Sam Bell's Sculpture Diary

Visit my workshop, when you are in Devon

2011-11-16T11:08:00.000-08:00

Having recently moved to Southcott, near Great Torrington, in Devon, I am presently inviting anyone with an interest in sculpture to visit the workshop. I have a number of completed pieces currently on site, and a few I that are works-in-progress.
Please phone in advance to ensure that I am present!

Southcott Stables, Southcott, Frithelstock, Devon. EX38 8LD
Phone: 01805 601881

I am this, I am that

2011-06-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

When I came back from Carrara recently, where I was working on some complex stuff, I needed a break! This was the result....

Roger Fry, Painter

2011-03-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

Roger Fry was one of the most important influences on early twentieth century British art. As a critic, that is. His actual work, however, is quite sublime (a treat for all you formalists out there!). Check out this work on Google Images.

OK, so this isn't sculpture. But without Fry, nothing I do would be possible as a sculptor, and in any case, just look at the sculptural values in his work.

Hepworth at the New Art Centre, Wiltshire

2011-01-27T07:43:00.000-08:00

Some pieces of work can quite take the breath away. Now, although I have always found Hepworth's work important, none of the works have meant so much to me as this piece. The first time I came across a version of it was at the Hepworth studio in St Ives (Cornwall) - it seemed quite uncharacteristic of her work. It was angular, totemic, wholly fragmented in form, almost tribal in its references and spacial dimensions. The work is called 'Single Form', and that reminds us of the importance of the relationship between the pieces here and reminds us of the need to see the variety of the forms as part of something coherent. This piece, as a dialogue, has a complexity that few other 'multiple-piece' works by Hepworth have.

On view at St Ives, and at the excellent New Art Centre, Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Web: http://www.sculpture.uk.com/hepworth/

The BIG exhibition of 2011!

2011-01-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

The Royal Academy of the Arts is offering THE major art event for sculptors in the UK in 2011: Modern British Sculpture. See it and die!

Update: Regrettably, I now see that this exhibition has come in for some criticism. The Observer art critic has pointed out the number of modern British sculptors who have been left out of the exhibition - an astonishing number of late 20th century artists in particular (Gormley; Whiteread et al). I'm also surprised to see the American Carl Andre's bricks turning up again (yawn) - yes, we all know about this (and we also know that it has counted for little in the development of British modernism (and post-modernism). In any case, why fill the galleries with influences anyway? We have SO MUCH to show of our own!!! (Note the use of a Barbara Hepworth piece as a symbol of the exhibition that is itself heavily influenced by Naum Gabo - this isn't mature, individual Hepworth we ar being offered).
Nevertheless, good to see Richard Long there (although he has not produced significant work for a couple of decades). As for Damien Hirst: the jury seems to be out on him now, and I've gone from loving the work of the 1990s to wondering what exactly he is - artist? collector? (and, like Long, whether he has anything more to offer in his late period work). I also wonder if artists who plough too narrow a furrow end up with too little to achieve in their later years - Whiteread may also be suffering from this too. Contrast the tradition from Picasso to Hockney: multiple craft skills combined with multiple perspectives and interests.

Key British works include: Alfred Gilbert Queen Victoria, Phillip King Genghis Khan, Jacob Epstein Adam, Barbara Hepworth Single Form, Leon Underwood Totem to the Artist, Henry Moore Festival Figure, Anthony Caro Early One Morning, Richard Long Chalk Line, Julian Opie W and Damien Hirst Let’s Eat Outdoors Today.
Link: Modern British Sculpture

A carving for Christmas...

2010-12-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Although my main interests in sculpture are abstract/non-representational, I have always had a great love of religious art. In part this is, I think, because I have a religious temperament, and being unable to commit to a theology (Christianity, Buddhism, etc), my leanings are expressed through religious art, from icons, Giotto and the art of the Renaissance through to Eric Gill and beyond (yes, even Damien Hirst's struggles with the subject appeal to me!).
Now and again, though, I have to 'have a go' at a more representational image, and here this stylised Madonna represents my own love of the stilled, impassive and transcendent image - something that I also seek to achive in the abstract work too.

Carved in bianco puro Carrara marble.

Jaques Lipchitz

2010-12-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

In Anthony Caro's interview on 'Start the Week' (see below), he speaks of the influence of Jaques Lipchitz. For anyone interested in modern sculpture, and Cubism made three-dimensional, have a look on Google Images!

