Documenting "Pencil Sharpener" work-in-progress | Cut Back 2010

So here is another post explaining how I make some of my stuff in particular the animals for my installation called Pencil Sharpener that featured in Queens Wood (see www.theleocohen.com), because quite often enough at shows I get tons of questions from people all the time asking "how are they made?", "what are they made from?"

So for all the curious cats out there... prrrrr!

First, I start off with creating the basic structure for my sculpture. Working from inages, sketches etc, for this particular piece I was recycling branches that had been lobbed from the back yard to build the body parts. My backyard is a wild haven at the moment so its ok, I know that whats been cut this year will be back by the next! I attach heavy duty plastics to these structural branches and tape them in place using strong gaffer tape. Here you can see the legs are not yet attached and sorta look like how you would find them in a butcher. If you imagine what butchers do, lob bits off animal bodies, dicing them up, we are actually doing the reverse here and putting those bits all back together like lego... sometimes I think about how to properly carve chicken and when you take off a leg it should sorta come off the bone easily in one piece... I'm a bit loopy probably but I see it like putting the legs back on chickens!

One thing I need to let you in on is that when using gaffer tape, never buy it from a pound shop. Over the years I've worked with Shape loads of gaffer tapes and a lot of them lose their stickyness when you most need it! the brand "Duck" tape is more expensive but very good...

As you can see the legs and the body begin to take basic shape and muscle. It is a process sometimes of adding more plastic to build up the 'tissue' and taping it correctly into place. Some people ask me "what type of plastics do you use and where do you get them from?" In truth anybody can get them free of charge if they look around the backs of smaller supermarkets like Budgens, Sainsbury's local. It is a good source for cardboard too! Everytime they get a delivery of stuff, the plastics and cardboard get stacked and are left over from the packaging waiting to be picked up for recycling. You need to know when this packaging gets picked up so you need to raid these places with calculation...

Here you can see how working from sketches underneath I begin to create the shape of the head for the wolf. This is actually made from cardboard as I find it easy to work with, to create tough shapes whilst being fairly easy to cut and glue (with glue guns and tape) and mould at the same time. Of course this takes time to experiment with.


Here I have taped more and added the other side of the head which will take on my wolf like shape. I imagine where the eyes will be placed. In fact a lot of the time making this work, one needs to imagine what it is they will make or add to before hand. Like michaelangelo could see the sculpture in the stone, I see the opposite. One gets a feel for how things should look or build up.

One thing I have later learnt not to regret about my Orthodox upbringing and having the Sabbath each week meant that once a week I could not play with anything electrical (and even draw on this day) unlike during the rest of the week. Sabbath was a peaceful time spent reading books... and playing with Lego and Mechano. These things helped develop my creative craft already at a young age I think!


Next stage, I stuffed the head with plastic to give it strength and durability.This is what I do with a lot of things that need external detail but internal structure. It is the same as creating a cast/ mould and filling it with expanding foam or something.

Now you can see the head attached to the body. Everything looks rough, and taped up like Thomas Hirschorn walls applied to sculpture! There have been times when I've thought about leaving the sculptures exposed like this. Naked and raw. In fact I did such a thing for the bodies in Oil-Of-Course.



There is something aesthetic about the unaesthetic, and I can't quite explain what that is...


It is this next stage that the sculpture begins to take on more structure and solidity. You can see me applying Modrock to the wolf in layers. I cut them from rolls and soak them quickly, let them drip off in the blue bucket beneath, before layering it on top quickly. A tip: I use a medium head paintbrush to sort of paint on the modrock to the tissue and once applied to spread the plaster evenly and cleanly. If you use your hands, it gets messy and dries messy.


Did I forget to mention I added ears to the wolf's head. This is made from cardboard and is covered in gaffer tape to make it water resistant. There have been times where I've had to cover a whole sculpture to make them temporarily water resistant but not here since the sculpture was only supposed to be out for 3 days and it was not expected to be terrible weather yet...(well...) It was a risk anyway (which paid off hehe!) but I was still considering the worst when making it...


...and anyhow a full layer of modrock should keep it protected depending on the number of coats you apply.


