AiR – IV : Avoiding ghosts whilst haunting the landscape…
Now back on the South Coast of England I’m remembering the last few weeks of my wonderful time in Germany, as Artist in Residence.
When I arrived in early April, I had a few ideas of what I might want to do, but deliberately, no definite plans.
…the view from the back of the apartment in which the Artist in Residence lives.
On my first day I was given a tour of the wonderfully fascinating Jakob Bengel Factory with its rhythmic, mechanical machinery that works just as smoothly and efficiently now as it was designed to 150 years ago. After a devastating flood of the whole valley by the river Nahe in the mid 20th century, the machines at Bengel were dried out, cleaned, oiled, and eased back into work again whilst more modern electronic machinery in adjacent factories was irreparably damaged and ended up on the scrap heap. The Bengel Factory is justifiably an Industrial Monument to ingenuity, engineering and jewellery production and it is so very well worth preserving.
After this introductory visit, I sensed that for me it would be too easy to immerse myself in the ghosts of the past; to be beguiled by the miasma of memories evident in the machinery, the multiplicity of the marks of making in the textures of use in the tools of the past.
This proposition, mere steps from the Artist's apartment was seductive, but I wanted to force, or to at least set in place the parameters to encourage myself to think differently. So instead, I hauled my tools along the valley and over to the college campus at the Department of Gemstones and Jewellery, and set up there instead.
Last summer, the department suffered a catastrophic fire and lost its well established, custom built workshops. The go-ahead to adapt and use the current building was only given half-way through January this year. What the team has since accomplished in such a short time is nothing short of miraculous. Even I was excited when I saw this sign go up by the side of the road.
As I encountered so many varied challenges in my months in Idar-Oberstein, I'd been tempted to change course, but decided to trust my instincts. So, I made sure to practice taking time without wasting time.
As a result I have a head full of realisations, possibilities and ideas that will permeate my practice for the foreseeable future. Realistically, I'll start working on most of these ideas early in 2024 as I now have beach-based wild tool workshop days to run and new work to make for Goldsmiths' Fair.
In the previous journal entry, I mentioned plans to experiment making work mainly with my left hand. This entailed a completely fresh crop of design considerations. I made a series of paper models for these ‘left-handed’ pieces, tricky when using a scalpel hurt, and eventually I had something in progress.
Back in the workshop I devised ways of holding a pendant motor with my left hand whilst pinning the flex shaft to my apron over my right shoulder, so that I could recruit my right shoulder to ‘draw’ on metal with the tool.
Cracked earth texture drawn over two sheets of gilding metal (similar to bronze,) with a rotary burr.
After a couple of days of adapting my working processes in such strange ways (and only a week after delivering a workshop about the use of descriptive words,) I found that I was searching for words myself… it only lasted a couple of days, but I realised that my brain was somehow protesting at being forced along different neural pathways to enable me to execute 'left-handed' tasks.
Unsurprisingly, the unfamiliar physical execution of these tasks set off a ripple of imbalances in my body. So yet again, I have had to re-think.
I devised ways to work metal that allowed my dominant right hand to do minimal work whilst I attempted to use my left hand (usually my vice or gripping hand) much more actively.
Once I’d worked out what I could do without too much contortion, I designed for what was possible at that time.
Sinistral is a beguiling word meaning ‘left-handed.’ In my last few precious days in Idar-Oberstein I produced three ‘Sinistral Makes.’ I think each piece took at least three times longer to make than usual, but I just enjoyed working the metal.
Sinistral Make No 1 – Scoop. Fine silver. Hammered with wild stones found in the banks of the river Nahe, Oberstein. 2023
Sinistral Make No 2 – Bowl. Fine silver. Hammered and raised with an agate geode, purchased Idar-Oberstein. 2023
Here I’ve filled the scoops with thorns from the black locust tree, gilded with 22ct Moon gold leaf, with the notion that the thorns are a metaphor for a series of arrested ideas that will come to fruition from this experience in times to come.
Scoop as above and Sinistral Make No 3 – Double Scoop. Fine silver. Hammered with wild stones found in the waters of the river Nahe, Kammerwoog-Krechelsfels. 2023
Despite the enforced rest from making, my hand is only now returning to normal after the treatment and advice of my osteopath. To say that I'm relieved displays typical English reserve.
Bengel Blanket, almost finished, just before I left the apartment…
I think that perhaps the main achievement of my Residency was to have remained sanguine throughout, to have resisted immersing myself in the spectres of the industrial past, and instead to have opted for rather more tricky to attain landscape-based experiences and sinistral thinking.
Time will tell.
