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[The Justified Sinner]

Having now had a couple of weeks where a combination of loads of things on my plate and general late-autumn lethargy have conspired to prevent me from making any blog entries, I'm back to it after a week in which I saw an opera featuring a depressed singing egg and created a seriously dangerous structure.

 

Having seen the Call for Entries on Crafthaus for the "Hot Under The Collar" show which will be part of SNAG Conference next year, I decided to create something specifically for it, rather than trawl out one of my old pieces which have been seen before. Since making the Spoon Skull Cross, I have been thinking a lot about the process of casting steel objects in place, something that has been sitting subliminally in my mind since studying Chris Knight's fantastical chalice earlier this year:

 

 

The Spoon Skull Cross has used sewing-machine needles cast in place at the back and I wanted to create a piece which makes use of this process as the primary focus, rather than as a decorative element. Consequently, I came up with the idea of putting these all over the surface of a sphere:

 

 

This Rhino model was then milled in wax. Unfortunately, I only have access to a 4-axis mill and so had to make the ball in sections which slot together:

 

 

The needles have a groove ground into the shank of each one and this is filled with soft beeswax; the needle is then inserted into the wax model shown above:

 

 

 

This is then invested and cast:

 

 

I've been working on a variety of sizes of these structures:

 

 

 

These structures return me to a form with which I was obsessed a few years ago, that of the mace:

 

 

This is a piece I made about twelve years ago and kind of marks my movement away from minimalism and into a more truthful - for me - interest in complexity and decoration. (The photograph above actually shows a remake from about eight years ago, the original piece being used to remake this. It is ostensibly the same - I didn't remake the chain but did remake the ball, catch and the spikes to lighten the whole thing and refine the spike shape. The ball is almost exactly the same size as a table-tennis ball, from which is was moulded!)

 

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Other than that, I've been making some new items for the Etsy shop, as well as swapping round some pieces there for some pieces returned from a gallery:

 

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As to the opera featuring a singing egg, well, it was a brilliant collaboration between theatre company "Magnetic North", contemporary music ensemble "The Red Note Ensemble", composer David Fennessy and artist David Shrigley and featured not only a singing egg but puppet vegetables and a psychotic butcher... A pantomime for adults, a proper opera - sung through with arias, duets, trios, recitative and ensemble pieces - and I really, really hope it goes on tour. It would be a great shame if it were only seen on the three nights it ran for.

 

 

 

No photographs of the production as I really don't like to take photographs while things are underway, nor do I like other people doing so.

[The Justified Sinner]

The egg role was quite unlike anything else I've ever heard. I can only think of "The Song of the Roasted Swan" from Carmina Burana, and even that lacks the swing between the falsetto and bass, relying only on the bass singing falsetto. There were some other lovely touches, such as the knife and block chopping and knife sharpening on a steel in the percussion section!

[Ann Davis]

I'm an opera buff, I'm in for the singing egg!!!  Wow sounds like a  lyric coloratura:))

[The Justified Sinner]

Yes, Brigitte! Singing... he was a "real" opera-singer. The rest of the cast were mostly actors who were also good singers but the egg probably had the hardest part to sing as he delivered couplets, the first line in falsetto, the second in basso profundo throughout.

[Brigitte Martin]

The idea of having a psychotic butcher featured in a play is strangely appealing to me. And he's singing too ? Priceless. Tour-worthy.