Part 4 of essay

Fig. 5. Take a chance on  me. Sculpture, 2004, Elaine Sayers

 

Sonja Wyndham-West, tutor, reminded me of my sculpture that I worked on last year (see fig 5). I created a cardboard box sculpture painted with white acrylic, covered in text messages, lines from emails, real personal ‘stuff ‘ that I glued  all over the box and made it public. The dice were symbols of the chance I had taken in love.

 

One of the many artists I was studying at that time was Tracy Emin. I was particularly interested in her work ‘Everyone I ever slept with’. Emin was brave enough to embroider a tent with more than 100 names of people that she had ‘slept’ with. (See fig. 6). It was a bold statement but subtle at the same time. To read all the names one had to crawl in to the tent – thus making men crawl rather than stand tall. This tent was a very clever piece of work, very creative and very meaningful.  The viewer, once inside, would be encompassed by Emin’s thoughts and feelings.  The same way I want to encompass the viewer of my work.

 

Fig. 6 ‘Everyone I ever slept with’, Tracy Emin, 1997

 

I was encouraged by Sonja to reinstate the excitement I had when I was involved in my sculpture project. I needed to change my direction. I took a look at the workspace I had at college. It was not adequate enough for creating the atmosphere I wanted. I had a partition put in to create my own space and enable me to surround myself with my work.  I put down the paintbrushes, picked up my digital camera and headed for the woods where I would take multiple photographs and use them to bring a sense of exterior space inside. This was going to be the beginning of something very new and exciting.  I felt the need to share this with other people so I created a journal on the internet and logged my day to day experiences and thoughts about my work.  It was brilliant, a great buzz, people were excited about my work and encouraging me from all over the world.