Today I attended a course on Sculpting in Concrete at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Johannesburg.
The ages of the students varied from about 20ish to a really nice elderly gentleman (a full time sculptor) who told me he was 71 and always like learning new things.
We started the lesson with a video of past PPC cement exhibitions and competitions for concrete sculpture and I was, to put it bluntly, totally intimidated and thought it might be a good idea to leave after tea. The work, and bearing in mind each piece has to contain no less that 70% concrete, was mind blowing. Beautiful delicate more than life size figures to large installations; wall mountings with exquisite detail, fantastic hanging pieces and exquisite object that I would just love to have in my house or garden. The winner of each year’s competition takes home about R50000 so it is quite a serious prize.
We then got to grips with mix ratios and other concrete type terminology. And then were off to the large outside studio (bit freezing cold) where we were allowed to experiment for ourselves. We were given a large cube of “foam” concrete and an even larger rectangle of polystyrene to sculpt. After finishing each piece we covered them with a quick drying concrete mix which we were allowed to mix ourselves and added pigments if we felt like it.
My pieces were OK…...nothing special. Some of the others were quite stunning. I usually sculpt in clay and found it quite difficult to remove material rather than build up a piece from nothing – I found it quite difficult to “see” the finished product in a lump of concrete or polystyrene. Carving the polystyrene set my teeth on edge and my jaw was quite stiff after this….but OMG, you should have seen this place – it is no wonder we worked outside. It looked like a snow storm had hit us. Imagine 30 people working away on polystyrene, cutting and sawing it to pieces! The wind was blowing and we were all covered in little white balls that just stuck to our fleece tops, shoes, hair in fact everywhere. My hands and arms up to my elbows were white. And then we got stuck into the concrete blocks with rasps, knives and other implements and this produced a fine grey power, heaps and heaps of it all mixed up with the little white balls.
My first lesson of the day: This was just too messy for me – I can’t handle the debris, the dust and I know I will never do this in my studio – perhaps a friend’s *grin*
The second lesson and I knew this anyway, but we tend to forget these things sometimes and need to be reminded: You can’t just start hacking away at a nice cube of concrete or polystyrene. You have to have a plan in mind; you have to know what you want to do and you have to know what the end result will look like. This takes a bit of planning, mapping out where you want to start, what the next step will be and so on….. My friend Chris is a wood-turner and as he says, if you don’t know what you want to make once that lathe starts turning you are stuffed and so is the nice piece of wood. You will have a better chance at success if you have a plan. This applies to anything, to any project we tackle, a holiday, a new business, a change in business….need I go on?
A few weeks ago I went to Nieu Bethesda and re-visited Helen Martin's Owl House with that huge array of cement figures. She added the dimention of ground glass to make things shine. There is ground glass on every wall and ceiling in her house. Me thinks the polystyrene is less intimidating!
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