AiR – III : Sawing granite and keeping calm…
From May 1st during this fascinating residency, I used the wonderful Deutsche Bahn €49 monthly travel card to explore a little further afield by bus and train. In amongst these trees atop the highest point in the region I had a moment or two of pure happiness; completely alone in the woods on a clear, sunny day with the sultry scent of sun-baked earth and the softness of deep pine needle duff underfoot…
…the scent of the earth in the heat was divine.
I continued to offer tutorials, to discuss issues related to the students’ work, however as the MFA @campusidaroberstein runs in English, not the native tongue for most of the students, I felt I could make a difference with the use of English for artist’s statements and similar, so I devised a simple workhop: Making Words Work.
Workshop: Making Words Work
Ten students attended, and we used our time to consider words that describe objects clearly, yet convey feeling whilst doing so.
Exactly half-way through my residency, after a full day in the workshops, very happily faceting dyed blue agate on ever finer diamond laps, I woke up and realised I had somehow hurt my dominant right wrist and thumb. After a frustrating week of rest, thankfully, it felt better, so I sawed through this piece of granite, smaller than my little finger-tip, using a hand saw and 0.26mm diamond wire.
After a frustrating week of rest, thankfully, it felt better, so I sawed through this piece of granite, smaller than my little finger-tip, using a hand saw and 0.26mm diamond wire.
I paced myself, however this took about two hours and five lengths of diamond wire.
This wire isn't designed to be used by hand, and the cut isn't clean, but I was really happy to know that it's possible because I have plans for hand-cutting a really beautiful piece of top quality lapis lazuli. Unfortunately, later that evening the pain in my hand flared up again. Since then, I had to rest it. Not easy to accept when after a series of frustrated plans and ideas, I had just started to become really excited about one or two other possibilities for making work.
Hands are strange; typing was fine for a while; hand-writing was too much after a few sentences and chopping vegetables was painful almost immediately. Thankfully I was residing in the land of palatable pre-prepared potato!
I know from experience that an idle, injured hand becomes stiff, so I started knitting tentatively, to ensure that my hand remained mobile without further damage..
I started to think of this as the Bengel Blanket.
A show of all the works by previous Artists in Residence to celebrate 150 years of the Jakob Bengel Factory was to be curated for exhibition on the last day of my stay. A second book of AiR works is to be compiled and published afterwards. Of course I wanted to show something, but I wanted it to be a piece worth showing, something I can look back at and be proud of. No pressure.
As my hand continued to show no sign of real improvement, the next plan to emerge was to experiment making work mainly with my non-dominant, left hand…
