1

Contents
List of Illustrations
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.......................Page 2
Introduction
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.......................Page 3
Chapter one: Aims and Objectives
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.......................Page 6
Chapter two: Methods and Practice - Drawing the tools
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.....................Page 10
Chapter three: Methods and Practice - Drawing with tools
................................................................................................................................
.....................Page 17
Chapter four: Evaluation
................................................................................................................................
.....................Page 37
Bibliography
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.....................Page 39

List of Illustrations
Cover Image. Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation with pin hammer (right handed). 2012. Carbon
on paper. 60 x 84cm.
Figure 1. Natalie Parsley. Tools 2 . 2009. Oil and gloss mono print on paper. 250 x 220cm.
Figure 2. Jim Dine. Untitled tool series (drywall hammer). 1973. Charcoal and graphite. 65.1
x 50.1cm.
Figure 3. Duchamp. In Advance of the Broken Arm. 1915. Wood and iron. 132cm high.
Figure 4. Natalie Parsley. Assorted Tools. 2011. Oil mono print on paper. 104 x 151cm.
Figure 5. Natalie Parsley. Tool line up. 2012. Oil mono prints on paper, hung on wooden
baton. 305 x 58cm (approx).
Figure 6. Vik Muniz. Beggar 4 After Rembrandt. 2011. Photograph with nails. 34.6 x 20cm.
Figure 7. Natalie Parsley. Chimp. 2011. Hammered oil mono print on paper. 149 x 110cm.
Figure 8. Natalie Parsley. Trace Studies. 2012. Mixed media. 46 x 46cm.
Figure 9. Natalie Parsley. Cells. 2012. Charcoal on paper. 150.5 x 130cm.
Figure 10. Niki de Saint Phalle. Untitled from Edition MAT 64. 1964. Plaster, paint, plastic,
wood. 72 x 54 x 5cm.
Figure 11. Yayoi Kusama. Infinity nets. 2008. Acrylic on canvas. 194.1 x 259.1 cm.
Figure 12. (a) Natalie Parsley. Tool Chest. 2012. Tool chest and acetate. 157.5 x 72 x 2cm.
Figure 12. (b) Natalie Parsley. Tool Chest. 2012. Tool chest and acetate. 157.5 x 72 x 2cm.
Figure 13. Natalie Parsley. Trace. 2012. Tool pegboard. 157.5 x 72 x 2cm.
Figure 14. Natalie Parsley. Test 1. 2012. Tenderiser and carbon on watercolour paper. 42 x
59.5cm.
Figure 15. Natalie Parsley. Test 2. 2012. Pin hammer and carbon on grey paper. 42 x
59.5cm.
Figure 16. Natalie Parsley. Test 3. 2012. Masher and carbon on Cotman watercolour paper. 60
x 84cm.
Figure 17. Natalie Parsley. Test 4. 2012. Carbon on circular cartridge paper. 148cm
(diameter).
Figure 18. (a) Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation with pin hammer (left handed).2012. Carbon on
paper. 60 x 84cm.
Figure 18. (b) Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation with pin hammer (right handed). 2012.Carbon on
paper. 60 x 84cm.

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Figure 19. Cai Guo Quiang. Conan Doyle. 2005. Gunpowder and ink on paper. 150 x 200cm.
Figure 20. Debbie Locke. Mapping Installation-Bow Wharf. 2012. Motors, NXT programmable
bricks, wire, plastic, ink, paper. Dimensions variable.
Figure 21. (a) Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation studies with pin hammer, claw hammer and
mallet (left handed). Carbon on paper. 2012. 150 x 155cm.
Figure 21. (b) Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation studies with pin hammer, claw hammer and
mallet (right handed). Carbon on paper. 2012. 150 x 155cm.

Introduction
My art practice during the last few years has specifically focused on tools as
my subject matter. One of the first bodies of work I created was a personal
enquiry/response to the tools on my Grandfathers farm. Using these tools as my
source material I made large scale representational prints and drawings (Fig. 1).
The tool prints of the American artist, Jim Dine (Fig. 2) heavily influenced the
visual style of this work in its early development.
In the first year of my Masters in Fine Art I researched agricultural tools at
The Somerset Heritage Centre. Here I began to deepen my understanding of
tools as cultural objects with a
patina and history that documents both their use and the lived experience of
the people who used them. The answer to the question of, What is a tool? that I
posed to David Walker, the curator of The Somerset Heritage Centre, during my
research visit is the starting point for the aims and objectives of this project
report. His reply,
A tool is an appendage to the body to increase the range of what the
human body can do. Tools are extensions of ourselves in a bodily sense
but also in a physical sense. (Walker, 2011)
This is quite a broad statement as initially my enquiry into, what is a tool? was
both in a linguistic sense i.e. (what do we categorise as being a tool?) And in a
bodily sense, (how do we know what a tool is through its use?) In chapter one I
have clarified my aims and objectives and given my reasons for specifically
examining an embodied relationship to tools.
Chapter two documents my initial struggle to move away from my familiar
way of working and sustained questioning that followed. In chapter three I revisit
and understand my original aims and intentions more thoroughly and was able to
see how I could use the indexical in my work to take my drawings in a new
direction. Finally, in chapter four, I summarise and evaluate the work as well as
the outcomes I have produced against my aims and objectives.

