GROOVE
Project details
- Year
- 2023
- Programme
- Bachelor – Product Design
- Practices
- Honours Programme
- Minor
- RASL
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Artist’s Statement
Studying at the Academy, I have learned that ‘design’ is a domain which offers the potential to unite both my interests, and my passions.
I aim to create (more literally, to make) objects of beauty and meaning through an autonomous, circular process that is, if not autobiographical, then at least personally expressive and exploratory.
My practice unites my love of image- making, improvisational music-making, and ceramic production, while exploring and embodying aspects of research into creative processes and the physical and psychological states associated with these processes.
My improvisatory music-making has taught me the importance of being alive to the potential of the accidental and the serendipitous, and this has been reinforced by my work with ceramics, with dynamics of control/no control, and associated aesthetic traditions of imperfection.
For my graduation work, I have developed a project, and related processes, to unite image-making, improvisational music- making, and ceramic production.
Using music I have composed and recorded, or images I have created (chiefly, analogue photographs), I sought a way to express these as topographical ‘landscapes’.
Using digital fabrication techniques, particularly 3D Modelling and Computer Numerical Control (‘CNC’) milling, I create plaster molds derived from these ‘landscapes’ , allowing me to transfer these detailed textures into the clay body. These slab bodies are then variously manipulated to create objects which are both accurate expressions of the original source material, and of the improvised act of assembly into vessels and other forms.
The body of work which has resulted, I have called GROOVE. GROOVE derives its name from musical improvisation (to be ‘in the groove’), the literal meaning of ‘marks’ or ‘scorings’ in a surface, and in the sense of ‘routine’ or working pattern. GROOVE is a suite of related ceramic works which derives from a specific source: one from an analogue photography, and the others from my own musical improvisation at the piano.
Each of these families of objects has a name, and like a musical suite, the objects are separate ‘movements’ which are thematically and tonally linked.
The project has a focus on the ambiguity of intuition, and the nature of the intrinsic reward of creation. In particular, I am fascinated by the creative act. Where does the desire to create come from? How I do I account for a sense that something ‘works’ for me, or satisfies me? How do I optimise for these?
Special Thanks
There are quite a few people to whom I owe thanks for helping me realise this project but none more than Irene Vonck, Janey Joyce, and Gary Carter.
Irene, I thank you for the time you have taken to discuss ideas, the inspiration you and your work have given me over the past four years, your incredibly touching enthusiasm regarding my work, and of course the golden tip of exploring contemporary finishing techniques.
Janey, I thank you for the conversations we had in the early stages of my project, suggesting my process was akin to Jazz and thereby shaping the transformative theory project that followed.
Gary, words cannot describe how much you have contributed to my journey over the past four years. None of this would have happened had I not have been lucky enough to have you in my life. The unwavering support you have shown me has been, and always will be, a source of motivation and immense happiness.
