Abercrombie Awards

Another competition.  In this case, I got shortlisted, produced a prototype and then lost out to Adam Johns again, with Adam using a similar hot glass "egg" design to the one for the Building Forum award competition, covered in my previous post.

This was a competition staged by town planners in Plymouth City Council.

Patrick Abercrombie and James Paton Watson created the 1943 "Plan for Plymouth" after the city was effectively flattened in World War II.

The Abercrombie Awards are handed out every three years "celebrating the development and improvement of Plymouth's built environment".  This year, 10 awards are planned with the theme of "A Changing City".

 The brief came in a 20th August email and submissions had to be in sharpish, by 1st September.   Up to four artists were to be shortlisted and given £100 each to produce a prototype by 22nd September.  A winner would then get £1,300 to make 10 awards by 24th October.

In view of the short timeframe I decided to keep it simple and propose a design engraved on a piece of flat glass, mounted on another block of glass.

I started out trying to be clever and use parts of Abercrombie's Plan for Plymouth in the design but I couldn't make it work - it was too obscure.

I went back to basics.  I thought the award ought to be easily recognisable as Plymouth and ought to have some sort of reference in it to the Council's strategic plan to promote Plymouth as the "waterfront" city.  That led me on to Smeaton's Tower, a strong symbol of Plymouth, a seagull, a waterfront bird, and a view looking down from on high, which is the way town planners like Abercrombie often look at their work.

I proposed getting the awards made by Proto Studios, the outfit I worked with on the Derriford Hospital sculpture and I signalled a problem - I couldn't make the prototype myself until the college workshops opened on 29th September, a week after the deadline.

I got shortlisted and I sidestepped the issue by getting Proto to make the prototype:

In the end,  I lost out to Adam Johns with a proposal that was similar to his Building Forum "egg" ...

....but had "a skyline of buildings at the top" according to the organiser.

Once again, I would have picked Adam's proposal over mine.  

I don't envy Adam the task of producing 10 awards of this quality in a period of 3 weeks.  I would find it very stressful (even if I had Adam's hot glass skills).

The feedback I got was:

Peter Heywood’s was liked because looking at it, it immediately said “award” at the same time as incorporating Plymouth in the image. But this was the reason others also didn’t like it. Because the Abercrombie Awards are architectural awards and they wanted something “striking”.

Lessons

• Hot glass beats engraving for awards, as I said in the Building Forum post.  I didn't think there was enough time for anybody to propose this.
• I think I picked the best solution for me -  where I did the design and then handed over the production to Proto - bearing in mind the time constraints and my lack of engraving experience.
• I think the design would have looked better with less deep-carved lines.  I didn't fully understand what was meant when discussing it beforehand with Proto
• In different circumstances I might have tried to create the feathers on the seagull using a lathe.

Building Forum Award

I think it's probably a good thing that I've been taken down a couple of pegs by failing to win any of the five of the competitions I entered during the summer.

I feel suitably chastened, although I'll carry on entering competitions whenever the opportunity arises - they're a great way of pushing myself and getting a brutal assessment of my work.  

This post is about the "Building of the Year" award for the Building Forum for Devon and Cornwall - one of two competitions signalled in  college email on 20th August.  

The brief did a lot of stipulating.  In particular, the award had to use the colours and shapes on the award page of the Building Forum website... 

 ...and it had to include the full names of the award and Forum.  The prize was £200.

The colour, shape and lettering requirements hemmed me in quite a bit.  Also, I didn't want to commit to anything that would be difficult, time-consuming or stressful to make in the fairly short timeframe - the deadline for completing the award was the end of October. 

Eventually, I hit on the idea of creating a geometric pattern from the shapes, using enamels.  In that way, I could send away for a decal of the design, apply it to a glass plate that I could buy for a few pounds, and then fire it.  Job done!

I don't feel too bad about losing this competition because the winner was Adam Johns,  a Plymouth College of Art graduate whose hot glass work I've seen and admired (see previous post).  Here's his design:

If I had been assessing submissions I would have picked this over my offering myself.

Adam used the same concept, with the same result (i.e. winning) for the Abercrombie Awards, the other competition in the college email mentioned earlier.  I'll write about that one in a separate post.

