Notes on: Found Materials Workshop

This was a three-day course at the St. Ives School of Painting. The tutor was Daniel Barnard.

Summary of Course

1. Visit to an artist's studio (Daniel's) to see works in progress.
2. Trip to the Mariner's Gallery to see works by Daniel Barnard, Liz Luckwell and Roy Ray.
3. Field trip to the beach at Gwythian.
   Exercize: Collect materials from the beach (shells, stuff washed up by the tide etc.) and assemble them into an art work; you may use wire to hold items in place. Take a second bin bag with you, so that you can clear the trash from the beach while you're at it.
4. Return to the studio.
   Exercize: You are provided with some wooden boxes, and a collection of things that Daniel has bought from junk shops, car boot sales etc. Select a wooden box and a few of these items, and create a work in a box.

Gallery Visit

Liz Luckwell puts folded prints in a box. Folding a print makes it into a more three-dimensional object.

The works by Roy Ray consist of WWII photographs, a section of barbed wire, and a bronze casting of a bullet in a box with a glazed front.

Making a work in a box

Glazing the front of the box “completes” it, and makes it look more like an art work. The usual way to glaze a box is to nail panel pins into the walls of the box; the glass then rests on the panel pins, and wooden beading around the edge will hold the glass in place and conceal the edge of the glass. Hammering in the nails carries the risk that it will damage delicate contents of the box, so you may want to plan ahead and put the nails in before you glue you objects in place.

For this exercize, I used some stained-glass technique: I put copper foil around the edges of both the glass and a liner I'd made for the box, and soldered them at a couple of points to hold them together,