There is a strangeness, here. We have found ourselves inside a liminal space, making in a largely subconscious way. Led by drawings made with our eyes closed, it is not clear where we are heading.
Estela Saez-Vilanova is a marvellous teacher in the way she reads the imagery of our works like she is sifting through some ancient aspects of us. Using words we perhaps never considered were apparent in our works, such as “origins” for one and “ancestral” for another.
Renee Bevan’s workshop on Push/Pull provides me with a framework for where to place my process with Estela’s classes. We have all been given prompts, instructions and homework which we then take to our making desks, exploring or “pushing” that concept as far as we can take it. Next we refine or “pull” through critique, analysis and sharing with the group. At the moment we move fast, dropping into idea or material for brief moments of time. It feels elemental at its core, shifting through emotive dreamscapes, whirlwind brain storms, ideas and chatter through to earthy manifestation, work, process and play.
As a process-based maker I tend towards these ways of working, drawing upon subterranean cues, feeling my way through the material, allowing material to speak to me, or simply reveal its nature to me.
I settle into “the origins of fire” as a comment made during the showing of my wooden models. How was fire discovered? What would that have been like, at first, to meet the deity of fire? This feels like witches burnt at the stake. Dragons that could breathe fire. Small controlled fires for warmth and cooking, into wildfires that are entirely destructive. What is the origin of fire, on a personal level?
Fire can be a creative force, as much as it can destroy. Heat activates seeds, alchemizes and transforms materials into new forms. It shifts densities, melts metals, renders wood to nothing but ash. Ah but at just the right temperature, it is intrinsically nourishing to human life. Where would we be without fire? Nowhere.
I conjure the phoenix, a being who lives lifetime after lifetime. A concept often applied to jewellery, how it lives on long after the original maker, wearer or owner has died. Fire as a concept applied to creativity implies spontaneity, life-force, animation, swiftness and passion. There is no hesitation in fire, it simply burns through until all its fuel has disappeared. In this instance, the fuel here are the continuous creative tasks, gentle instructions and nudges deeper into our psyches, to draw out those manifestations that are beyond logical thought or design.
When I move into making, through this seemingly random assortment of ideas and suggestions, it feels like I shall eventually draw out something magical. Like pulling ideas out of a deep well, hat, or bag, not all of them will be interesting enough to continue. Somewhere in there, though, there exists my personal treasure. I will consider it valuable, or I will feel some kind of drive, motivation or passion to bring this particular shadow forth into the light. This particular hunch, instinct, creative idea embodied through a material.
My next movements will be shape-shifting marquettes into metal, settling chaos, liminal and imaginings into the familiar, the ancestral and the new. The intangible into the tangible, out of the dark and into the fire.