Lessons

• I think my design was quite clever and quite striking given all the stipulations about what it should incorporate.
•  I think its implementation on a bought-in plate was its weakness.   However,  it was right for me - I didn't want to be drawn into a complicated production process.  
• It's tough to compete against hot glass for awards.  If you're capable ( as Adam is and I'm not) then it looks as though it's possible to produce a beautifully polished 3D item fairly quickly and thus cost effectively. 
• Conventional cast glass is a non-starter for awards as I've discovered on previous projects - see the orienteering and running awards I made.  They take a long time to make, the materials are expensive and grinding/polishing can get stressful.  
• I still think there's some potential in making awards by pouring molten glass into moulds - see my "simpler" running awards.  However I failed to win a competition using this approach for the Association of Colleges "Gold" awards earlier this year -  I'll write about it some time.

Devonport Column Merchandise

Another competion, another rejection!

This was for a gift shop item for Devonport Column, the monument in Plymouth for which I designed the gates - see more.

Here's the brief:

We are seeking an innovative, artistic and relevant design which represents the column project. Your design must be applied to a product which may be handmade (for example glass, ceramic items) or manufactured to house your design (for example tea towel or mug). You must consider the fact that the product needs to be saleable in a gift shop setting.

There is a budget of £1,200 to produce a limited edition range of the product. Please take this into account when submitting your entry to ensure that the product can be produced and will have a suitable retail price. If successful further items may be produced for sale.

Please email your design to alumni@pca.ac.uk including your name, CV, and a link to your website/online portfolio (if you have one). Your design must be accompanied with a statement of no more than 500 words describing your inspiration for the design and explaining the production of the piece.

Once shortlisted two the selected artists will receive £200 to produce a prototype in order to test the viability of the product, after which a winning design will be selected. Adjustments to the design may be requested at this point before identifying the chosen design. 

In early July 2014 I submitted 2 possible designs that could be engraved onto low cost lager or latte glasses.  I got a quote from an engraving company to do this for £3 per glass so long as there were more than 100 glasses.

Design A

This is an outline of Devonport Column when the glass is vertical/full and a telescope when it’s horizontal/empty. The telescope delivers a strong message about the great views from the top of the Column and also provides a maritime reference.

Design B

This etching is already used on the Column’s beer label.  I included it in case my telescope/column idea was considered too whacky.

A long silence ensued, in spite of me sending a couple of emails asking what was happening.  On 1st October, almost 3 months since my submission on 8th July, I was told:

None of the submissions we received were deemed strong enough to take forwards. I thought this had been communicated to you so I am sorry that this was not the case. We were looking for something a little more unique and innovative to mirror the project itself. 

I thought my telescope/column idea was unique, innovative and mirrored the project itself.  I suggested it could be developed but was told "we are not going to take this concept forward."

Lessons

So (as usual) I don't have much feedback to help me learn from my experiences.   But here's where I think I might have gone wrong:

• I should have produced a more polished submission on a single design board rather than a couple of photos and a statement on a separate sheet.
• I think the telescope/column idea has legs but it needed more development.  However, I didn't really have time to do this - the deadline was quite tight.
• In a perfect world I should have shown what the finished product would look like - the engraving on the glass - but I couldn't see an easy way of doing this without actually engraving a glass with the design.  And that was supposed to be Phase 2 - shortlisted artists producing a prototype.

Vantablack

Interesting interview on BBC4's Today program this morning - Anish Kapoor talking about Vantablack,  a nano-technology material that is said to be "the world's darkest material - so dark you can't see it".

Kapoor is working with this material and in the interview he says it has peculiar properties.  Because it absorbs light it creates a sort black hole that doesn't have a shape.  And Kapoor says that not having boundaries does funny things with our perception of time.

Sounds really interesting!

Here's a link to the  Today interview with Kapoor

Here's a link to an article about it in Dazed. 

Energy from Waste Sculpture

Another competition for a large scale public sculpture that I entered over the summer.

I didn't even get shortlisted on this one which was quite a blow, even  though I keep on telling myself to manage my expectations on competitions.  I'm hoping this post will help me analyse where I went wrong.

Here's the background:  

MVV Environment Devonport Ltd, a company completing a huge energy-from-waste incinerator,  invited proposals for a work of art near the entrance to its facility, next to a busy road junction in Plymouth.