Figure 1. Natalie Parsley. Tools 2 . 2009. Oil and gloss mono print on paper. 250
x 220cm.

Figure 2. Jim Dine. Untitled tool series (drywall hammer). 1973. Charcoal and
graphite. 65.1 x 50.1cm.

Chapter One: Aims and Objectives

Aims
- To create work as research into the enquiry of what is a tool? I aim to explore a
more embodied theoretical approach to tools by focusing on their physicality and
mark-making potential.
- Explore what it means to recognise the image of a tool(s) as a sign and how
can I necessarily use my new mark making processes in conjunction with this.
This is not to say, at this stage, whether the work made will be representational
or not but will begin with an exploration into mark making.
Objectives
-To analyse what it means to use a tool.
-To link the above back into my practical work, specifically using drawing/mono
printing as a means of exploring mark making and how that may/may not relate
to a bodily experience.
- Answer the following questions: How can a pragmatic approach to using the
tools potentially aid the process of knowing a tool better? What is it to know a
tool?
In beginning the journey to understand what a tool is, I think it would be
useful to distinguish how a tool functions as an object. In the Human Condition
Hannah Arendt (1958: 121), in a chapter on labour, discusses tools, ...they
[tools] do not belong to the process of consumption but are part and parcel of
the world of use objects... What, therefore can we discover about tools, as
objects? Baudrillard (1996: 86), in The System of Objects states, Every object
thus has two functions to be put to use and to be possessed. The put to use
factor in this statement would certainly fit with Walkers definition of a tool,
however there are many interpretations of what use could actually mean.
I am interested in how the use of an object can be altered through art, for
example, does a representational image of a tool (in this case a hammer), in a
drawing by Jim Dine (Fig. 2) have a use? And if so how is that use different to
how the snow shovel is used in Duchamps readymade In advance of the broken
arm (Fig. 3)? Both use a tool as the subject; however they use them in different
ways. The Dine drawing is a perception of a hammer, which cannot be likened to
the physical sensation of using a hammer, but in being perceived and then
drawn it becomes symbolic and infused with personal meaning to Dine. I would
argue this is still a form of use in the sense as in Dines work it is being used for
personal expression or, as a symbol that gives us insight into the artists
personal psychology. Whereas Duchamps use of the tool, the snow shovel, is
challenging pre-Modernist conceptions of what art can be. Duchamp simply
assigned an exhibition value to use value objects. Boyd (2006). Here, the
use of the tool is being transformed from the use it was designed and made for
(that of shovelling snow) into a different use as an art object in a gallery context.
What both have in common is that they reference the human body. Dine himself
states, A tool is like a bone. (Cited in Enright, 2004: 117).
In my work it is important that I am clear in my intentions as to how I am using
the tool. Taking this debate further, I will be exploring how I use my tools and
what interpretations my different approaches create. Although, according to
Martin Heidegger (1996: 68),

7
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a useful thing. There always
belongs to the being of a useful thing a totality of useful things in which
the useful thing can be what it is. (1996: 68)
Ultimately, I will be searching for a method of using my tools which conveys a
sense of the body and the lived experience of using a tool. Whether the tool
used is defined by its relationship to other

Figure 3. Duchamp. In Advance of the Broken Arm. 1915. Wood and iron. 132cm
high.

useful things is something I hope will be revealed in the process of working. I am