Lipchitz is, of course, the cubist sculpture maestro! As Caro says, cubism always seems like a three-dimensional art style, mainly practised and developed, oddly enough, by painters (like Pablo Picasso and George Braque). It is only when we see Lipchitz's work, I feel, that we see cubism in its fully mature form. Until this point, it has been a more-or-less two-dimensional experiment; with Lipchitz it has found its right medium.

If you live near London, Tate Modern have some wonderful pieces by this master.

Anthony Caro on BBC4's 'Start the Week'

2010-12-20T04:08:00.000-08:00

Anthony Caro helped change everthing in the 1960s. With Caro, art was no longer a singular object, solid in structure and opaque. As this piece evidences, Caro's work takes up a new relationship to space, building as much space into the work as material itself. It hearks back to Picasso's early experiments in the meduim and even, I think, to the mobiles of Miro.

'Start the Week' offers an interesting interview, available on iplayer (Link below).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00wp012/Start_the_Week_20_12_2010

On the Edge - a new sculpture

2010-12-19T04:27:00.000-08:00

This is a work just recently completed for the Penwith Society of Arts in St Ives, Cornwall. It's a piece that plays with lines and planes, reaching its full complexity on the side views. Like di Teana, I tend to prefer creating unemotional work. This piece has an architectural quality, I hope, combined with cool, detached forms that avoid the anthropomorphic, or any reference to nature at all.

The contrast with 'This Is Who I Am' (below) may see stark. In fact the link with the earlier piece is partly in the simplification of form, but also in the eyes of the earlier piece, which convey a sense of being elsewhere, something 'On The Edge' also conveys, I feel. The abstract work is not about being in a place nor is it about a specific place or specific thing; it is somehow located everywhere and nowhere.

I continue to be interested in what exactly it is that abstract art keys into in our psyches (and will follow this up in a future blog).

Art criticism may label this work 'non-objective' art, rather than abstract, as abstract may imply 'abstracted from'.

Carved in Carrara marble, with a Kilkenny limestone base.

Marino di Teana

2010-12-18T06:39:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of threads to my artistic personality. One is a love of architectural sculpture. This goes back, I think, to my formative artistic period - the late 1960s, when I fell subconsciously in love with Brutalist architecture in London. You know, the South Bank Centre, and other such buildings, much fumed at by Prince Charles. It is perhaps the impersonality of the buildings I love most - they don't shout 'Me! Me! Me!', like so much modern art. The architects were also, I feel, frustrated sculptors, seeking to turn functional buildings into art - the focus on form and structure. They also loved the materials they used. The concrete is given a role in the aesthetic of the buildings, not hidden away beneath a benevolent facade. This was an art, then, that would be all around us, lived in by us, an art that would shape us by being a part of our daily conscious lives.

Marino is a sculptor who clearly focusses on structure too. This combined with a fine sense of the relationship between form and space makes him special - see how the forms of this piece cut into the space around it, and how the clean, linear structures press outwards, keeping the work at the level of architectural assemblage. An art, then, that sets aside the human as a subject in itself - nothing here suggests human, animal or natural form (this is NOT Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth): the work comes from the same place in the modern sensibility as Brutalism, only the material harks back to an older sculptural tradition.

This is who I am

2010-12-18T02:55:00.000-08:00

My main interest is in abstract art, but this is an image of a small head that speaks of a religious dimension to the work I do. In the main the head is contemplative, looking up as if to the stars, the heavens, to God if you like, or to infinity. It's an image of interiority too, of escape within or internal joy......

You may recognise this upward-looking pose, so typical of the work of artists from the Renaissance onwards.

You may also recognise the sculpture as an image of the 'contemplative life' - an old philosophical/religious tradition that stands in contrast to the 'active life'. 'Be still and know', as my university moto would have it (The University of Sussex).

Carved in Portland limestone at Hartford, Cambridgeshire.

Christophe Gordon-Brown in Cambridge

2010-12-17T13:43:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you come across work that strikes home as absolutely complete within itself. It's work that has its own life. Gordon-Brown's work gets to me because of this, and also because of its minimalist grace and completeness of form. There are many sculptors around whose work lacks this quality, this grace (and sometimes is the better for it), but this work is almost metaphysical in its rejection of the particular, this rejection of the messyness of the real visual field. This I like....

On a recent visit to Cambridge I met Christophe in his studio in Newnham. A selection of tiny sculptures are exhibited in his studio window to intrigue you, and draw you in to talk and see more.