For this week’s wonderings I am sharing my words and images from the sculpture that I created this month. It was orginally going to be in an exhibition but has been replaced with my Artist book, Music, Art and Passion. This is an e-book that I have made available to anyone who subscribes to my newsletter, so if you would like to see it, you can either pop to Iklectik this weekend, or you can visit my homepage and subscribe!
The sculpture will not be displayed at this time but it has been really interesting to do and I feel that I will come back to this image and theme but in a much bigger way at another time.
Love Susan x
Susan Merrick
Title: Tree and Me
Sculpture – mixed materials
‘The energy flow of literature and ideas’
I wanted this piece to represent the flow of energy that goes into and comes out of a book. A physically entwined representation of a huge myriad of actions and processes.
But it doesn’t have to be more complex than this. The earth feeds a tree so that it grows full. This tree is then the source for the paper that creates our books. The books then feed the minds and souls of us.
It can take a tree decades to grow large. Someone took the time on the below website to work out that an average pine tree can be the source of 80,500 sheets of paper (about a5 in size). Our souls, our minds and what we become also take decades to grow and so much of this growth comes from information and learnt actions, responses, vocabulary and ideas that came from books.
In sculpting this piece I wanted to bring together these elements as a single representation, roughly pulled together in the same rough way that we pull ourselves together through life and up through the information we are immersed in into what we can finally see as ourselves.
On the piece I have also included the below three statements as a reflection on the piece, books and information.
‘Our souls are already there when we are born, open and succulent. We both feed and restrict them through our socialisation, our lessons, our schooling, then sometimes, sometimes we learn to open them again.’
‘In this world of social media, of screens and heads bobbed, there are still books. Electronic and physical. Stories and ideas passing through time and generations to inspire.’
‘What we read, hear, see and take into our minds and hearts as we grow, forms the basis of what we feel, think and believe as adults. If you start to be aware of what you believe and think, you can start to unpick these thoughts and beliefs, and with this you can break down your limitations.’
In making this piece it was essential that the materials consisted heavily of books. It also felt appropriate to recycle and upcycle as many items as possible to create the structure.
Materials used:Recycled stool from the tip
Many many Books from beautiful people who were recycling them – for the trunk, for the sculptures filling, for the papier-mâché clay covering and for the text running through the piece.
From my own garden I used 3 different types of wire mesh in rolls all left in hedges by previous owners. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/question16.htm