cracked opportunity

[mark sanger]

Hi all

Sorry for the delay in posting, I have been out in my workshop trying to make some new bits and pieces :shock: :shock: :? ,

All your comments are appreciated even the one about George :lol: :lol: :lol:

Some of you have asked about the materials in the first item and the idea behind the second.

In the first the form is spalted beech.

The base for the piece is Ash which I used as it has a nice open grain and as such would still show through once painted.

The idea was for it to be an organic piece so while I wanted to contrast the Ivy and form against a black background I did not want to lose the fact that the base was wood.

The eggs/seeds inside are Anjan which is a lovely exotic wood. But I didn't have anything else to use so I painted those black too. ( sorry all you exotic lovers)

I had to have a tight grained wood to give a nice finish that did not look like wood. IE no grain hence using the anjan.


For the second piece/the black bowl and contrasting sphere the idea came about from my interest in Zen.

The idea is that the black bowl is the psyche. Within this there are conflicting thoughts, one being the wavy cut out being a thought full of energy/fleeting ideas etc etc, the other being a pure thought (the circle cut out) Both thoughts the pure and the conflicting thought play on the mind.

The sphere in the middle represents the meditative focussed mind/thought process which is undaunted/moved by what is going on around.

So I gave it the name " Fudochi" which translates to " Unmoving/ or Unmovable wisdom.


Since then I have made several other variations.

This one I was not happy with as I did not like the base. It looks too, well crap. I meant to put it on a stone base but never got around to it so now my daughter has it in her bedroom.

Instead of trying to re-work a piece, I now look at it as a lesson and an experiment for newer pieces. Certainly not all of my work goes to the galleries or gets shown. Some goes into my chimnea and up in smoke.

 

[Paul.J]

Great examples Mark

 

[mark sanger]

Paul

thanks mate.

oops it helps if I post the picture of the one that I was talking about in relation to a stone base.

Here it is. As you will see the base does nothing for it.

 

[Paul.J]

I have a couple of bowls here that i think will give this method a go at
They look really effective done like this Mark.

 

[mark sanger]

HI Paul

Thanks. only the first one I used was from a cracked bowl. Now I just cut them up. But it is interesting that when I sat back and thought about it, the crack bowl becomes an opportunity to explore ideas without worrying about ruining it. As after all it is cracked.

Using this method also on thin walled bowls works straight to finish. As long as the pith is removed totally within the cut out there is very little chance of it cracking anywhere else. You just have to be happy with where it moves. But by using concentric rings and end grain it will not move much at all. Not enough to notice as the movement just transfers to the open space.