moments of seeing, gestural drawings in india ink and school chalk

1.5 minutes of seeing something here and there... of the figure.

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Hi, I am Iurro. Please visit my web site to learn more about my art.


http://www.iurro.com

sand blasted

detail of torso number 10



Side and front views torso number 10, 30" x 10" x 8"


detail torso number 9




Multiple views torso number 10, 31" x 8" x 9"

Sunday April 22, I finished cutting off all of the sprues and vents. After hours of cleaning and the final sand blasting, the figures are almost ready to finish. They are assembled now and it is possible to see something of the original wax models. There were some areas that slumped during the dipping and have to be realigned. The beautiful deep sepia tone and luminous surface of the wax is gone. The stark honey tone of the bronze feels too clean, raw, unseasoned, lacking the subtle passages that were so beautiful. There are some last minute decisions about deepening the surface with hot or cold patinas and welding. I sometimes like to join the sections manually with wire. The third piece of this group will be cast next week and hopefully the group will be done by the end of this semester. It is not immediately apparent, but the figures heads have slight inclinations toward or away, depending on how they are placed. I have some small technical things to fix in the structures themselves. There are some cut off spurs that must be polished and the feet will be shaped and smoothed. I am excited to finally see the group after months of waiting between the initial designing process in January, the melt downs in February and then the slow process of rebuilding, preparing the pours and vents for the casting process, dipping the investment, casting and cleaning. Many steps. It is easy for me to lose my once compelling vision and in its place, I find only exhaustion. I will have to get away from the work, create a neutral eye and stumble on them before I will know if they are any good. The prejudice of expectation and investment are hard on the finished work.

Break outs

Casting in bronze is a humbling experience. There is no room for hubris or false confidence. You need to be clear, work as a single mind, anticipate but not over anticipate. Like going into battle, you stay frosty, ready to respond, wary of things that could go horribly wrong, but practiced in the quick assessment and action required to still the forward motion of an "incident" , a "nonsense" and to know the difference is crucial.

Sitting at the computer yesterday wrestling with emails, the director of the foundry, Sarah, said "Are you ready to go?" "Yes", I replied. "Then let's do this while we are still fresh..."

First we set up things that require an analytical presence; weighing out the bronze, firing up the furnace, stacking and lighting the burnout kiln. Taking a look at the clock, we estimate the burnout, and melt times and then go make some coffee. And drink some water. It is one of the things I often forget. In the heat of the foundry, it is easy to get dehydrated. The swift sequencing of the many steps of pouring compresses time and I lose track of human hours as I focus on bronze hours.

We decide to pour the top portions of the two torsos first. They are fairly small and the wax burns out quickly. Astonishing, the shells are perfect. There are none of the cracks than can sometimes run along sprue vents, and edges of long planes.

We suit up. This is the part where I begin to feel my breathing change. My bandanna, (to protect my ears, thin and quickly burned if left flapping in the open(!) and my hair that can completely burn off in a wave of convection heat) goes on first. We check to make sure we have our heavy cotton shirts (duck, canvas flannel). Acrylic will melt at a low temperature and continue to burn into your skin. Shoes, leather, heavy soled are the best foot coverings. Even with the leather and fireproof gators, it is possible to step on a piece of hot bronze that can burn through a sneaker in an instant. We are taking a chance to do this with only two people. The two pourers rely most heavily on each other.
I gear up, buckle and adjust the fireproof sleeves and apron, snug so that they do not flop away at a crucial moment, but loose enough to be able to move (quickly, if necessary), adjust our masks and then pull up the gloves. The gloves are bulky and I loose the sense of my fine motor movement as the hands I know so well are lost in these clumsy mittens. I wiggle my fingers, feel for holes where the air and heat can still come in. I adjust them. I take a deep breath, realizing now, that I have been taking very shallow breaths.

Sarah takes another peak at the bronze. "Ready?" "Let's do it!"

The furnace is turned off. The preheated shell is buried in the sand. Sarah opens the furnace and we lift the crucible from the furnace. The scum is skimmed from the hot pink yellow bronze. The pouring apparatus is clamped into place and we move toward the shells. Lifting and lowering 75 pounds in unison to find optimum pouring angle. The first one goes fine. The second one has some tiny broken vents that we did not see and so we have to stop pouring and hope we got enough in to fill the mold. We place the crucible back in the furnace and recalculate the next pour.

We get the two larger pieces and burn them out. They will be poured separately to spare our backs. Each pour takes its toll in our muscles, our reflexes, our focus. The next two pours go perfectly. There is a small crack that I repair, even though it appears to be a surface crack. We do not want any more surprises today.
There is a strange bubbling in the cup, which indicates trapped air in the cast. I will remember this and be more careful constructing the next wax model.

I break out the two small piece first. And then the two bottom pieces. The above photo shows the pour cup, sprues and air vents. These will be cut off and the white residue from the investment will be picked off with dental tools and sand blasted.
the pieces have some problems where the pour was incomplete, but over all I am very pleased with the results.

It is always a shock to see how small the bronze pieces are compared to the size and weight of the casts!

