Sculpture, spoons and art education
Working from a musician absorbed in playing. I did this on my iPod with Procreate. I hadn’t used that programme for years but another member of the group was using it and had a really appealing and sensitive line. I’m really enjoying it. It is great to use with an apple pencil. Below is a stop frame video of the drawing being made – really love Procreate.
I joined a drawing group in a back room of the Horse and Groom in St Leonard’s. Just people who want to draw and organised by Teressa. Loved it.
This was all quite liberating and I’ve done another 10 drawings since then. Mostly out and about with a fountain pen and some finished later with Procreate on the iPad.
That’s the last Thursday of the month sorted.
I’ve just finished resetting all the AI stuff into a new website so it doesn’t get confused with my spoons and stuff. I’ve been working on it quite intensively for three or four months now. Partly writing it, then restructuring the content for the web rather than paper, and lastly having to relearn WordPress.
Here is the link.
So it’s a relief to have finished the challenges I set myself. Now I can look to other bits of disparate creativity like spoons and sketch books.
That’s the second of, what feels like, a family of spoons from these two pieces of bog oak. I’ve also got another two pieces ready to carve.
I don’t think they can take fine carving. The old wood is too fragile for that, so they will stay rustic. I rather like the way they stand up almost like small figures. Now I’ve got the basic format I can just crack on.
Just blocking out the basic structure of another small bog oak spoon.
I’ve just been grazing through a book of David Hockney’s drawings from the late 1960’s early 1970’s. They were shockingly familiar because I had bought the first Hockney book – a significant expense and my first major art book purchase. What was strange was how looking back on these old 1970’s drawings of Mo, Celia, Ossie, Peter I recalled how, as a young student, I saw them as being older and part of a golden generation. This book was small and the reproductions modest. But for a second I was once again an awed young man looking at the art of the new. I was surprised that these simple drawings still held that fresh appeal for me after 55 years.
This morning the UK government issued a press release setting out a blueprint to turbocharge AI. This appears to herald a dramatic change to the approach adopted by the previous administration. The earlier approach was measured and gave equal emphasis to dangers and safeguarding concerns while accepting the advantages. The government now declares the intention to ensure the UK takes a leading role in advancing the development and adoption of artificial intelligence globally.
“Artificial intelligence will be unleashed across the UK to deliver a decade of national renewal, under a new plan announced today (13 January 2025).
AI Opportunities Action Plan
In a marked move from the previous government’s approach, the Prime Minister is throwing the full weight of Whitehall behind this industry by agreeing to take forward all 50 recommendations set out by Matt Clifford in his game-changing AI Opportunities Action Plan.”
January 2025
This will take some time to achieve because it depends on structural as well as intellectual and attitudinal change. However, this represents a sea change in the approach to AI and will affect and embrace education. It is too soon to see how this will affect the AI sections of this site – but it will.
Click here to see the 50 recommendations that have been accepted by the government.
Used my iPad app to work up this page of drawings for a family of spoons. These were based on the first bog oak spoon I made last week. I did make a very small one from a chip of wood but I tested it to destruction and it broke. I think these bog oak spoons will need to be quite loosely carved as the surface appears to show its age.
I have just read this post on ‘The Kennet School Learning Blog’, ‘written’ by Karen Hornby (Head of Art). ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Art Curriculum: are we redundant yet?
It made me laugh in admiration of both AI and Karen. It is worth reading through to the end.
I spent months looking at this piece of bog oak, not sure what to do with it. In the end I just started the spoon on the last day of the year, a vague self imposed deadline.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, But it seemed to be in control and demanded to be simple, roughly worked and lightly finished. It has ended up as a vaguely medieval spoon for gruel or a miniature, contemporary sculpture.
It was curious to carve. The grain had long since disappeared and it was neutral and crumbled easily. But it has a rich dark colour (with walnut oil) and the blade leaves crisp cuts across the grain: less so with the grain.
I rather like the end result and it may be I’ll make a family group.
I’m currently working with old friends, colleagues, and the NSEAD to understand why we don’t seem to talk about ‘design’ anymore. I’m not sure if we have stopped doing it, or simply stopped talking about it. Check out ‘Art Education/Student Creatives‘.
The piece of cherry turned out rather well. Baking it (180 degrees for 30 minutes) made the colour darker and richer and final burnishing gave a soft sheen. I must now find time to do the other half of the log.
I was given a nice piece of freshly cut cherry wood the other day. It demanded that I returned to an old favourite shape, which I have often used over the years. The flattened, flared shape of the base of the handle was originally inspired by my Apple computer’s mouse. It’s nearly finished now, just a bit more work on the bowl. I think I’m going to burnish and then bake it: which I have not done before.
When I was an art adviser in Bucks I always made a point of going to all the school art exhibitions. I had set up a website to share ideas, work and information with art teachers. When digital cameras were new I took short videos of the exhibitions and posted them on my website that evening so they were available the next day. Not very dramatic today, but in 2010 it was pretty cool – my attempt to promote the use of digital media in art education.
