bewildered how much more time it takes to work on my own pieces than other artists work performing processes that I find take a day for other people I find take a week for myself. I suppose it is a combination of second guessing myself and having more consistent time for other artist’s works during the course of a day’s work then trying to squeeze two hours in for my own stuff at the end of a ten hour day, ridiculous. I am backing off a little over Easter hopefully to free myself up to tie up some loose ends before I start new work soon.