Here you can see me at work with my paintbrush working over the back legs of the sculpture with the modrock.


Next thing, I take it outside into the back yard to be sprayed using Belton Molotow Spray paints. Here I sprayed what is to be the base in the colour black...

...And here she is all dark like a dangerous wolf is? well at this stage anyway. In fact at this stage it really looked like a doberman dog. You know, one of those dark looking dogs with sharp pointy ears sticking up, that when you see them makes your blood curdle. I remember seeing them in a film based on a Russian book called The Night Watch. If you haven't seen this, then I suggest see it anyway.


Here I have applied woodchip fur coatings using PVA. If you go to B&Q and ask for PVA they normally send you to the branded one that is pretty expensive and not large quantities. Tip: head to the builder supplies section and there you will find the B&Q branded stuff that is cheap and actually better, and in 5L quantities for about a tenner. Bargain!


With the glue gun, I can apply branches...

...leaves...
...twigs,...
berries, and other things to the wolf now later on inside once the PVA has dried and the woochip is more or less in place.


Notice how I've occupied the kitchen space and probably pissing everyone off with it! thanks to all who have to put up with it! Love!


From Jokes, fun times and stupid moments...


...to the far more serious and well behaved ones. I hope you have enjoyed the little insight into how I make/craft this breed of weird and wonderful creatures! Until next time! rrrrrrrr x

CUT BACK FLYER

3 Solo Shows and 2 beers in 1 night!

Tonight I attended three Solo shows by painters, but had only two beers..!

The first show of my night at the Gallery In Redchurch Street presented Urban Lanscapes painted by the French painter Cédric Carré in what is his debut show here. Having come from painting urban landscape myself, I was transported back in time, thinking about my own progressions. I still adorn urban landscapes.

Excitingly, not much further up Redchurch Street was the second buzzing show of prints, drawings and paintings (being bought up like hot cakes), by the artist Tom Lewis. His works are comic, graffiti-esque, reminscent of japanese manga, but with small quirks and inuendos, surreal jokes and stories. His solo show is called Megan and the Garden of Edo, at the Maverik Showroom, and is still on for a week.

The third and final show and probably the strongest shows of paintings seen tonight are the works of Benjamin Cohen in his solo show at the Truman Brewery with HRL Contemporary. Cohen's style of painting is graphic and raw, and has the ability to convey each of his subjects critically and with depth, "regularly focus[ing] on lone male figures in which a sense of pathos and abjection arises out of a tension between strict figuration and dissolution into abstraction." Of many of the paintings on display one of my favourites was this one because there is something quite fascinating about the hands and what is or is not in them...

The show is on until the 17th October.

Work-In-Progress documentation of "System" 2010 at Hackney Wickipedia, Hackney Wicked! Art Festival 2010

So,

Here is the recap with photo documentation of the work in progress for my installation called "System" which exhibited at a show with the Gadje Collective called Hackney Wickipedia as part of the Hackney wicked Art Festival 2010.

This is the day it began really, after talks and planning, we assembled at the pearly bar cafe place near Oslo House and then made our way to see the warehouse a week or so before the dates for the opening. Sydney, Uli and Roman are caught here as we entered Main Yard.

As we entered the warehouse, the space was overwhelming and there was an incredible feeling of excitement felt by us all. The floor hadn't been painted yet in this picture, but there is something also quite beautiful and photogenic about space, even when there isn't any work in it yet don'tya think?

Discussion started to occur. Other technical aspects to do with curation needed to be finalised still at this point. The electricians needed to put in lights and power supply was still limited.


When I was finally able to get in after the floors had been painted, I needed to crack on with preparing the cloud. Since the electricians were scheduled to fix lighting in later in the week, I could only work efficiently during daylight hours. Realising this problem, I created some lamps from light fittings/batten holders and plugged them in as it started to get a bit darker. Makeshift, very makeshift! Here you can see me glueing bits of plastic together to create a sort of bumpy wavey textured plastic sheet...


Every now and then I'd get up to investigate the other artists. Here is the gorgeous Sydney Southam working from her laptop, editing her video and shit! woop! Sydney recently won the Vice/Koppaberg Clash for her Ice Cream video which exhibited at Atmosphere in the Spectrum which I curated earlier this year.

