Project: Stand and Deliver

This project involved consideration of the ‘vessel or container’ in relation to its ‘stand or plinth’. It also required us to juxtapose work inspired by the natural world with work inspired by the man-made world.

Summary of the brief

1. Research, gather and present visual reference material relating to both the natural and man-made world.
2. Produce 2 finished pieces each involving a stand/plinth and a container/vessel:
   • Man-made stand and natural world vessel.
   • Natural world vessel and man-made stand.

Each piece should be inspired by or reference some aspect of your collected research material, providing contrasting aesthetic qualities.

I have no problem with the suggested sources of inspiration here!  However, I do not generally make 'vessels' and I have a particular dislike of vessels on stands.  This extends to both conventional and unconventional stands and conventional and unconventional vessels.  I can tolerate a flat stand such as a 'board' or something that is maybe 'saucer-like' but otherwise, this particular genre of ceramics just goes against my sense of what is aesthetically appealing. 

I had to ignore my instincts and try and make something that fit the brief.  As the brief asked me to do so, I spent a lot of time in the beautiful and amazing world of Pinterest looking at images of the man-made and natural worlds.

Links to my Pinterest boards on these subjects:

• Natural world
• Man-made world

I searched for themes relating to 'light and shade' as this relates to my general area of research on the MA. This revealed many relevant images but one (much copied, as it turns out) photograph in particular caught my attention:

Le corridor de mon pére, By Bart Deburgh

This photo has a beautiful 'vessel' quite literally highlighted within it. Using my tablet and stylus, I quickly drew around the vessel. To balance this natural pathway vessel with the man-made world, I decided to add a roadway as its 'stand' and thus also roughly sketched a block of black 'tarmac' underneath the vessel, linking the two using the 'white line' of the road...

I have various making notes on this piece in my sketchbook, but for this blog I'm not going to go over those too much. I went through various processes of exploration that eventually led to the making of a plaster cast which I used to make a translucent porcelain vessel - very much a prototype. So I had some partial success but the real beauty of this project, for me, was the way in which my ideas developed from this photograph - including the process of drawing around the photo on my tablet.  This process, whilst somewhat deliberate and, initially, giving a quite simple, not particularly abstract interpretation of the work, did, in fact, make me 'feel' the lines of the image quite literally through my hands.  This went to my brain in a way that simply trying to think of ideas never does.  I'm not sure if this is the result of so many years spent working at a computer keyboard, but there is definitely not too many degrees of separation between what my hand says and my head thinks any more!!  Anyway, without getting too philosophical about it, it was an interesting process and I think I will experiment with this a bit more here and there - i.e. find a 2D image that I like and attempt to feel its 3D qualities through tracing over some of the lines.  

From feedback on this project, I've been encouraged to complete this piece and will try and do so in the near future.  

With thanks to Bart Deburgh for sharing his lovely photograph.