Geisha 2
The cycle begins again. 5-3-2012

I’ve always been amazed at the way the creative juices flow.. at least with me.

When I get into a series the work will move from one piece to another over a period of months. I will sometimes be working on 2 or 3 pieces at the same time. Then, one day, I just don’t feel like working so I find other things to do. The piece which is almost finished is staring at me but I know if I don’t feel like working on it I will screw it up if I try.

In this case it is the unfinished Geisha which I study each time I walk into the studio but I’ll go to the drawing board and play around with a few new ideas for the next wall sculpture instead of painting. I have several of them ready to go but the cycle was not ready to begin again… until yesterday.

I like the form of Geisha so much that I began to ask what might happen if I tried to do a variation of that piece. This morning I have the 32”x 39” drawing ready for that sculpture. It is somewhat different from the one I’m working on and I’m sure it will change again as I work on the construction but the process has begun.

Geisha #2 Working Drawing 32″x 39″

Now that I have another sculpture to do it will give me the incentive to complete the Geisha painting. I have a backlog of work to be done and another goal. That is the fuel I’ve been waiting for. I learned long ago not to rush it. The creative juices don’t dry up, they gestate.

It’s very rare that the first cut works. 5-12-2012

A few posts back I showed you the drawing for Geisha #2. I’m going to follow the progress of the piece on here for those of you who have said you are interested in the process. All others can come along 🙂

Each of my wall sculptures involve many individual pieces cut and hot glued to create the rough form. You would think that once you have an accurate drawing all you would have to do is copy each shape and place it into position. Wish it was that easy. If you take any rectangle and lay it flat it works that way but lift one side and you now need a larger piece to fit the same area. Then raise an opposite corner to create a compound angle and the measurements change again. It becomes a trial and error process. All the while I have to visualize the angle and depth of the individual section I’m cutting. What is the elevation? How will the next piece fit in? What do I want it to look like when all of the pieces of the puzzle are connected?

On this piece I have added compound curves to the mix, both convex and concave plus the compound angles. After working on this for a few hours my head is spinning and I have to walk away from it for a while. Sometimes it will take several cuts for each piece before it fits the way I want it and then each piece has to be supported underneath to provide the structural strength that I want. When this construction is completed it is only the beginning.

This is a photograph of where I am on the piece a week into the project. On the left is the drawing I’m working with which in effect is my floor plan. On the right is the elevation in 3D.. Very rough at this point but all art starts bad and grows from there.

Detail

I’ll keep you posted as the piece goes though the various stages from now until it’s hanging on the wall.

The End of Phase One on Geisha #2. 5-17-2012

The rough construction of Geisha #2 is now complete.

Over the next several days the joints will disappear… sort of. I’ll be working on it as a sculptor and using knives, rasps and abrasives to blend the separate parts as much as possible. At this stage no matter what I do there will be cracks, small holes and irregular surfaces that don’t match, Once I get the piece cleaned up I will begin working on it with fillers which will, in the end, make it look like one unit instead of the many separate pieces you now see glued together. That is when the surface texture will begin to show up as well.

I’ll show that in a future post.

The rough construction of Geisha #2

Geisha #2 is ready for painting. 5-23-2012

As usual this piece has been “finished” several times. I’ve found that when I’m working white on white in the beautiful light of the sculpture studio it is difficult to see flaws that would jump out once I put some paint on it. The soft light and the surface reflection can hide imperfections like candle light at an intimate dinner.

The way I get around that is to bring the piece into another room and hit it with a hard cross light. If there is something that needs fixing it will jump out. I’ll circle it so it will be easy to find when it comes back to the studio and a day or two later when everything looks right I will repeat the process. Eventually I will be satisfied that it will paint well.

Since the piece I going to be painted you might question why this attention to detail is so important at this stage. It’s simple. I learned long ago that you cannot make a good painting out of a bad drawing and flaws in a sculpture cannot be covered up with a layer of paint. The construction and surfacing of these 3D pieces become the skeleton of the final wall sculpture. I cannot fix anything later so it has to be right .

The surface texturing has held up under this harsh light so i can now move on to figuring out how to paint it.

Construction and surfacing is finished. On to the next step.

If you compare this stage of Geisah #2 with Geisha you will see that they are very similar but different. Where they will make the complete change is in the palette. I plan to make a radical jump from cool to hot. My research shows that the Geisha costume runs the gamut of colors so let’s see where this ends up.

Geisha #2 is now finished. 6-7-2012

As stated in the last post , It was my intent to use a hot palette on this piece to counter the very cool colors of the first Geisha.. I actually started off that way and was using very warm reds, yellows and orange along with white. It didn’t stay that way very long because I’m really not comfortable with that color scheme. It may have been fine for most people but it was too hot for me. The pieces I have done in blues are an exercise to force myself into another mind set but my natural range of colors are very Mediterranean.

Without thinking about it I began to soften the original color scheme. This piece was in a constant state of flux; adding color, taking it off, trying one thing then another, one layer over the other until it began to come into balance. At one point I thought it was actually finished and I signed it. The next day I was dissatisfied with it and I whited the whole thing out so I could start again.

I am now back with a color scheme that is in my comfort zone. I think it’s finished.. We’ll see after I’ve lived with it for a while.

Geisha #2 Mixed Media 32″x 40″x 5″

I often try things in my work that make me a bit uncomfortable. It’s part of my philosophy of “I wonder what would happen if….” The same thing takes place in my sculpture where I generally work with the encirclement of major and minor space. Every once in a while I’ll take off in another direction to see what will happen.…only to find that several pieces down the road I am coming back to the same form I’ve been using for over 30 years.

There is an inherent sense of form and color in all of us. No matter how much we may experiment we always come back to our signature. I’ve learned not to fight it.