Here's some excerpts from the brief:

• The artwork must be site-responsive and engage with the specific context of the location, community and those who will come into contact with the work.  
•  Artists will consider the relationship of the site with local residents and the surrounding community. 
• The site for the commission is not otherwise an area where contemporary art is located and artists should consider how their work will engage with this audience.
• Artists should consider the context of the plant in terms of its commitment to green energy and carbon reduction.

The deadline for submissions was 30th June 2014.  Five artists were to be shortlisted and given £500 each to develop detailed designs.  The winner would then get £25,000 to create and install the work, with additional money for landscaping.  

I was shown around the site by Jane Ford, MVV's very helpful community liaison officer, who suggested using scrap or waste from the incinerator in the design.

As one might expect, there's been a lot of local opposition to the incinerator.  It's huge and although it will deliver a big reduction in Plymouth's carbon footprint I can understand people living nearby being worried about noxious fumes, smell, noise, and having a gigantic box blocking their view.

The location is really tricky.  Jane gave me a drawing showing the proposed base for the sculpture on the banks of the Camel's Head Creek, which is at the bottom of a 3 or 4 metre high bank next to a busy road junction.   

To my mind, this meant my design needed to achieve three key objectives:

1. Get over the message that the plant was investing in the future - slashing Plymouth's carbon footprint and in that way, preserving the environment for future generations.
2. Engage with the local community in a way that lets it move on from its opposition to the plant.
3. Address 2 audiences - people driving past at road level (who won't see the bottom 3 or 4 metres of the sculpture)  and people on foot at creek level.

I came up with what I thought was a "killer" idea for Objectives 1 and 2.  A "future generation" was right there, in Weston Mill Primary School,  opposite the sculpture site, on the other side of the road junction.

I went to see the school's art coordinator, Jennifer Usborne, and came up with a scheme under which all 340 pupils would each paint a tile that I would then incorporate in my design.   I proposed combining this with a nature walk along the creek so the school could visit the sculpture and the area would become an attractive place for families to come and admire the handiwork of their little ones.

On Objective 3 - addressing audiences in cars on the road and on foot at a much lower level - my initial proposal was this:

I wasn't entirely comfortable with it.  I thought it looked a little ungainly, mainly because the "stalk" of dustbins was too thick.

Anyhow, I submitted it, along with a statement etc, on 24th June, the day before I set off for the New Designers show in London.   While I was there, I encountered this over the entrance of Westminster City School:

Scrap plastic bottles forming a giant seed-head!

I decided I should rethink my design and I eventually did this almost from scratch, coming up with this:

I'd asked Jane how I should re-submit my proposal and as a result  I sent this sketch and 2 other photos (the seed head and a mock up of the view from the road)  plus an "addendum".

A long silence ensued and I eventually heard that I hadn't been shortlisted on 16th September.  The feedback I got from Jane was as follows:

Your submission generated a lot of discussion, however it was felt that there were issues with scale in your proposal. The concept of working with the local primary school was a very positive aspect of your application. 

I suspect the scale issue had to do with the size of the dustbins in relation to the tallness of the masts but I couldn't get Jane to elucidate.

The five shortlisted designs are on the MVV website - here's links to them:

• Tabatha Andrews
• Jimmy Bumble
• Gayle Chong Kwan
• A Mackie
• Thrussells

I'm  surprised that most of these designs take no account of the big difference in height between the proposed foundations at creek level and the road, particularly as the need to take account of the setting was spelled out in the brief.

However, there's some big lessons I can learn from this project:

Positives

• The school idea was a cracker
• I totally rethought the design when I encountered a new idea - a lesson from the Derriford Hospital project

Negatives

• I should have produced a much more polished submission on a single design board. 
• It would pay to get proficient at 3D modelling so I can make snazzier submissions  
• I should have worked harder on developing a homogeneous design.  My submission was a collection of bits and pieces.
• It was a mistake to submit before the deadline.  Having to submit an addendum  meant my submission was even more scrappy. 

UPDATE 1:  I went to a presentation by Jodie Bishop, public art officer at Plymouth City Council, on 8th October.   Lots to learn from the examples she gave, which included quite a bit about this project - she's on the selection panel.

