PVAF

Sometimes we need, as artists, to take on a new material if only to satisfy a curiosity. I've been feeling lately like I wanted to try working with stone - I wanted to do something,in terms of sculpture, that was as far away from the string as possible. i wanted to eat into the material instead of modeling it. I wanted to use something that was permananent and fundamental and traditional for a change. So I went to Perth this weekend to do a stone carving course run by Susheila Jamieson http://www.rachan.co.uk/content/susheila.htm as part of the Perth Visual Arts Forum http://www.pvaf.org.uk . It was great - we worked with limestone which was not too hard to work ith - but not too soft either. I made this piece. It was strange to find how easy it was to find the form within the stone - I had thought that I would never be ablt to do that - that it would be lost to me but it wasn't - it was there and all I had to do was move the rest of the stne out of the way. I think I'll get some tools and spend a little time exploring stone some more. Suisheila who took the workshop was an absolute pleasure to be with and i wish I had had some more time to learn from her. It was a great opportunity from PVAF - there were other courses options during the weekend - paper casting and transformation of material looked particularly good.