First Day Of The Assemblage Project

First day of the Assemblage project

Here he is, my muse: Arthur the Heron (or Artie, if you'd like). He can be seen along the Shannon, but he's typically posted up by the old rowing club, or perched on a rock in the river when the river's low.

There's something about Arthur that just captivated me. I love animals and i have a particular soft spot for water birds. I think there's a lot to love about the heron: symbolising nobility and stoicism, standing tall and proud, like a statue above the water, waiting, scanning- and then. striking its prey with lethal quick precision!

But on the other hand, the Heron is a deeply silly animal. Look at how it moves, how it sort of has to fold in an itself. They make infamously silly noises, Kranks and Gogogos and ooooos.

I have a more personal connection to the Heron: for a while, my ma swore she was being stalked by a heron. Every bridge within 20km of our house had the same heron posted on it. On the way home from school in Carlow, on the drive to our favourite restaurant in Castle Dermot, sitting atop Cromabu as we drive through Athy. He disappeared with the pandemic.

I think more than that, the heron reminds me of home, and how far away I am. The Shannon reminds me of my own river Barrow. Herons have colonies, "sieges" where they can group together when mating season rolls around, or when they're "off duty" but other than that, they're largely solitary, largely alone.

Tuesday’s Drawing Seminar

I’m not entirely sure what the pint of Tuesdays drawing seminar was. I think a lot of the pints made were self evident and obvious. We didn’t even do any drawing, it was all “theory@ no practice

Attended the Laser Cutting workshop today, and had a lot of fun!! As much as I enjoy working with my hands, I have to admit I feel very at ease working behind a computer screen. We made a little template snail in Adobe Illustrator, and then cut it out with the laser cutter.

Paper Puppets

Working With Mixed Materials in 3D

[7-10-24 - 12-10-24]

This workshop was a wonderful excuse to do exactly what I've wanted to do for this whole project: take things apart, see how they work, and put them back together in a new way. With the encouragement of my tutors, and a bag of used toys from the curio shop, I set about my task.

I found that I had a few guiding principles: I liked the movement of the toys, liked the use and function of it, so kept that as much as i could. I found in both my selection of toys, and my work that I was drawn to the more humanoid figures, intrigued by the idea of taking something familiar and "ruining" it. Conceptually, I like the idea of An Assembly of self, the idea that we all have to construct ourselves, and i think theres something grotesquely Divine about that, so i aimed to give my creations a sort of Angelic appearance, to create a host of Angels Of The Self.

This was sort of inspired by the myth of the managol, a filipinio vampire, a woman who separates at the waist. I wanted a sort of dangling thing, evocative of organs. i used ropes to try simulate that sinewy texture.

A baby doll with a halo if legs. Originally had big buff arms, but it liked it better crawling around on its halo. Cardboard wings help with a paper fasteners, based of a set of plastic toys wings i have that you'll see later

This toy is the same as the one used for the torso in my first creature. It had a set of two screws in the back, and i thought taking it apart would be as simple as unscrewing the screws. It was not. This thing was unreasonably hard to get apart, and this is as far as it would split, even with the screw drilled all the way through, even with my tutor chiselling her open. I though there was something evocative here, something about her head splitting and cracking while the rest if her holds resolute. I think I'd eventually like to to fill the crack with red wool and tinsel.

This is Gabriel, my chief angel, and my favourite. Through a use of carefully made holes and axels, Gabriel maintains the articulation of both his arms and his wings. He's made from a baby doll, and some detachable wings from might've once been an action figure.

As i was working, I tried to keep an eye out for Interesting patterns, shapes, connections, as inspired by the work of Hans Bellmer