Anyhow, Jodie made a big thing out of making sure you read the brief and address it, which prompted me to talk to her afterwards for a little whine.  I addressed the brief on this project and it was clear to me that some of the shortlisted artists hadn't!  I was misled by it!

Apparently, they are now talking about moving the whole idea to a different location - one that sidesteps the issues that had dictated my "two-level" design.  So I feel a little hard-done by.

A similar sort of thing happened on the Derriford sculpture project.  I spent a lot of time and effort making sure that my design was achievable only to discover that the alternatives were nowhere near as "developed" and that the selection process (so far?)  seems to have focused mainly on aesthetics and almost ignored the practicalities!

UPDATE 2:

The idea of getting pupils at local schools to paint tiles for something to do with the plant might get resurrected.  It might turn into objects on a nature trail through the woods.

UPDATE 3:

The winner ended up being a bell cast from scrap metal coming out of the incinerator, proposed by A Mackie (see link above).  

I think the idea was clever although the proposed support structure looked really ugly.  I understand that aspect has been redesigned.

As already noted,  the installation has also been shifted to a different location - one that sounds a lot less visible to passers-by.

Derriford Sculpture

Over the summer I've entered five competitions, two of which have been for large scale public sculptures.

In this post I'm going to focus on the earlier one, the Organ Donor Recognition project for Derriford Hospital, and review the lesson/s learned from it.

This started as a college project.  All the students in the 1st and 2nd years of Contemporary Craft were asked to propose designs for one of various projects, one of which was for two sculptures and a seat for Derriford Hospital, to thank organ donors and inspire others to follow in their footsteps.

I  focused my effort on the larger sculpture, for the main entrance to the hospital, proposing a design that could be scaled down to suit the smaller sculpture in a courtyard.

 I came up with a general concept - hands reaching out to each other, appealing for and offering help, inspired by Michelangelo's "God creating Adam" painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Stage 1.

I proposed a very large (3m high by 1.2m wide) sheet of 25-mm-thick glass slump cast over a mould of the hands on a concave surface.  I cast a 1/10 model, pictured below:

 I was shortlisted, along with 3 other proposals, and I was asked to develop my ideas further, particularly in term of costs.

Stage 2.

I knew that the scale of my project meant that it would have to be made by a specialist - none of the kilns at college were big enough and the weight, about half a ton, meant special lifting equipment would be needed.   So I contacted Proto Studios, a company with a long track record of working on architectural glass projects, and I went to see them in Wiltshire.

David Proto told me that slump-casting was a non starter on safety grounds.  If someone was able to crack the sculpture (which would take some doing) it could fall on top of someone and kill them.   He proposed an alternative - deep sand-blasting the hands in a sheet of glass that could then be bent and toughened and bonded to a second bent and toughened sheet to create a laminated monolith.  It would  be almost unbreakable and if it did break, one side would shatter completely but be supported by the other side and stay in place, like a car windscreen.

David gave me a quote for doing this, so my second submission was now a practical proposition with realistic costs and a proposed contractor.

I made a 1/10 model, pictured below:

All the same, I wasn't too keen on the laminated monolith approach.  I'd wanted the whole thing to be much more 3D.  I'd liked the idea of the slump-casting in Stage 1 causing ripples in the glass that would catch light and convey the idea of energy, a life force, being passed between the hands.

As a result, my revised design boards suggested that the original idea might work in another material, such as one of the plastic alternatives to glass.

Not surprisingly, I was asked to look into this idea further, which I did quite extensively.  It was very interesting but I concluded it was a bit of a blind alley - the materials existed but very few companies had used them on large scale sculptures, the cost was probably going to be prohibitive and there were question marks over how the material would age.

Stage 3.

I didn't much like the laminated monolith idea and alternatives to glass had been a dead end, so I was at a bit of a loss.

Then I had a brainwave - a totally different way of implementing the same basic concept of the hands reaching out to each other.   This involved 3D modelling the whole project and then water-jet cutting up to about 100 relatively small pieces of glass and stacking them horizontally, threading them onto rods.

I discussed this idea with Formlite, the company I worked with on the gates for Devonport Column.  It was game to do the 3D modelling.

