This past Monday Emma and I had our Project Space in C02, which we entitled “En•trance”. Coincidentally, Emma was also offered a opportunity to teach in Barnsley this week, so in order to allow her to accept it, we shuffled things about a bit, schedule wise.
The concept we came up with in one of our early chats on this project was “doors or portals”. We decided that we would not collaborate on a single piece but would rather each respond to the theme in our own way. We both work strongly with narrative and we hoped that this would tie the whole show together. There was always the risk that we would each create something that had no reason to be in the same room as the other’s piece, but we kept abreast of each others progress and in the end it all seems to have worked out.
My concept went through several phases before I came up with a final plan. I had been wanting to do something that hearkened back to my Norwegian heritage ever since I visited Oslo this past summer. I considered painting or drawing on door panels, telling a tale from Norse Myth, but decided to save that for another time. I began thinking of things I had seen while in Norway and it suddenly came to me.
Scandinavian countries like Norway have a tradition of building stave churches. These early church structures were made entirely of wood and constructed in the same manner that they use in boat building. They began to fall out of favour in the Middle Ages and came to be considered obsolete in some countries as newer construction methods became popular.
When I was in Oslo, at the Museum of Cultural History, they have several portals from vanished stave churches. I got to thinking about them and how their removal had completely changed their meaning.
The portals of a stave church are weighted with symbolism. They represent the threshold, the barrier between the real world and the spiritual world. These doorways are introductions to the space within and the carvings on the door posts speak in a language that was culturally understood. They prepared the faithful for their transformation from secular to sacred and helped to impart the message of the church.
By removing these portals from their churches and placing them against a white wall in a museum, the symbolism changes dramatically. The functionality of the portal is completely negated since you can no longer pass through it. Their purpose as sacred art is also altered, becoming simply secular objects of art. The love, devotion and care that went into their creation is still apparent, but the reason for it becomes obscured.
Many of these doors took imagery from Norse myth, perhaps to promote an association between the Christian faith and the old gods, during a period of transition. A popular theme is the tree of life, something the Norse might easily interpret as Yggdrasil, the world tree.
So I decided that I wanted to construct a stave church portal, but also to highlight these conflicts that I saw with their transformation from sacred to secular art. I decided that I would create a tree of life design based on Yggdrasil as the foundation of my portal. I decided to use the CNC Milling Machine, a computer controlled router, to do the carving for me, so I chose to simplify my design since I was not certain of the limits of the machine. Both for monetary and for aesthetic reasons I decided to use blue foam, a form of polystyrene insulation, as the material to be milled.
The first step was to create the design, which I did by hand in pen and ink. This was then scanned into Photoshop, preparatory to taking it into the 3d software. Since I am not that familiar with using 3d software, I chose to use a method that works fine for relief items but not for in the round sculpture, converting a greyscale image to a heightfield.
Simply, the process is thus: in Photoshop or similar software, you create your image, keeping in mind that it will be converted to 3d based on the values of grey in the image. White will be the highest point and black the lowest. If your piece of polystyrene is 50mm thick, like mine, then a 50% grey will be 25mm deep; 10% grey is 5mm, a 30% grey is 15mm and so on.
Once the greyscale image was complete, I cut it up into portions based on the size the CNC router could handle, each one approximately 1100mm x 350mm. These I saved as TIF files which I loaded into Rhinoceros, the 3D software I was using, and used the Heightfield from Image command. After some trial and error and minor manipulation, I had the STL files I needed to input into the CNC controller.
I considered painting the surface to resemble wood, but opted to go with the bare polystyrene in order to emphasise the distance from the original portals. After assembling the pieces together and reinforcing the seams, I constructed a wooden prop to allow it to safely stand up. This would allow me to place the portal into the room rather than up against a wall, allowing people to travel through and around it, seeing both the facade and the reality of the backside.
All the construction was done in C02, prior to our show opening on Monday. I spent most of Thursday assembling it and on Saturday, Emma and I spent some time deciding on the best location to stand it, so it would create a nice counterpoint to both her door and the main door to the room.
So, with both pieces installed, we had the opening on Monday, which was fairly well attended, and then the critique in the afternoon. Unfortunately, I have been getting over a cold and was not feeling up to par, so I have difficulty recalling exactly what was said during the crit. From my notes, it seems that most people got the idea that it was a portal into a fantasy realm, but that the material and support structure in back detracted from that, so that rather than passing through and being uplifted, they were let down. This is not far off from what I intended, so I’m calling that a positive comment. Though I did not expect the connection to be made with Norwegian stave churches, I was hoping that I would have the opportunity to explain it.
Unfortunately, we were trying a new crit format this week. Normally, the group makes comments one after another, and the artist says nothing until the end, when they can comment on their own work. This time the format was changed to one where each person in the group made their comment and then asked a question. The artist then responds only to the question asked and the next person comments and questions, etc. At the end, it was simply over without the artist being able to comment upon their work.
I feel that this format didn’t work well for me, for two reasons. First was the fact that I was not able to explain the origins of my work, which I think might have clarified some of the decisions I made; and second, I felt like I was not getting a “pure” response from the people further in the group. By hearing the questions and answers earlier, they had the opportunity to change their view of the work based on what was said. It seemed to make the latter comments a little less like gut reactions and more homogenised.
If I had this piece to do again, I think there is very little I would change. Now that I know more about the CNC router, I might approach that differently, maybe making the design more complex and cleaning it up a bit more. I might try to make the design more Norse and less Celtic looking, but the roots of the imagery are similar and their art was severely cross-pollenated, so that could be a losing battle. Overall I think I would create the same basic piece.