also looking to define what that lived experience might be as I am aware of the
ambiguity of the word bodily in my objectives. Bodily, like use may have
many definitions and in the beginning stage of my working process I do not want
to be too specific as to what they might be, as that is what I am attempting to
find out through the work.
In relation to the other function of objects in Baudrillards statement, to be
possessed is also an interesting starting point. As I previously mentioned, Dine
was a significant influence early on in my practice,
When I was a boy I discovered hand tools...I wanted to possess them and
what better way to possess them than to draw them. Dine, (2005: 5)
This statement links to my own process of drawing/print making where I often
argue that my personal obsession with tools and my constant need of re-visiting
them by drawing them could also be described as a possessive act. How,
therefore, does the act of drawing help me know what a tool is?
I would propose that the act of drawing is a pragmatic process and drawing as
a method traditionally done by hand also connects to the hands use of tools,
Hand and tool co-evolve over time; much creative thinking happens
through the activity of the hands themselves. Martin (2011)
This idea of thinking through hands is discussed in the book, On drawing by
John Berger (2005: 102) who states, To draw is to know by hand. Meaning that,
the act of drawing is more than a process of merely looking and mark making.
That, drawing is to know by hand is to perceive something through an
experience that requires sight, mind, hand and body in order to function. I think
Berger is saying that drawing is a more embodied experience than merely a
looking exercise. Which Dewey (2005: 24) explains, To see, to perceive is more
than to recognise. Suzi Gablik (1976: 73) in Progress in art has a similar view,
To perceive a structure is not enough to be able to copy it or imitate it in
drawing. Both would seem to support the idea that drawing and the perception
it entails are not just about looking, but are more embodied experiences.
Experiences, that draw on other experiences and knowledge in order to function.
In a chapter of his book discussing Merleau-Pontys phenomenology, Crowther
(1993: 41) writes, our fundamental knowledge of the world comes through our
bodys exploration of it and similarly the philosopher Martin Heidegger [1889
1976] also has ideas on the experience of being in the world, as Crowther
(1993: 4) writes,
Our human mode of belonging to the world...involves recognition of our
affinity and reciprocity with things.
And how Heidegger in Being and Time (1996: 66) explains,

...the less we just stare at the thing called hammer, the more actively we
use it, the more original our relation to it becomes and the more
undisguisedly it is encountered as what it is, a useful thing.
Berger does not, however, specify what type of drawing he is referring to and
one of the things I aim my drawing practice to explore is to discover what kind of
drawing is to know by hand, whether the recognition of an object also becomes
a recognisable sign of that object and how is that then interpreted by the viewer.
This is the theoretical underpinning I aim to explore in my practice and I will
discuss further in relation to my work in the next chapter.

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Chapter Two: Methods and Practice Drawing the tools

I have found this project to be a personal battle between holding on and
letting go of previously learnt and familiar ways of working. Specifically, this
chapter is about my attachment and reluctance to let go of the representational
in my work and how I discovered a new way of working. Initially I continued to
make prints of the tools themselves (Fig. 4). Through an obsession of looking
and depicting tools I thought I would eventually capture the visual qualities they
have as objects of use. I even tried to change the scale of the tools (Fig. 5) to
see if that changed the bodily relationship with the image of the tools. It did
change how the viewer felt to encounter these familiar objects on different
scales, but I still felt that it was only a visual form of knowing that I was dealing
with in the prints i.e. the prints showed and captured the form and shape of the
tools but none of the weight or the lived experience of what it feels like to be a
body wielding/holding/using a tool. The representational image alone may do
little more than create a recognisable sign of the original object, I question
whether the act of drawing (as an embodied process) can allude to connotations
that tools have as objects of use/doing? Torreano (2011: 170) in, Twice Drawn,
writes, To draw becomes to embody: and it makes manifest movement... If this
is so, what form must these drawings take? Whilst the act of drawing is a
physical process I thought I should look to the uses of tools as a means for
making art, as Crawford (2009: 164) in a similar way to Heidegger, explains,
The way we come to know a hammer is not by staring at it, but by
grabbing hold of it and using it.
Deweys (2005: 24) To perceive is more than to recognise. was beginning to
sound even more fitting. However, the art writer and critic Germano Celant
(2003: 40) writing on the artist, Vik Munizs work states,
Everybody knows how to recognise but they dont think about it. Its
embedded in their perception.
There are different levels recognition can take place in terms of how easy or
difficult the artist makes the work recognisable. It is important to remember that
recognisability does not necessarily mean it has to be representational in order
to be recognised and as Iverson (1986: 83) writes, Recognition is only the first
step in deciphering an image. The reason I refer to Vik Muniz here is because his
work has influenced me away from the representational in my work. Munizs
work is representational but also uses the indexical whereby the materials he
uses act as a referent to the image depicted. In (Fig. 6) nails are used to create
the image of the beggar. The nails act as an indexical reference that makes us
think about the image of the beggar differently, so connotations of nails
associated with craft/work and construction add to how the audience read the
representational image of the beggar. In the MA I explored the indexical using a
hammer to create a mono-print of a chimpanzee (Fig. 7). The intended reading
of the piece was for the indexical mark of the hammer to connect tool use with
the idea of our evolution from apes; however I will admit this link may be a bit

11
tenuous. Hence I aim to test if the indexical use of the hammer in this piece can
be adapted to make new work in which the trace of the hammer is read as an
embodied action. Next I created an inventory of marks made by the different
hand held tools around my home made in clay (Fig. 8) The use of the tools to
create indexical marks was a distinct difference to the previous way of working
as the marks made with the tools were left, literally, as marks, as traces of the
action of them hitting/striking the surface of the clay.
However, I knew that returning to my aim of using drawing as my process
was crucial, not only because it was my original aim but because drawing is an
embodied process,

Figure 4. Natalie Parsley. Assorted Tools. 2011. Oil mono print on paper. 104 x
151cm.

