A mushroom is not a cuff

I am still stuck on what a sculptural cuff might be. Especially in my practice, which draws on a lot of sculpture's more tactile history and centres around mould-making, material reactions and curing. There is a lot of casting, a lot of cement, a lot of materials which start as one thing and become another.

Of course, once you start doing this kind of work, it is hard to unsee it: it is everywhere. The work we are doing when we lay a paving slab is almost identical to the work of casting in the studio. So is the work of cooking - the first process I really fell in love with - it is all about measurements, temperatures, turning one thing into another. And home repairs are so identical to sculptural practice that most sculptors I know spend more time in Home Depot than in traditional art shops... But this work is most apparent to me when I go to the woods/ the bush/ the land. The way that materials flow into/around/through each other, and the tactility and immediacy of the material encounter seems very clear to me in ecosystems that are mostly flora and fauna.

So, walking through the forest yesterday, I was thinking about sculptural cuffs, and I came to two assertions:

- A mushroom/fungal fruiting body looks like a cuff to a human, but it is not a cuff.



- A burl is a cuff.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZEq89eT0rCU/VBJAdE7UB5I/AAAAAAAAAgI/LMjYFfgenm0/s1600/Burl_Slab.png

(The way it is a change of direction. The way it folds the wood's bodying in on itself. The way it is nonessential, yet its pull and difference changes the growth of the tree...)