So before half term I made up a pile of images with the idea of making a ‘dream of Paladino’ piece as a tribute and as a way of thinking about the use of fragments in Paladino’s work. After half term I walked back into the classroom and saw the pile of things on the table and momentarily forgot why I had done it. And then I wondered why I had thought it was a good idea.

After a bit I decided to use them anyway and I quickly put together two ‘Paladinos” which worked quite well. I am not sure what they have to say about fragments though. There is something different about making fragments deliberately to put together into an image. I know what I am doing and I am planning ahead really, I am just building an image out of disparate bits. I make some more fragments on some more varied materials around the art room and make up another one on a small canvas. Not really very happy though. For the research project part of the point is that the different bits of the fragmentary practice are more broken up than that, more separated by time and materials and intention and part of the point is that they only look evenly vaguely coherent after the event. This is different to the bits being made as fragments.

To make a work out of fragments then the work has to be accidentally made as fragments, almost. If that can be done. Certainly I have been thinking more about leaving things undone or half done and not having the same need to ‘finish’ things. But I am not sure how I can deliberately make accidental fragments. Perhaps the point is that all of the work is made of fragments of time and effort and leave it at that.

Is everyone’s? I suppose I am again contrasting this with some sort of Ideal Artist deeply delving into their practice in long lonely uninterrupted hours in the studio as opposed to making stuff in the gaps.

I did a lot of ceramics work with the pupils last week and this and I made a couple of plates up whilst this was going on. I liked these a lot and this has started a chain of thinking about commemorative plates, Grayson Perry, Richard Prince and Lilly Van Stokker and further text pieces in clay.