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Figure 5. Natalie Parsley. Tool line up. 2012. Oil mono prints on paper, hung on
wooden baton. 305 x 58cm (approx).

13

Figure 6. Vik Muniz. Beggar 4 After Rembrandt. 2011. Photograph with nails.
34.6 x 20cm.

14

Figure 7. Natalie Parsley. Chimp. 2011. Hammered oil mono print on paper. 149
x 110cm.

15

Figure 8. Natalie Parsley. Trace Studies. 2012. Mixed media. 46 x 46cm.

16
Drawing is the place where blindness, touch and resemblance become
visible, and it is the site of where the most sensitive negotiations between
the hand, the eye and the mind. Elkins cited in Berger (2005: 106)
Moving from the robust and yielding surface of the clay, to the more delicate and
less yielding surface of paper was a decision based on a curiosity to test the
contradiction of the fragility of the surface against the hardness of the tools. I did
not want to return to drawing representations of the tools but I also wanted to
keep the positive quality that those drawings and prints had. The obsessive
repetition of those familiar saws, clamps and cutters in the prints perhaps
demonstrated my own inner psychological possessiveness towards tools (in a
similar way to what Dine referred to in chapter one). This could be seen as a
more internal bodily interaction with tools as objects (albeit a psychological one).
I wondered whether looking at the bodys relationship with tools could include
the entire body as a thinking/feeling/doing entity. The following quote from
Dewey (2009: 96) explains what I am implying in a direct reference to drawing,
Drawing is a drawing out; it is the extraction of what the subject matter
has to say in particular to the painter and his integrated experience.
In stating that a drawing is a drawing out the new meaning of the word
drawing is presented, so that drawing, is no longer a word left in the context of
art (where the act of drawing is an act of mark making with hand/pencil and
paper). Drawing could potentially be understood as something to bring up or
bring out in the same way water is drawn from a well, blood is drawn, or as one
draws breath. In making the association that drawing is also a drawing out,
Dewey implies that the act of drawing is both a drawing on paper but also a kind
of drawing out from something internal or coming out that happens in the
process of drawing. That drawings mark-making requires a relationship between
an internal bodily, drawing out and the external bodily action of the markmaking required in drawing itself. This process enables the exploration into the
indexical mark-making potential of tools by drawing with them using my own
body. This leads to the new direction which my work has taken.

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Chapter Three: Methods and Practice Drawing with tools

This chapter focuses on my recent work and outcomes from this project. In
the drawing titled Cells (Fig. 9) I used a hammer to pound 16 grams of carbon
(in this case coal, which acted as a signifier for the 16 kilograms of carbon in the
human body). As Gray writes in The Elements (2009: 25) Carbon is the most
important element of life...from the spiral backbone of DNA... The more obvious
connection to the body came from the process of my own body hammering out
the lump of coal on the paper which created the indexical trace of the hammer
you see in the drawing. However, I began to look for representational imagery in
the hammered surface I was creating, organic structures such as, cells, bubbles,
planets, space and bacteria. As a result I adapted the hammer by adding a piece
of rubber to it in order to draw back into my drawing; this time erasing parts of
what I had previously hammered to create an image that was more immediately
recognisable. The image I was creating was a cross-section of the human lungs
as I felt it fitted my earlier perception of the marks looking like cells/organic
structures. The link between carbon and breathing again related the
imagery/material back to the human body. This was successful due to using the
hammer and carbon to make marks and in line with, a more embodied
theoretical approach to working. This resonates with the quotes from Crawford
and Heidegger mentioned in chapter one, referring to knowing a tool by using
it. Use here refers to the physical sense, the phenomena of picking the tool up
and wielding it. And Merleau-Pontys (2002: 66) definition of phenomenology,
to rediscover phenomena, the layer of living experience through which
others and things are first given to us...
One might question therefore whether collecting or looking at tools also
demonstrates a kind of use? Similarly my own past experiences of using a
hammer will have influenced my use of it in these drawings. Merleau-Ponty (cited
in Crowther 1993: 42) calls this the carnal formulae,
Our knowledge of the world is thus founded upon the bodys relating and
habituating itself to things. Such encounters will leave behind them not so
much mental pictures or memory-images as carnal formulae structures
constituted from all the sensory and affective life of the subject.
A phenomenological approach therefore entails an embodied approach and that
perception, perceiving and knowing the hammer is a result of ones bodys
relation to that hammer, or its carnal formulae, agrees Hume cited in Gray
(2002: 42), ...we cannot know things in themselves only in the phenomena that
are given us in experience. The sensorial experience of feeling the weight,
texture, size and form of the hammer, hearing it strike the carbon and seeing its
movement in context to its use or function might lead to an understanding of
what it is, that could not be necessarily achieved from mere looking alone. As
Cerbone (2008: 46) explains, ...it [the hammer] can only be too heavy (or too
light) relative to a situation where it is put to use.
The idea of adapting the hammer to turn it into a tool for drawing was also an
interesting concept but not one I pursued as I wanted to continue creating
drawings with the hammer without altering the tool itself. The representational
element to the work seemed unnecessary and more illustrative, when the marks
made in the hammering process conveyed the body and sense of an action

