updates on work live from the studio (let the chips fly)

So...... was going to post all of this in my last post but decided that it would end up too long a post with too many images thrown in so here we go.

Now have been working on another carved piece for the past three weeks, this isn't perhaps a brand new piece but one that I had put away at the end of my masters degree with the intention to continue to work on it after, and now having finally been given the facilities and opportunity to do so I have once again dusted off my carving tools, set square and graphite stick and started work on the piece. This piece comes out of the previous door carving I did for the degree show, but it is part of something bigger its part of an installation idea that I have had stuck in my head for almost a year now and one that I'm only about a third of the way through getting out.

 Anyway the past three weeks I have been writing out the words on the object then finding they don't fit and having to re-scale them and balance them etc etc which has been extremely frustrating at times. Anyway finally finished the laying out last week and began carving the the design onto the piece, which is by far my favourite part as you get to witness the object coming to life, seeing the character of the piece emerge from what was previously line after line of faint pencil marks on a piece of wood. Have again been using my flexicut hand carving tools which are taking a huge amount of punishment but get the job done slowly. Trying to speed up the carving process I borrowed a power carver/ chisel from a good friend of mine and that has sped up the whole process which is excellent but I cant help but feel it has come at the cost of something else. By using the power tool it introduces the machine into the process, which hadnt been there before, when using the hand tools it was a labour, a trial perhaps, which maybe allowed me to appreciate the finished article in a greater depth knowing that it has taken time and effort to bring the piece to a resolved point. I dont know, this bares more thinking about on my part and seems to boil down to what I think is more important the act of doing and making the finished object or the finished object itself and right now I have no idea. Anyway some pics of the work in progress.