Daily Journeys by John Adamson

This is my 4th attempt at this project over the last 20 years or so. I started it when I was studying for a BA in Sculpture in Preston about 1997. It was my answer to a one day’s brief of “Do something in plaster”. Any one who has seen me at Saturday club meetings, and shows will have seen my 3rd attempt. The idea is that a group of people, take the same bus morning and afternoon. The day has changed how they feel and how they sit on their seat. The seats face one way in the morning, and the other way in the afternoon. For easy comparison of their states of mind each person sits by the side of their morning / afternoon self. I hope that make sense. If not you will have to come and see it next time we have a meeting, whenever that is.

Daily Journeys 3rd Attempt

It had started to go wrong some time last year and I patched up what I could, but now have come to the conclusion that some problems were just not fixable. The problems stemmed from mistakes at the design / planning stage. Because the sculpture was long and thin, and I had some lime of the right shape, I went right ahead and used it. The grain runs from left to right and the necks became a weak point. When leaning on a figure to carve the next, the inevitable occurred, and heads fell off. Then there was a problem with the seats. I tried to take short cuts, as they seemed to be so easy to do: a saw cut down the back. and a drill under the seats to allow me to get the waste out easily. Did not work out and I had to patch, and some were impossible. For my 4th attempt, I have the grain running vertically, and am carving 6 pairs of separate figures rather than 2 rows of 6. Seems to have worked out so far. Nothing has broken and the seats have been easier as the back can be done on a bandsaw. The 3rd attempt may seem like a waste of time and wood, but I learnt a lot, and thinking positively I don’t have to think up a new project for the foreseeable future.

As they will be in the finished sculpture

Before the Yoga / Pilates class

After the yoga / Pilates class

This a woman who attends a Yoga / Pilates class and has suffered. The last pilates class I attended, I left in an ambulance with a dislocated shoulder. I am told by Richard Colbran, that this is not the universal experience and that he felt better after the class. The work has to have a final finishing cuts and a coat of polish, but that will have to wait till I have all 12 figures finished so that they can all be brought to the same standard.

Details of the individual figures follow