It has been our intention to create a new Stonehenge installation for many months now. Sometimes a piece can be elusive for many reasons, technical challenges to work through, shifts and developments in ideas in response to our Stonehenge explorations, delays in getting hold of all Stonehenge’s dimensions, and generally loads of other stuff to do.
However, technical challenges still to conquer, suddenly an aspect has come together beautifully. We are creating from the proposed larger ceramic Stonehenge circle a ceramic vortex, hopefully that will move and work well with video projections.
The vortex is metaphor for both our mystical experiences at Stonehenge of energy, including landscape weather energy, and resonances of ancestors. It will also have a contemporary sense of current humanity and the chaos that we create and how perhaps the mysteries of stone circles can engulf and heal destructive forces through the deep spiritually peaceful energies that the stone circles have for us. It informs our deep interest in the Neolithic people, that have in the past and could in the future encourage collaboration and cooperation and more peaceful times, even integrating cultural difference through early migrations.
Lance has taken to drawing in the new year, as a way of working through anxiety and also to keep the creative momentum alive. He created a piece that he named ‘Dancers’, the title coming to him as the wiry drawn figures appear to be in celebratory motion. Mike noted that the wild but rhythmic energy of the drawing would be perfect for the imagery needed for the Vortex.
Equally coincidentally Mike went on a screen printing on clay workshop at the V&A museum and we also have the technical means to transfer Lance’s imagery onto the Vortex forming clay. More on that when the fired work is collected.
Lance and Mike have a shared spiritual philosophy honed by Tantra about letting go of thoughts/ego and letting the deeper flow work with your intentions, and possibly the same way of experiencing creativity from deep inside as many great creatives have alluded to. The Vortex project seems to be a wonderful example of that in practice where we had been blocked by trying to control the creative process with our thoughts. Letting go and doing something else had allowed other things in both of us to pop up seemingly randomly but together taking us forward. Even the printing course was fairly random and booking it was on impulse with no end in mind. The nice thing is that both Lance and Mike can very easily work together on clay printing as its an easily learned technique. More to come over the next few months.