I had forgotten about these until this morning when I found an old link to some of these that I posted on Vimeo. The quality of the video reflects the limited technology of the time (a floppy disc Mavika), and my learning curve. But the work from these schools at the turn of the century is really extraordinarily fresh, varied and exciting.
This is one of them. It is a video of an ‘A’ Level exhibition from a school in Chalfonts Buckinghamshire. At the time this art department offered a pioneering curriculum way ahead of it’s time. The work spans a wide range of media including digital animation, fine art, illustration and design. The digital work was inspirational, reflecting the fine art animations of William Kentridge and of contemporary advertising and digital design. Students went on to stuidy degree courses in digital media. Student’s special studies became art works in their own right reflecting the work of designers and artist makers of books and things – above all the exhibition reflects a joy in, and celebration of, creativity and imagination.
I am exploring the potential and dangers of AI in art education. It is a confused and confusing arena for an art educator at the moment. There is a need for careful reflection and to take note of the story of the baby and the bathwater. But in my casual experimenting I found myself, like everybody else, exploiting the capacity of AI to combine unrelated ideas and images. In my case the combination of art and spoons was an obvious query.
I suspect this trick will quickly lose it’s appeal and become a cliché. Novelty is not the same as creativity. However, I did find the notion of spoon design in the context of Lichtenstein or Picasso’s ‘Desmoislelles d’ Avignon’ amusing.
I asked AI to make a picture of me – a 75 year old, bespectacled, art adviser with a grey beard. It’s an endearing cliché, but a cliche nevertheless, and layered with bias, mysogyny, and racism.
Tomorrow I’m going to a seminar at The Photographers Gallery which explores how AI can be used creatively by students. I’m looking forward to it as it’s not something I have thought much about – yet. My AI experience has been to understand how it might make life easier for time poor teachers.
But I felt I should get a sense of how AI image generation works. It seemed sensible to use my own interests as a starting point. So I asked for original ideas for hand carved wooden spoons and then added prompts to generate more unusual shapes and a distressed, burnt, stained, patina, which is my current direction of travel.
Below are some of the AI results with a picture of my own recent spoons (bottom right). I’m not sure what to think about this – it’s not what I expected but it has given me some ideas that I’m interested in pursuing.
Rather pleased with this.
Just modified the top of my axe block to provide better, and safer, ways to hold wood while roughing out with an axe. This should provide for a variety of stops to push and cut against. It should avoid the danger of the wood slipping on the flat surface.
Roughed out the next spoon.
I’m reading about design at the moment and hope to be contributing to discussions about design in schools. In conversations with Ged (old friend and colleague and art educator of significance) we noted that it is sometimes hard to define what students make in terms of art, craft or design. There seems to be a generic, fused together ‘art + craft + design’ thing that happens in art classrooms. Because we don’t tend to think much about whether it’s ‘art or craft or design’ it’s sometimes hard to track how design is delivered in the ‘art & design’ curriculum.
But that’s a debate for elsewhere. This is just about this latest spoon which is part of a set of ‘deconstructed’ spoons. The whole ‘spoon’ thing is in effect a simple formal exercise in playing with 3 simple elements a handle, a bowl and the joint that joins them. It’s not an intellectual puzzle but is worked out time and again just through touch, tools and wood.
But back to design, is it a spoon because of its form or function? I seem to be challenging the convention of function in this last carving (distressed, cracked, burnt, stained rubbed back and oiled) but in my mind there seems to be a bottom line that says it has to be able to function as a spoon even if it’s just ceremonial, otherwise it’s just an arbitrary bit of decoration or treated wood.
…and so distraction over, back to reading ‘Introduction to Design Education, Theory, Research and Practical Applications for Educators by Steven Faerm.‘
A batch of experimental spoons.
I’m starting to understand the process of using layers in subtle ways to create a complex patina on these simple (spoon) shapes. Initial carving pushes boundaries by creating fragility in the thin bowl and narrow stem. The surface retains the marks of different tools – gouges, knives, rifflers, rasps, files, wire wool and fine sand papers. In places gouge marks are left following the form and it’s making, in other places a smooth shiny surface suggests wear and use over time.
I am experimenting with neutral wood stains to build and refine the surface patina. Sometimes I just use flame, although this softens the carving. Otherwise I am experimenting with a walnut and a dark oak stain (small spoons on the left). One is a rich brown applied and lightly rubbed back possibly several times. On top of this a deep dark charcoal stain is used to create a sense of aging in the deepest and more inaccessible parts of the form, again this is rubbed back.
Finally walnut oil is used to fix the piece with a soft honey glaze.
Really cold but this is a very interesting beach with all sorts of debris and trees that have fallen from the cliffs. (Note to self) Must come here in the summer with a larger sketchbook and charcoal.
I’ve been experimenting with ways of developing a patina and a sense of aging in these spoons. This involves playing with natural aging processes like burying in earth, exposure to flame and water. It has also involved using thin applications of stains, oils and waxes to spoons which still show the marks and cuts which were involved in their making. I rather like the subtleties and richness of these worked over surfaces.