18
having taken place I wondered what could be achieved by using a less contrived
process. I therefore opted to alter the type of hammer being used as well as the
type of paper and its shape/size. A change in attitude in my working process was
necessary at this stage and the process of making the work was now more
important than the end result in a similar way to Niki de Saint Phalles shotgun
paintings (Fig. 10), although I am not as concerned with the psychological
reasons to display the aggressive nature of tools in my own work. I found more
similarities in the Net paintings by Yayoi Kusama

Figure 9. Natalie Parsley. Cells. 2012. Charcoal on paper. 150.5 x 130cm.

19

Figure 10.
Niki de Saint
Phalle. Untitled from Edition MAT 64. 1964. Plaster, paint, plastic, wood. 72 x 54 x
5cm.

20

Figure 11. Yayoi Kusama. Infinity nets. 2008. Acrylic on canvas. 194.1 x 259.1
cm.

21
(Fig. 11) whose repetitive quality to her work was also present in mine,
The incessant quality of this gesture is both obsessive and
meditative...insistently handmade quality of these paintings [The Net
paintings] demonstrates Kusamas technical facility and stamina. Anon
(2012: 3)
It would seem that whilst I may no longer be drawing the tools (as
representations) what I am doing in my repetitious act of using the tools is still
quite an obsessive and debatably meditative act. I wondered if I should be
recording or documenting the process of creating these drawings or whether to
keep the process private. In the end I opted for the latter, preferring my audience
have the ambiguity of not knowing whether the marks I was making with the
hammer were created gently, meditatively or in anger. To some extent I think
how I made the marks can be seen and felt in the way the viewer reads the
marks themselves and I remind myself that it is not so important that I am
conveying a sense of my own emotions in the drawing as it is a record of the
embodied action of using the hammer. Although,
...the work of art expresses the artists personal relation to a shared
world, and is, therefore, of interest both in its own right and implication for
other lives. Crowther (1993: 51)
I am making these drawings amongst lots of people also using hammers and
whilst it is not my intention to be expressive, I cannot entirely escape that the
work will always have an element of the personal to it. My physical size/shape
and my experiences of wielding a hammer differ from other peoples e.g. a
blacksmiths. As Crowther (1993: 44) writes,
Merleau-Ponty notes that perception stylizes. Each person is a unique
individual, and though we can expect different subjects to share a
common phenomenological field and similar carnal formulae (through the
fact that we are all embodied), each person will have his own style of
relating his body to the field.
Even if my drawings become stylized in this way, I think the recognition of the
hammered mark is still recognisable as a hammered mark despite the subtle
differences caused by the person doing the hammering. I think that the question
I now asked was whether I allow my hammer drawings to become art works
that were intentionally planned and coherent or whether I would simply record
what happened when I used sixteen grams of carbon with a pin hammer on a
sheet of paper.
Before I continue narrating my exploration into drawing with the tools, I want
to discuss a piece I made whilst creating Cells. The piece titled, Tool Chest
(Fig. 12) was created at the same time as Cells and stylistically is a slight
digression from the drawing-based work. As mentioned, I tried to make the
drawing, Cells look like a cross section of lungs relating it to carbon as an
element required for the human body to breathe. Whilst the drawing might have
been a bit contrived, conceptually it led to the development of the work. Taking
my Grandfathers tool chest I turned it into a chest by adding a chest X-ray
copied onto acetate inside its tiered drawers. It was a deliberate pun, on the
word, tool chest but unintentionally achieved a much more perceptive bodily
connotation which I became aware of later. The tiered splayed open drawers of

22
the chest mimicked the kind of opening and closing associated with the actual
breathing of the lungs. I also noted connections between the tool chest as vessel
and the actual human chest/body as vessel. In having this piece alongside the
drawings it was then able to act as a referent to the body and tools in the work.
To make this association clearer I have displayed the tool chest alongside the
drawings which, when I tested it in a group critique made the connection

between the body and tools more obvious.

