Are my thoughts crystalizing???

I woke up at about 5:30am last Sunday (10th July) with a head full of ideas. This happens to me quite a lot a the beginning of the making period of a project, I think the daydreaming state the hovering between wakefulness and sleep is a really productive time for me.

I got really excited because I thought "This is it, I feel this is what I want to make for the Blacksmiths Shop exhibition in September." (more info about this nearer the time)

Now I've let that all settle down for a week and it still feels good so I'm going to pursue it further. I recognise that my creative process is like a slow filtration, a mental sifting. Sometimes it needs a bit of stirring up (nothing like a deadline to spur you into action), but at other times things just need to sit for awhile. In fact certain ideas can get deeply embedded, for years sometimes, and then an image or piece of text causes it to rise to the top again.

This seems to be the case with some small sculptures I made in the first year of my MA at Glasgow. They were three dimensional interpretations of text (an extract from the Book of Genesis), and I've been thinking for a long time that I'd like to continue that idea.

I've been latching onto the use of systems by both the historical figures we have been looking at (Thomas Sopwith and Robert Owen). Sopwith with his drawings and models of the landscape, Owen with his Silent Monitor and numerous texts on the improvement of society.

I am going to experiment with some of each of their texts, using them to create a sculptural work. I'm thinking along the lines of "What sort of city / dwelling / society would have arisen if Sopwith and Owen had worked together on a plan. A kind of physical realisation of an amalgamation of their ideas.

I've also been thinking about the structure of the minerals at Killhope and I've found some really great video clips. See Britannica link to right. Check out Crystal Systems and Natural Resources Law videos in particular, they are in a vertical menu on the left of the page once you have opened up the Britannica link. I like the music that is used in the background of natural resources law, I think that I might like to use something like this for an installation or video.

Oh and check this guy out, he is great. I love the way he explains things using the periodic table and the mineral examples in front of him. See minerals guy link to right.

I think making a model based on a hybrid of ideas / systems from both Owen and Sopwith to sit along side the other models in the Blacksmiths Shop is something I'd like to pursue. It might be a straight forward translation of text or blending of texts together to some how form a systematised structure.

I also like the idea of something that then gets taken over by crystals or some kind of growth. I like the work of Roger Hiorns and Cath Keay because of the way they have worked with architecture and organically formed structures. Roger Hiorns is well known for his work "Siezure" in which he filled a flat with liquid minerals and then allowed the interior of this building to be taken over by crystal formation. I saw it a few years back and it was pretty impressive. Cath Keay has worked with wax models of buildings, allowing them to be taken over by bees and exhibiting the collaborative result.

I found a really nice interview with Roger Hiorns, never realised he was from Birmingham. See Roger Hiorns link to right.