Brazil : Enterrem-me

Somewhere in Brasil Cynthia will bury me

Looking Back at the Market

It was very interesting to chat with market-goers last Sunday about the consorts, and to watch people's reaction. I talked shop all day, it never got repetitive.

It was good to be out there.

It was good.

It was good to explain what I was doing, particularly how and where I had started with it.

I suppose at a stall like this I was less likely to chat with the indifferent or those who might hate it, but some actually gushed until I was thoroughly embarrassed.

I encouraged people to pick them up, saying, "they are not finished until they're held in your hands."

Consorts in Bronze and Pewter at The Market

The Consorts to the Mountain Goddess have been poured in bronze and pewter in Tasmania, beside a rivulet running straight down from the mountain.

Their making, ancient and new, is blogged here but their final shape however will be molded in you hands, by your touch.

So come and see them at the Market this April 11th 2010, opposite St David's Park in the old Masonic Hall near the corner of Sandy Bay Rd and Davey St, Hobart, Tasmania.

Spike's Baptism

Spike, Consort to the Mountain Goddess, was first made as a wax positive, candle wax, about two years ago.

There was an attempt at a bronze pour of a copy, but that effort failed.

Spike was first invested in a thin layer of plaster and then surrounded by an earth and wallaby dung outer. This was some months ago, which means the investment was very, very dry before it was burnt out and the wax lost to the flames.




So it only took a couple of hours tending an open camp fire with fallen branches, before I up-ended the mold and poured molten pewter into it. It worked well. Unlike the one I did the week before when I didn't let the mold cool down a little and it leaked into my packed sand.




Art is basically a form of consumption and I try to limit the environmental impact of what I do as much as possible. And while I am making devotional dolls for the Mountain Goddess, I don't think she actually likes art as fetishistically shiny-shiny. I re-use pewter, use and source as much material as I can get (like the chicken wire in the investment) from tip and second-hand shops. Using an open fire is very crude but it means I can use a more sustainable energy source, the trees in my backyard.

Other Authentic Cretan Fictions

It's a great blog post: Authenticities and Cretan Musics. I'm going to play that music while I sculpt more Cretan Consorts to the Mountain Goddess.

The post wanders and riffs on personally experiencing an authentically politicised romantic confabulation, and speaks to the heart of a multi-culti modernity, which, I find informs a lot of anti-nationalistic Australian nationalism. It's a very Australian post.

Must remember to make more tussled-hair consorts and maybe I give one an instrument.

The First Bronzes?

Cobbled from here and here:

These figurines of men and women from Tell Judaidah, Turkey, are the oldest examples of true bronze (combination of copper and tin) human figures known. They date to about 3000 B.C. The statuettes were intended to be mounted in some fashion, for a tang projects below the feet of each one. The skill with which these unique pieces were modelled and the technical knowledge that was needed for their casting reveal surprisingly high standards of artistic and technical achievement in Syria at the beginning of the third millennium B.C.

Both sources suggest that the male figures are warriors brandishing weapons. And they may have good contextuals reasons for doing so. Looks like they are might be presenting sacrificial lambs or kids on their shoulders to me.

demi-consort spotted in Arizona: #Swineflu is Born!

Sheree Rensel (aka @wizzlewolf) has put up images of the grand opening of a Twitter.com organized Artshow "Twitter 140" on the projects blog.

Thank you Sheree for making it happen.

I am on twitter too @meika of course.

Small Works Exhibition 09

I've sent three bronze consorts of to the Brunswick St Gallery for their Small Works 09 Exhibition, including the Lame Consort to the Mountain Goddess above. If you're in Melbourne, it is opening tomorrow 19 June and closing 2 July, while the Exhibition Opening is on 26 June 2009. There are prizes and everything.

#TwitterArtShow (working title)

#Swineflu is Born! 2009


I've decided to join the #TwitterArtShow (working title).

For like Sheree Rensel (aka wizzlewolf):-

"I am an artist. I use Twitter to follow other artists. There are many fantastic artists using Twitter. I thought it would be a grand idea if we joined together to create a Twitter Art Show group. Our mission is to write a proposal, submit our plan to art venues, and create an exhibition that can travel the world!"

I like the idea of it being inspired, rather than 'themed', by #hashtags on twitter.

I'm using the hashtag #swineflu.

I poured #Swineflu is Born! on Sunday, and spent yesterday afternoon removing an encasing eggshell-like fin. I got to the point shown in the photo and realised he was #swineflu and he was born.

I'm also discovering that taking sharp images of shiny pewter figures is very hard to do. May have to go back to the old camera.

Interview on Art-Resource

I've been interviewed by Steve Gray on Art-Resource about my sculpture.