Figure 12. (a) Natalie Parsley. Tool Chest. 2012. Tool chest and acetate. 157.5 x
72 x 2cm. (view from above)

23

Figure
12. (b)
Natalie Parsley. Tool Chest. 2012. Tool chest and acetate. 157.5 x 72 x 2cm. (view
from side)

I made a second piece that reiterated the idea by tracing where tools had hung
on a board (Fig. 13). This enabled the indexical trace to allude to how in the
absence of the tools, their recognisability through the shape still referred to what
they were and their use. Dewey (2005: 119) writes, The shapes of spoons,
knives, forks...are means of identification because of their association with
purpose. Compared to the physicality in the drawings both this piece and the
tool chest are very different in the way they refer to an action that has taken
place despite the tools being absent. The tool pegboard refers to an action that
has taken place over time, through the use, removing and replacing of tools on
the board whereas the hammer drawings are a very immediate and deliberate
action. I think that the absence of the tools throughout the work as a whole is
important, as in their absence the clues and things that remind us of what are
tools and how are they used are questioned by the viewer more than in the
representational work.
Next I began experimenting with different papers/shapes and tools (Fig. 14 to
17). What these experiments showed was that the thickness and texture of
paper had little significance, other than white was more effective at showing the
marks/dents made on the papers surface. These experiments also showed me
that I was more interested in limiting my enquiry to mark-making. I kept my
experiments to using hand tools because of the connection the hand has to
drawing. Specifically I decided to look at the mark making of different types of
hammer; to kitchen utensils and wood-working tools because it is one of the
most familiar tools I have worked with so I was interested how that would affect
my handling of it and in using it in this different way would I come to think of it
differently. I also think the reason for this is that the mark making achieved with
the hammer was the most sustaining in the way that I could start with a lump of

24
carbon and progress hammering it until it turned into very fine dust. The drawing
process was therefore determined by the material and not by my own judgement
on whether the work was finished or not. With other tools it was more difficult to
arrive at an end point that was open. Limiting my use to one tool also meant that
I could explore its mark making in more depth than I had done previously.
Following an embodied approach to I wanted to allow the process of drawing
to happen naturally rather than interfering with the action of hammering the
carbon by setting myself any preconceived ideas of what the outcome would be.
As Crowther (1993: 44), writes explaining the relationship between the artist and
the medium,
He has learnt an affinity between his body and the handling of a specific
medium that enables his body to take a fuller grasp on the meanings he
encounters.
I made two drawings using the pin hammer (Fig 18); one with my left hand (a)
and one with my right (b). This time I let the action and event of the hammering
process determine the outcome without controlling it or having a preconceived
idea of the final image, as a result I think these were my most successful
drawings as they looked more spontaneous. There is a contradiction in altering
the hammers use from the more controlled action of hammering
nails/embossing metal to the less precision-based/spontaneous action of using
the hammer to create a drawing. What is interesting about this contradiction is
that in using the hammer differently it is unlocking the hidden potential it has as
an object. All objects have potential, in the sense they can be used or
possessed, like Baudrillard stated in the quote in chapter 1, but tools in
particular are objects of potential as they are a means of creating/making/fixing
something other than themselves. They are often the subjects of the process and
rarely the end-result or product. An interpretation that I have had of the hammer
drawings is that in using the hammer in this different way I have demonstrated
the potential of altering the hammer into a tool for drawing, but have in a way
perhaps also highlighted the characteristic of tools generally as objects of
potential. The visual quality of the drawing looks like an explosion on the page
and instead of covering the entire surface of the paper the space/contrast

25

Figure 13. Natalie Parsley. Trace. 2012. Tool pegboard. 157.5 x 72 x 2cm.

26

Figure 14.
Natalie
Parsley. Test
1. 2012.
Tenderiser and carbon on watercolour paper. 42 x 59.5cm.

27

Figure 15. Natalie Parsley. Test 2. 2012. Pin hammer and carbon on grey paper.
42 x 59.5cm.

28

Figure 16. Natalie Parsley. Test 3. 2012. Masher and carbon on Cotman
watercolour paper. 60 x 84cm.

29

Figure 17. Natalie Parsley. Test 4. 2012. Carbon on circular cartridge paper.
148cm (diameter).

30

Figure
18. (a)
Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation with pin hammer (left handed). 2012. Carbon on
paper. 60 x 84cm.

31

Figure
Natalie

18. (b)
Parsley.

Tudiculation with pin hammer (right handed). 2012. Carbon on paper. 60 x 84cm.

between the action of the hammered areas and white space make it easier for
the audience to read it as an action or moment in time. In the fresh-looking
immediacy of these drawings they also appear more breath-like and due to

