AlteringSpace.com is the website for the kinetic sculpture designed and made by Kate Gale and Sally Wakelin
We have an Instagram account too altering_space
Here are the Quails eggs which I am going to cast in order to set up some new shadow structures. I shall be making a mould of them in Chromium Alginate bought from Maragon, who sell everything one could need for casting in plaster and are the most helpful people. I am surprised at how much the eggs vary in size, shape and in texture, some are quite rough and gritty feeling and a few are very smooth. I have coated them all with petroleum wax to help with the moulding and I shall choose the nicest shaped ones with the smoothest surface. I do like the mottled colouring, they look good on the blue vintage French plate but Ido like to see them in black and white too.
I want to explore creating shadows with eggs so I’m going to try making a mould so that all my eggs are the same shape. Some of these real eggs have subtle textures which I love, I don’t know if I will be able to combine areas of texture from several eggs into my mould, I hope so. I think the moulds will be half-eggs, which will make it easier to create the shadow effects I want.
Looking through old family photo albums recently, I found images my Dad had made sometime in the early 1960s. I don’t recall having seen them before though I must have done at some time. Just two months ago I happened to be there, on Bangor Pier and took some very similar photos. I found that rather heart-warming, not the usual tourist choice, we must share some sensibilities and an interest in form. We must have both loved these detailed patterns made by the series of cast benches.
Its so easy after the event to see where I went wrong. I was using my brother’s Canon 70D, much heavier than my 350D and with an unfamiliar lens but no excuses, I must have left my sense of composition in my other bag.
What interested me was the pylon reflected in the water but a vertical shot which included at least some of the pylon against the sky would have been much more interesting. I do like the feint imperfect reflection with the broken cables rippled on the surface but it might have been better to move around so I had more water and less tree reflection at the far edge of the pond. There is a bright red spot of a man’s sweater top left and a dull spot of an Elizabeth Frink steel head sculpture in the top right, both of which I could have made more of somehow.
I am a great admirer of Thomas Heatherwick’s work and this week had the chance to see his Sitouterie in an Essex garden.
It is a hard subject to photograph but I went for the simple approach, looking in from the outside and looking out from the inside of the same corner. The metal spikes are hollow with amber translucent material at their tips so showing tiny spots of amber light on the inside. A young girl who happened to be there at the same time called to her grandfather “Grandpa, come and see, its the best bit of art I’ve ever seen” (I think she might have been 7 years old at the most!)