TLA Reader Cover Design 2007

Cold rainy day

I have been nailing one piece of dry wall everyday (collapsed powder room ceiling) so I am almost done with that.
In between, I am fussing with the cover design for the TLA Reader.
This week, I may pour the bronze for my sculptures, I really feel so bogged down in this process of casting. I miss the direct work, where I am not relying on other people.
Richard wants to put some new sculpture up in one of his buildings in the fall.
The sketchbooks are not going very well in my Goddard groups. The books are languishing somewhere in NY, MA, HA, NJ, Italy... Maybe, it is better in real life.. the mail being almost not possible to deal with.. stamps?

AIR Symposium: The Arts as creative Catalyst

Using the Arts as Stimulus to creativity, why haven’t we done a better job in areas outside the arts?

AIR Symposium, University of Maryland, College Park, 2007.

If you ever have a chance to hear or participate in any event where any one of these characters will be, drop everything and go. Laurie Anderson, Russell Banks, Liz Lerman, Walter Dallas and Joe Goode are generous, powerful, insightful, generators in the kind of art world that reminds me why I chose to be an artist.

Panel Moderator, Michael Collier questions in brackets.



Russell offered a biochemical allegory of a chemical reaction where the artist as catalyst, accelerates the creative reaction, but is not consumed in the process. Describing the university as a “largely parasitic institutional environment” (oh I wish I could write like that!) He warns that we must as artists remain free agents and know the stance of the institution that employs us but not identify with their aims and the goals. He conclude that he was lucky, that his school was willing to have an outsider in their midst.

Laurie related a story of an early experience of an elementary school art teacher who operated outside the classroom bells that herded people in and out of rooms, a transgressor who was all pumped up about orange, simple moments of personal seeing and expression, out of bounds..

Walter spoke of his early experience watching the garbage men in his town, laughing and finding joy with each other, the mysteries of new language in multi-cultural environment and wanting to carry these mysteries and joy into what ever he did, have a good time making a difference..

Liz described the challenge from her family to be an activist, in the world, deciding that after absorbing classicism that she would break away from it, that dance was an art that was somehow, not being used right. She wanted to find a way that honored the history of ballet but that was more inclusive movement, a story about her experience of researching in the financial world to build a narrative.. And how pleased people were that the arts were taking an interest in finance as something creative!

Joe described his work as coming from the felt experience, time.. Passion, that the goal is to create it so that someone else can feel it... to make himself transparent to share it



Russell: Teaching writers to find the consciousness to read the way a writer writes to create the out of body experience of what he called ‘controlled hallucination”. This makes it possible to begin to talk about inducing this experience in others.

Laurie: “What is stopping you from finding the space of your own creativity? Start transgressing now, give up hope of fruition, make an awful drawing, notice the rules you are breaking... begin to see creativity is an inexhaustible source of energy

Walter: instead of ‘park and bark’, use the process to find what you know inside already works, stay with it a little longer, find the real moment in felt experience, the pathway of delight

overcoming it?

Our society infantilizes fear instead of seeing it as an opportunity... a source of energy, a highly alert state of presence. Use the energy.
overcoming blocks...fix it later, find the heart of the work in the re-visioning process, let go of wanting to know too soon what it will be
ignore the career, do the work
let the ideas find you, notice what comes your way
trust that what you need is there already
fall into the space of fear and use it
give up the obsessive search for closure

It is not possible for me to give this writing the full breadth of the symposium. It was not always possible to write every thing just as it was spoken. I tried to capture as many of their words as they spoke in the moment. I didn’t want to miss anything while writing, so I wrote when they took a breath (Hah!) Or paused... The generosity in the spirit of the collaboration of the panel gave full mind and presence to addressing the questions in the personal experience of their respective practices.

I am revived. I feel able to stay in my job at the college.

9" x 12" studies of male torso

...drawings about seeing, thinking about seeing, finding the energy of the line, the tension in the neck, the posture, mapping the space of gesture allowing the most simple shift of shoulders to make a statement about the presence of the figures. I have made many drawings of dancers in very exagerated postures from the work of Martha Graham. I think these are more from Balenchine, using the body as an instrument in space. My attempts to reduce political content (gender, age, race) is to allow the status of the figure to be found by the viewer.

My struggle to energize the space takes place on a relatively small scale to quickly capture something of the model. I found these drawings in a pile of papers and have included them in this packet because I might have thrown them out in my attempt to clean up after years of making images. After reading Conversation before the end of Time ( Gablik) I was overwealmed with a sense of post-apocolyptic guilt. But then, I was also reading other things that told me that this is my work. I have given a lifetime of seeing to this and to deny it would be to erase all that I have learned from seeing.

Street Garbage four pages Jessica and Jennifer

The Exchange Project

I have begun to incorporate more garbage into the sketchbooks, looking for ways to recycle and reflect my community. Creating instant ephemera from things that are already lost, thrown away destroyed... until I salvage the object and reset in in another form that is also ephemera. The book I made last semester from the garbage on my street was part of a psycho-geographic mapping of my street. This project reflects street garbage from the parking lots at school and also the walks around the capital mall in DC. The things I seem attracted to are worn by time and weather, past their original intent and at the edge of being recognizable. The tags, food containers are processed by being run over, stepped on, scraped and torn.

I have asked several people to participate. Sometimes the burden of expected creativity can create a pressure, a gulf or gap in a relationship. Simple lack of time and energy can quickly become some unspoken obligation. So many times a person will hand a book back saying, I really didn't have time to work on this, and then hand me something luminous. So, I have asked some people to record their feelings around handling the books and entering the process. So, we'll see, maybe that will create more pressure!