32
their scale the subtleties of difference between the left hand and right hand are
much more visible than in the drawings I went on to make next.
At the same time I discovered the gunpowder drawings by the Chinese artist, Cai
Guo-Qiang (Fig. 19) The formal resemblances to Guo-Qiangs drawings to mine
was very clear, however it was his drawing methods that were or greater
relevance,
With his gunpowder drawings, traces of the momentary explosion record
the union with the object. The combination of contrasting materials- fragile
paper or cloth and powerful gunpowder- gives birth to a delicate tonal
balance between the tense lines that transmit a sense of the spontaneous,
even violent speed. Bradley (2005: 68)
The tension between the violence of the gunpowder contrasting with the fragility
of the paper had particular parallels with my own method of hammering the
surface of my paper. This led me to question whether in my drawings, was the
material (the carbon) becoming more significant than the tool itself? My intention
was to create awareness of the hammer, but in the process of hammering the
carbon the hammer becomes secondary to the carbon. In Guo-Qiangs drawings
the gunpowder is the important element in the decision making process,
whereas in mine, the hammer dictates where the carbon is on the paper. To some
extent that is why I have kept the process of making these drawings hidden so
that the significance is on reading the marks in the drawing and not the process.
The resulting image can be read as an indexical trace referring back to the
hammer and suggests a pounding action made with a man-made object. The
artist, Debbie Locke, who builds autonomous drawing machines, (Fig. 20), uses
a process that also relies on chance and the man-made. Locke (2007) states,
I actively encourage the inclusion of chance and random interference in
the process... I can challenge the notion of the infallibility of machines...
One could argue in these drawings the body is absent in the work, as it has been
entirely made by a GPS device attached to a pen. However the artist
programmed and built the drawing machine and decided how long it drew/when
the drawing was complete etc. In this way the drawing machines have become
the tool that she uses to create her images.
The decisive difference between tools and machines is perhaps best
illustrated by the apparently endless decision of whether man should be
adjusted to the machine or the machines should be adjusted to the
nature of man. Arendt (1958: 147)
The constraint to hand-draw in my own drawings was to refer to the hammer as
being a hand tool. Although, the debate of whether it is the tool or the hand is
in more control of the outcome is present in both her work and mine,
Unlike the tools of workmanship, which at every given moment in the
work process remain the servants of the hand... Arendt (1958: 147)
I feel this is going into a new area of man-made or artifice vs. human which I feel
is an enquiry to explore another day, but none-the-less raises an interesting
debate. The relationship each of these artists has with their processes is similar

33
to the use of
hammer in
drawings and

contextualizes my work within contemporary practice.

the
my

34

Figure 19. Cai Guo Quiang. Conan Doyle. 2005. Gunpowder and ink on paper.
150 x 200cm.

35

(a)
(b)

Figure 20. a) Debbie Locke.

Mapping Installation-Bow
Wharf. 2012. Motors, NXT
programmable bricks, wire, plastic, ink, paper. Dimensions variable.
Figure 20. b) Debbie Locke. Mapping Installation-Bow Wharf (close up). 2012.
Motors, NXT programmable bricks, wire, plastic, ink, paper. Dimensions variable.

The next drawings revisited altering the paper size, however this time exploring
different kinds of hammers and using my left and right hand in the process of
drawing. In (Fig. 21) (a) (b) I made the paper the same scale as my body (h
157cm w 43.5cm) and worked from the top to the bottom of the paper.
Interestingly, whilst the vertical format of these pieces was formalistically quite

36
pleasing, they were another step back to the more controlled way of working that
I already noted from the circular drawing was not as successful. In interpreting
the work, a post-graduate Physics student was reminded of the drawn structures
of DNA despite that not being my intention in making the work. None-the-less it
once again, refers the mark making back to the human body. The scale of the
paper in relation to my body size was not entirely successful either as it limited
the area my body could work in to an area of paper that was equivalent to only
two dimensions (height and width) of my body. A much larger or even smaller
area to work on would have allowed me to work more freely and allow a more
authentic experience of using the hammer manifest in the mark-making. If
anything it highlights the dilemma of capturing an experience that is both on,
around and above whilst trying to capture it on a flat surface that is 2D. The
indexical approach is important because,
The index signifies by virtue of the existential bond, in many cases a
causal connection between itself and the object. Iverson (1986: 89)
However, the drawings in (Fig. 18) present a more accurate record of the
embodied action of using the hammer more effectively than the left/right handed
drawings in (Fig 21). In the final chapter of this report I will explain this in more
depth and evaluate the project.

37

Figure 21. (a) Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation studies with pin hammer, claw
hammer and mallet (left handed). 2012. Carbon on paper. 150 x 155cm.

38

Figure 21. (b) Natalie Parsley. Tudiculation studies with pin hammer, claw
hammer and mallet (right handed). 2012. Carbon on paper. 150 x 155cm.

