"ARTYFACTS"
INSPIRED BY THE WORKS OF DAME JOCELYN BARBARA HEPWORTH
22/01/2025
The Wednesday Experimental Artgroup’s first assignmenton in 2025 was led by Jan Callender on the Hospital Drawings and sculptures of the celebrated Cornwall based artist, Barbara Hepworth
Artist & Sculptor best known for sculptures.
The remit for the group was to design and produce a clay model based on her sculpture’s and were offered a 21/2 lb ball of self drying clay to work with which, for some, was the first time they had ever worked with clay. It was hard physical work bashing the clay into the right state for creating the designs but eventually mini Barbara’s started to evolve. This took a bit more time to complete as the models needed to dry to a leather state before finely carving and
then sanding when completely dry, which took approximately a week. The models were then burnished and painted using acrylic paint.
Quite a few of the group tackled both the clay models as well as the Hospital Drawings , which were based on Barbara’s drawings of surgeons at work saving lives. This came about following her own young daughter’s hospitalisation and an invitation by her daughter’s surgeon to attend a surgical procedure in order to sketch what she observed, concentrating on the surgeons eyes and hands, and some of the group opted for just doing the drawings.
All in all I think we spent an interesting time learning about Barbara Hepworth, a Yorkshire woman born in Wakefield in 1903 who attended the Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art during the 1920’s and married the Sculptor John Skeaping in 1925. But then she fell in love with the painter Ben Nicholson and after her divorce to Skeaping married Nicholson in 1938. During WW2 she and Nicholson moved to St Ives in Cornwall where she stayed and worked until her death in a fire in her studio in 1975 when she was 71.
Finding out that she wasn’t just the leading female World acclaimed British Sculptor of her time but also an incredible artist was amazing and I think most of the group thoroughly enjoyed the experience, albeit hard work!
Here are some photos of our work, but please do check out our gallery for more detail.
The remit for the group was to design and produce a clay model based on her sculpture’s and were offered a 21/2 lb ball of self drying clay to work with which, for some, was the first time they had ever worked with clay. It was hard physical work bashing the clay into the right state for creating the designs but eventually mini Barbara’s started to evolve. This took a bit more time to complete as the models needed to dry to a leather state before finely carving and
then sanding when completely dry, which took approximately a week. The models were then burnished and painted using acrylic paint.
Quite a few of the group tackled both the clay models as well as the Hospital Drawings , which were based on Barbara’s drawings of surgeons at work saving lives. This came about following her own young daughter’s hospitalisation and an invitation by her daughter’s surgeon to attend a surgical procedure in order to sketch what she observed, concentrating on the surgeons eyes and hands, and some of the group opted for just doing the drawings.
All in all I think we spent an interesting time learning about Barbara Hepworth, a Yorkshire woman born in Wakefield in 1903 who attended the Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art during the 1920’s and married the Sculptor John Skeaping in 1925. But then she fell in love with the painter Ben Nicholson and after her divorce to Skeaping married Nicholson in 1938. During WW2 she and Nicholson moved to St Ives in Cornwall where she stayed and worked until her death in a fire in her studio in 1975 when she was 71.
Finding out that she wasn’t just the leading female World acclaimed British Sculptor of her time but also an incredible artist was amazing and I think most of the group thoroughly enjoyed the experience, albeit hard work!
Here are some photos of our work, but please do check out our gallery for more detail.