In the Hand

It's possible that I will eventually work the Mountain Goddess herself into some kind of metallic manifestation. I suspect it is a long way off. However, in a discussion of one old representation of her, I came across the following about the Venus of Willendorf:

In fact, her most satisfactory, and most satisfying, position is being held in the palm of the hand. When seen under these conditions, she is utterly transformed as a piece of sculpture. As fingers are imagined gripping her rounded adipose masses, she becomes a remarkably sensuous object, her flesh seemingly soft and yielding to the touch.

What her identity and purpose may have been, why and for what reason she was carved, becomes an even more pressing question. If we dismiss all associations with goddesses and fertility figures, and assume an objective response to what we see, she might be identified as simply a Stone-Age doll for a child.

The writer goes on to knock this idea back, but the handling of the artefact I can relate to. In particular as I made such artefacts, the feel of it, the heft of it, as I worked in wax were, and are, very important.

Dolls are meant to be held in the hand (as one does in play).

That's how dolls differ from statues, or statuetttes. Statues are meant to be put somewhere, displayed, honoured by some position in some cared for place, or co-ordinated into a sacred place: a niche in a grotto, an altar in a temple, or a cabinet in a shop. They are about being seen, whatever the end point is for such orchestrated observances, in consumption or towards salvation.

I'll be no doubt making statues as the months go by, but, it seems, I started in wanting to make dolls. Metal figurines to be held in the hand for a reason which remains unknown to me, except when I hold them.

The key word in the text quoted above is satisfying.

The consorts must be satisfying when in hand. Even if they end up as statues.

When in the hand, they can be satisfying through their substantial weight of metal, nearly 2 kilograms. They can be satisfying because of their curves, their waists, their buttocks on the palm of the hand.

This is also why such small metal figurines have no bases, they ruin the balance of the doll, (though the bases are good for setting up on a bench top or recess).

I am going to have to find a hand model.

Etruscan Male Statuette 5th BC - Herakles (?), H.12.1 cm. W. 3.4 cm. (at shoulders) Bronze. Broken element on left arm. This solid cast nude male carries a small jug in his right hand while a cloth or garment is draped over his left arm (broken just under the arm). The figure could be Herakles and the missing garment his lion skin. Bronze votives like this one were often left at temples and shrines by devotees.

Deloraine Adonises, nearing their investment

I am having a few problems getting these two brothers from Northern Tasmania into their final form, before investment. The wax figures have been hollowed to 5mm or so, then a plaster and sand core poured in. Nails will be used to hold the core in place when the wax is melted out of the investment.

They are Consorts to the Mountain Goddess, which in their case it must be Quamby Bluff.

The one with its bum to us has been officially named, "Are you blaming this on our generation?"

The other one I am not so sure. Perhaps a string of curses.

They are less abstract than the previous consorts, and double the size, required a core to save metal. Hopefully this will lead to fewer incidents of back strain.

The advice came in to do bigger pieces, do finer features, I think took this on board to mean more naturalism, but the next advice was, well, 'Your abstract forms..."

As I am interesting primarily in the symbolic, the naturalism/abstract conversation is of little interest to me. The symbolic is where we do our thinking after all, and truth and beauty are just teases....

It is my interest in the symbolic that leads me to prefer artefacts to art. I want to make artifacts, and so make the symbolic substantial, even if they then need a core to make them safe for bad backs.

Map of Tasmania Consort, added to Saatchi-Online

Well, belatedly, I've discovered Saatchi-Online Gallery. It's got too much, from crits to book promotion, a gazillion adds, three columns twenty feet deep. It's like myspace for art, i.e. messy reloading shit, but I do have a presence there now with the Map of Tassie consort (above), and the Deep-toed Consort. (Saatchi-Online's thumb nail generator is very annoying, particularly with my images, as the statuette photos have such strong lines.)

Rate this Consort at the Saatchi Showdown.

Some Consorts Available at artflock.com

I've put up for sale some of the bronze consorts on artflock.com.

My profile page is http://www.artflock.com/artist/meika.

Spacehead, Bunny Boots: Consort to the Mountain Goddess

Ram Daggerman, Consort to the Mountain Goddess

Sunhead Consort to the Mountain Goddess

Sigi's 70th birthday Present.

The Sunhead Consort is based on the Spacehead.

In turn, the Spacehead Consort was inspired by an early Cretan Consort to the Mountain Goddess.

Described as

MINOAN SMALL BRONZE VOTIVE MALE, Worshipper wearing loin-cloth, right hand upraised to his head. Crete, Late Minoan I, ca. 1600-1500 BC Height 6.3 cm.

Art from Trash 2008: Deep Toed Consort to the Mountain Goddess

Deep-Toed Consort to the Mountain Goddess
meika loofs samorzewski

Recycled pewter mugs and vases, poured into a mold using lost wax (candles) in an earth, hair and wallaby dung investment.
AUD $1560






On show as part of Art from Trash 2008, at the Long Gallery, Salamanca Place, Hobart, Tasmania until Thursday 26 June 2008.

Test post

Over at my facebook.com photos there are some wax figures of consorts.