19 Lace

Lace 2008
Bronze h40 x w30 x d27 cm        

Easter 2008 saw me visiting Rajasthan in India.  Having travelled from a very quiet Suffolk village, this trip was an incredibly full-on, sensorily stimulating experience.  The relentless heat, dust, sound of honking car and lorry horns, smells of food and spices, alongside the bustling crowds of humanity were all quite overwhelming.

Yet beyond the populated towns and cities were quiet, stunningly beautiful, bleached out landscapes that reminded me of my childhood in Africa.  I found myself awed by the women in their colourful saris and head scarves.  They walked so elegantly through their different terrains with heads held high, often balancing a laden basket of produce.  In some cases, I noticed their cargo was rubble and stones.

I returned home inspired with the desire to try something new.  I wanted to recreate what I’d seen somehow, maybe via modelling in clay, a way of working that was new to me.  These three heads are the result.

Head: Lace pays homage to the beautiful henna decoration I observed on some of the women’s hands.  Henry Moore’s Helmet Head No.1 (1950, cast 1960, bronze) was an influence too, with its themes of protection and wrapping.

Creating Head: Turban marked a big learning curve for me as I needed to model an authentic looking turban in clay.  Fortunately, YouTube was a big help here and I watched some wonderful examples.  In India, I’d seen many different versions of a turban being worn by the men.  I’d been told at the time that it was an important ritual, and sometimes a sacred act, to put it on every morning.  Several attempts were needed to master the clay re-creation! At the time, I felt glad to have tried this traditional way of working: modelling a clay sculpture and then turning it into bronze via the cire perdue casting method.  I realise that my three Indian head sculptures definitely have a different air about them when placed next to my burnt out heads.  It’s this latter technique that is more interesting to me however, and produces work that has gone through a risky and unsettling journey to find itself.  Ultimately, I find this process more exciting.