I discussed it with Proto Studios who agreed that it was a far less risky (and thus less costly) idea than the laminated monolith.  The water jet cutting could be done in a factory environment and transportation and assembly would be much easier because we would be dealing with relatively small, light pieces of glass.

Unfortunately, however, time was running out for submitting this idea. I didn't have time to do a 3D scan of hands and arms or get Formlite to create a proper 3D computer model of a prototype.  

I ended up designing it in 2D on my computer and having to draw sections of the hand almost by guesswork.  Still, I managed to generate a file that I could feed into the college laser cutter to make about 40 pieces from a couple of 3-mm-thick acrylic sheets - see photo below:

I then threaded the pieces onto two threaded rods, spacing them apart by 3mm with washers.  This created a 1/5 model of part of my proposed sculpture:

Photos of my design boards for Stages 2 and 3 are on my website - click on this link to see them.

I and the other shortlisted candidates presented our ideas to the estates department of Derriford Hospital on 12th May.    I took along all my design boards and three models.

Unfortunately, the room at Derriford was very gloomy and as a result, the hand in my Stage 3 model didn't stand out as well as it might.  Also, it would have looked a lot better if I had been able to do a 3D scan of an actual hand, and if I had been able to do a 3D design of the whole project, rather than my rough-and-ready approach using a 2D drawing package.

This might sound a bit big-headed but my proposals were much more developed than the others.  I had discussed it in depth with companies that would help me design and build it so I knew it was a practical proposition.  The other proposals weren't much more than ideas that still needed a lot of development in terms of determining whether they were build-able, whether they were safe, whether they were weather-proof,   how much they would cost, what scales they should be, and so on.

Anyhow, the estate staff voted on the proposals and I came second.

I wonder whether I would have been better off trying less hard.   If I had stuck with my original proposal I could have "discovered" the safety problem later on if I had won  - and it would have put me on equal footing with the other candidates.

Having said that,  the proposal that came first was a clever idea and John Grayson, our course leader, balanced some positive comments on my proposal with a negative - that "the design concepts were rather derivative in nature".

I questioned this - see my previous post - and I've mulled over what he meant ever since.  John wasn't available to give me more than a one-sentence email as feedback.

 I've ended up seeing his point or view concerning one aspect of my design - the panel concept.   The switch to making the sculpture as a stack of horizontal glass plates gave me the opportunity to make a much more interesting and dynamic shape.  I wish I'd taken it, but the way the competition was structured meant that I tried to stick with the design idea that had been shortlisted.  Also, the timescale was tight, particularly as models were involved,  so I didn't really have the opportunity to go back and think things through from scratch.

As it happens, I subsequently encountered a sculpture that uses horizontal glass plates in a similar way to what I'd been planning.  The outcome was stunning - see the photo below.  It made me realise what I could have done, with more time,  in Stage 3.

I assumed that coming second in the voting at Derriford meant that I was out of the running on this project but when I voiced this opinion to John Grayson in July he replied:  "The final decision has not been made".

So who knows: maybe they'll be a Stage 4?    I would love the to opportunity to develop  my Stage 3 design some more, but I doubt whether this is going to happen.

Lessons

• Consider how and by whom proposals are going to be assessed.  The chances are they will be artists evaluating the aesthetics rather than engineers reviewing practicalities.  If this is the case focus on appearance rather than substance.
•  Look at who else has been invited to submit proposals.  Adjust the aesthetic/practicality balance of your own efforts accordingly.
• If you make a big shift in the way you plan to implement a concept then go right back to the beginning and see whether new opportunities have emerged.

Derivative?

In an assessment of my work for a competition to design a sculpture for the entrance of Derriford Hospital,  John Grayson (our course leader) listed some positives and then balanced them against what I assume was meant to be a negative, namely:  "The design concepts were rather derivative in nature."

I emailed John for clarification and got a one liner back, saying: "derivative in terms of source e.g. 'Creation of Adam' and in terms of the panel concept."

I'm not complaining but I'm puzzled by the use of the word "derivative" and it's negative connotation on a number of counts:

• What's wrong with being derivative?
• Isn't everything derivative anyhow?
• What's the difference between being derivative and including references to masterpieces in your work?   
• What proportion of viewers would "get" the references anyhow?