The Pour

Over the weekend I did what I call “a pour”. This is when I apply the resin to my sculptures. This does several things. It physically bonds everything in place, making it virtually impossible to remove or move an item on the sculpture. In the past, with a hammer and crowbar, I have removed things but it is neither pretty nor desirable. It also gives a sculpture a mental finality. You can still add items but it really gives a work a sense of completion almost like framing a painting. While this piece has had its first pour there is still more that I want to do and it needs another pour to clean up some rough edges.

So as you can see Miss-Match is the sculpture that has been poured. Now it goes back to the layout table to be tinkered with. Still thinking about playing around with this so more but now when I move the sculpture or bump it by mistake the items placed on the piece will not scatter – that can become a real pain in the neck because I need to go back and readjust everything. As I spoke about in an early post, I may add lighting and box in the item on the right as that part of the sculpture feels unfinished.

You may also notice that I changed the plastic piece over the “winking girls” to red. I felt the yellow blended too much into the wood color. That whole section may also need to be re-poured as the resin is sitting below the surface in the holes of the plastic. This does something odd to the eyes. The result was unexpected so I need to think if it works for or against the sculpture.

Miss-match Continued

Creation of miss-match is starting to become real fun. Note, there is a slight change in the name. I cut out one of the school pictures and have placed it into a dial like device – this was also moved to on top of the radio thingy. I am calling this little part of the piece “dial a girl”. It made me laugh when I came up with this little construction.
I removed the tin that was running across the top of the sculpture, it was irritating me and felt it was just not working. I replaced this with some wire and continue to work on the way the wire attaches to the sculpture.

I played around with four pictures of the girls a bit. Two are now behind a yellow piece of plexi with one eye each poking through holes, in a sort of “winking” gesture. One image I placed behind the device to left. If you view the piece just right you can see her eye through the device.'

I might work on enclosing this a bit more and putting a light inside. Hmmmm, that would be something very unusual for me to do. Could it be too much for the sculpture? I might just have to play around to see what I can do with it. I have a couple other pieces that I have toyed with the idea of alternative light sources maybe this is where I take the leap?

In this piece I have used a bunch of old school photos. A lot of people ask me is that you? Is that an old girlfriend? Who are these kids? Well here is the secret; the photos came from a box of junk I found in the hall of one of the studios I lived in. I also found a bunch of Duroc Pig certificates, canceled checks and old letters from a farm in the Illinois. It is real interesting stuff and gives a discombobulated history of a family farm. I have used a lot of the school photos and am starting to run low – Yikes. Hopefully I can find some more before they run out. Hint Hint - I accept donations. This sort of thing always amazes me – these people were living a life that I have nothing to do with and here I am in the future reading their letters looking at school photos attempting to piece their lives together and get an understanding of who they are. Yet – I am certain there is so much under the covers that I will never know about the death of a family dog, an unspoken affair or a storm that took down the old apple tree. When I create my work I will sometimes sit there and make up these stories. It is almost like I am trying to get the objects to speak about their history. Like the old saying “if these walls could talk the stories they would tell”, my job is to create that sort of conversation. The personal aspect is where it starts to get tricky because to the story I bring my own personal baggage, my life story. My history starts to get muddled in with the history of the object. Taking it to the next level when the work is observed by a viewer their world is then interjected. The muddling continues so that the viewer, mine and object’s history become intertwined. The interpretation is then left up to the observer.

Recycling older sculptures

So the piece called flag is still developing. When I started it I was excited I finally found an interesting way to use the wings. There is an issue with some of the objects that I find they will sometimes overwhelm a sculpture. I have had these wings for about seven years, I cannot recall where I found it but I believe it was the trash in East Boston. I have tried to use the item multiple times but each time it was too much for the sculpture. Finally it seems to blend real well here. I do need to work on the side if the wood holding the wings and am not certain about the exact placement of the “nailed pennies” but as you read on you will see they are part of a concept.

Interesting tidbit about the nailed pennies, those were retrieved off a sculpture that I dismantled. Not only do I recycle items found on the street but I recycle my own sculptures that seem bland or no longer speak to me. The recycled piece was from my days at the museum school and was in reference to an interesting article I read that spoke about pennies and the fact that it cost more the one cent to make each penny. Funny we are still throwing money away on them now. I have read that it costs 1.26 to 1.7 cents to make one penny depending on the price of zinc and copper. Here is a link about how much it costs to make a penny. While the older piece was just about decreasing value of currency this piece speaks more to hording as a result of this decreased value. It refers to the mentality that you need to spend to stimulate the economy but then the need to hold on to that cash for your personal well being. There is a constant battle being played out in our economy where it is stimulated by spending but the ones that save seem to be the people that come out ahead.

After writing about this I think that the title "Flag" may not relate enough to this piece. I need to come up with a better title. The concept of “Flag” came from the basic structure of the pennies in the sculpture with the pennies forming a circle like that in the early Bettsy Ross flag. I also have arranged the pennies to point outwards as the stars the flag do. I like this aspect but it is not what the piece is about

The First Sculpture

So my last posting inspired me to clean up my work table a bit. I did not realize how bad it had become. Following are two photos of the cleaned table.

I currently have two pieces I am working on. One is currently called “mis-match”while the other is called “Flag”.

I reserve the right to change the name of these as they develop.

This post is about Mis-match and right now it is really taking off. I am getting a good vibe from it and am working on how to display the images of the girls. I do not like them sitting so flat on the surface and am also having issues with the piece of tin across the top - I may loose that by the next post. One thing that inspires me in the work is the wire. This runs along the bottom of the sculpture and covers the image of the boy holding his hand out in a "stop" gesture.

Below is a detail of the wire and how it hovers above the boy. I found the wire and "electronic thingy" in an old radio. I am working on integrating the two elements of the boy and wire with the rest of the surface. I think I will add more wires and have been thinking of some heavy manipulation of the wood surface that everything sits on. Sorry about the "blow out" in the photo. I am working on getting better shots.

Next Post I will show you "flag" and I am willing to bet that mis-match will have progressed quite a bit.

Beginnings and Introductions

My name is Mark Cordeiro and I am an artist in Boston. This blog is about my creative process. Specifically about how I create my art, the modifications and changes a piece may go through right to the final product and shelving or destruction of a piece that did not work. When I create a sculpture it goes through multiple revisions and modifications, it may start out being about one thing and then morph to have a separate context. Some pieces have taken me ten years to complete while others seem to just flow and I can complete them in a week. Why is this? I think that sometimes an object overwhelms a piece and I have a difficult time pushing past it’s specific subject matter, other times it may have to do with not having the proper item to complete a work. In this blog I plan on showing the progression of works including these incomplete sculptures as well as sculptures that are starting and follow them to completion. First I would like to introduce you to my basement studio which drastically needs to be organized, but we will not go there today.
Ok so above is the Left side of my construction Table. As you can see it is pure Chaos but I know where most stuff is.


And now the right side - stuff always seems to pile up over here.. You can see some of my storage shelves in the background. These are staging areas for objects that may make it into a piece. I will show these off a little more later but there is some real cool stuff that I found living in them.


Finally here is the pour table where I pour the resin on the sculptures. I have to set them on wood blocks so they do not stick to the table. Sometimes I need to coax them of with a hammer. You can also see a few sculptures that are being worked on. We will see more about these later















This is my first blog so I am not certain how often I will update but I will try to do this monthly. I hope you enjoy this and learn something about how I create my work.
Mark