I was blessed to have assistance with making this installation from James-Frederick Boman who had also greatly assisted me on my installation "Oil-Of-Course" earlier at the beginning of the summer. Since he lived locally in Bow, he was able to be there for two days. Once we had glued the sheet of plastic all together, we started to fill the cloud up placing loads more plastic over the sheet...

Here's me doing pretty much the same thing, stuffing the cloud up. Idea being is that eventually the sheet would fold over and form a large sealed cloud base.


I must also mention that I had assistance from Katarina Kelsey who again had assisted me with earlier proect. Where would I be without my fantastic helpers! Love! Here's us working together sealing up this giant thing that at this stage wasn't sure if it was a cloud at all??...ha!


The next day, I came into the space and had another look at the thing I'd made the night before and felt it looked more like a giant turd made out of plastic than anything else, (well actually I thought it looked like the fish water shape from a Dali painting but only I can probably see that) anyway I wasn't happy, it wasn't cloud-like enough...


I needed to make the cloud fluffy, or appear that way, I needed to make more tiny little clouds to assist this big thing. I had experimented looking at the overall shape on the ground and then got to work on ammending bits and making additional little clouds...

Meanwhile, James...


...and katie, did nothing at all but messed around BMXing all over the place! (it is really all fun and games when we work)!


Jus Kiddin! they helped loads!

Anyway, at this stage we couldn't hang the cloud as the electricians were still blimmin messing around with the times and schedule to put up the lights, and my cloud was to eventually be hung underneath the very place the wanted to place them. Instead we found other tasks to do whilst we could not go ahead with this main duty such as linking paper chains, yep, I know, great way to spend an afternoon, eh! Good times, Good times. Here and there, we had the radio until the builders took it...


And who says poor, starving, broke-ass, mother-flying artists don't eat! Well, thanks to Sydney, towards the end of the day, we were able. She unintentionally brought us some leftover scraps of risotto from some place she'd been earlier in brick lane! surprisingly really tastey!


Yeah, this is us...erm...and the risotto, erm... yeah!


Next day arrives and I've got my Kate Moss sexy nipple T-Shirt on! ready to start! but first I sit on the drop of death from where Helga, Mia and 'the found object collective' were preparing for their Wicked show! It's not so scary in reality looking down, but if you drop you know your leg or ankle or something is gonna pop or crunch hehe! err...


So in the morning the electricians had finally bunged in their super bright intense neon strip lights which were quite an eyesaw when I'd seen what they'd finally done. Nonetheless, I had to carry on with hanging the cloud before I would consult with the collective about the lighting issue. Here James and I battled with hanging the cloud/turd using the tower and ladder.


It does look like a turd. Here I tied it in different places to give it more of a strange sort of curve, and to make it more like some sort of creature. I guess I'm quite thankful for the Tower because it sure helped quite a bit. That's the benefit of working with Festival people and also having the local industrial people around to help make such cool tools available...


In between this and that I managed to help with other from the collective, such as the lovely Alix Marie. She needed assistance with glueing some of her photographs up onto the walls with the glue gun...


James got on with helping me by glueing fishnet wire cut at different lengths to all the copper and silver coins which would then be hung onto the cloud. In fact, whilst he glued them together, I was busy tieing them up on the cloud...


Eventually the results were looking pretty good even in the neon light above. At least it looked less like a turd and more like some wild cloud beast monster thing that was all encompassing! A little bit further up in the space...


...the beautiful Tonga Schneider was getting a little dirty in the mud for her work! We all sorta rushed in snapping up photos at the sight of her semi naked doing this bizarre thing laying down creating silhouettes in the earth! documenting...of course... Anyway, it seemed almost like a ritualistic performance of some sort with Helene Butler working the earth around her!


Eventually, as the hours drifted later into the night, I had put up all the money, (including a few 50p coins which I noticed had been nicked by the end of the show haha!) and I had managed to place most of my little figurines down carefully and attached each of their chains to them and to the cloud.

The finished documentation of the work at the show is available to see at my webiste, www.theleocohen.com

Until next post... x