Chapter Four: Evaluation

39

In an article, Sue Spaid (2004: 30) writes, Art making is foremost an act of
discovery, rather than a communication tool. Through using a pragmatic
approach of learning by doing I have discovered how to make work that is about
finding something out/exploring a theory or concept rather than making work
that has a preconceived intention. The indexical trace that is produced by the
hammer reflects an actual experience of hammering better than if I had an
intended outcome. This was made clear in the differences between the marks
made in the drawings in (Fig. 18) and (Fig.21). I have decided to exhibit the
two together as I think they show the contrast of the controlled (Fig. 21) and
the spontaneous (Fig. 18). This shows that the embodied experience of using
the hammer to create the drawings is not coming purely from a non-thinking
bodily action, but is from an embodied, thinking being, in the sense that I am
creating the marks with my physical body and making conscious decisions about
what I am doing. This is in-keeping with what Merleau-Ponty (2002: 98), writes
regarding how there is no separation between the body and the self,
it remains marginal to all my perceptions, that it is with me. By being a
part of me, there is never any distance between my body and myself.
The form that takes in the drawings is sometimes a self-consciousness of, being
aware that I am making a drawing (Fig. 21) and sometimes an immersion in the
process (Fig. 18). As this project is very much about the journey I have
undergone to realise this, I feel it is important to have displayed both. I think that
this process has answered the question I set in my aim of how are tools are an
extension of ourselves? The drawings represent both the physical extension of
the hammer and my own personal embodied use of it, manifesting itself in the
quality of mark-making in the drawing. The process of drawing with the hammer
dictated the direction the work was heading in and I was not in control of what
the outcomes might be, Thus objects also make and use their makers and
users. Csikzentmihalyi, Halton (1981: 1). The tool became an extension of my
body in the decisions I made as well as being a physical extension to my hand
and creator of the marks on the paper.
Figure 18 was successful because they were the least intentionally stylized.
Whilst Merleau-Ponty acknowledged that, perception stylizes, these are the
least stylized drawings I made and this makes them less about me and more
about others experiences of using a hammer. Even though not all my audience
read the drawings as being made with a hammer, my feedback from these
viewings tells me that the marks are made with an object used to bruise/pound
or hit the surface. The fact that it was made with a hammer is almost irrelevant
as the marks refer to an embodied action that took place. Whether the audience
know it was a hammer that made the marks does not matter as they can see it
was made with an object and not created by the body alone. Hence the viewer is
more likely to speculate and think about what object made the marks. It is this
connection that I believe answers the question of, how tools are extensions of
ourselves. Even though the tool and body are not physically present in the work
both are present in reading the indexical trace and may make us consider our
own individual relationship to tools as objects of use.
In answer to my question, what is a tool? I now know it is too broad a
question to accurately answer as the definition of a tool as an object is different
to its definition as a concept. Many objects are classified as being tools, however
the concept of tool-ness and what makes a saw or a spanner tools has been

40
more important than looking into varieties of tools. Therefore, the concept of
what it means to know a tool is the same as finding out what is a tool? If
knowing and meaning are associated with an embodied experience of the world
then the act of drawing with the hammer is a trace of that experience. My
question then is how does the viewer interpret the work to necessarily come to a
similar understanding? In perceiving the marks made in the drawing the viewer
might begin to interpret them and speculate their origin. The neuro-scientist
Ramachandran (2012: 49) writes,
...perception must involve more than simply displaying an image in the
brain...Perception is an actively formed opinion of the world rather than a
passive reaction to sensory input from it.
So in perceiving the hammer drawings, if the act of perception is based on an
actively formed opinion of the world then the experiences that the viewer has
undergone will influence the reading of the marks in the drawings. The types of
marks in the drawings can be recognised as being created by a pound, a hit that
has been repeated hundreds of times. Anyone who has experience of using a
hammer or has knowledge of knowing how this kind of mark is made may come
to the conclusion the drawing is made with a hammer. The indexical mark is not
telling the viewer, this is a hammer. It is referring to the hammer or a
pounding action that has occurred as a result of a hammer being used. In turn
this is one way we come to know what a tool [or hammer] is, through the using
of it and through the contemplation of the marks made and what may have
caused them. Cerbone (2008: 132) writes,
In Being and Time the transformation of the hammer from something
useful to something objectively present when contemplation takes the
place of active using.
One of the main factors I have overlooked in this process is the possibility that
the body itself can also be a tool of sorts, as Dewey (2009: 48/49) writes
regarding the importance of the body in making art, Every art does something
with some physical material, the body or something outside the body... which
can refer to literally depicting the body in work or how any work of art made or
experienced is always in relation to ourselves as embodied beings. Our bodies
are used to experience the world we are in, this also makes me refer back to the
Heidegger quote on page 4 about useful objects only being recognised as useful
in relation to other useful things. If the hammer in these drawings has been
used, then the paper, the carbon and my own body equally have been used in
order to recognise that the hammer has been used.
No creature lives merely under its skin; its subcutaneous organs are a
means of connection with what lies beyond its bodily frame. Dewey
(2009: 12)
There is a totality of objects and my interactions/decisions with them that make
up the whole experience; that ones consciousness of the hammer is founded in
an environing world and is not separate to it. Again, this is in support of
Heideggers theories in Being and Time.
For me, this has been a journey in opening up my practice and accepting new
possibilities and ways of working. Through drawing as a process I have drawn
out new approaches to looking at what had become a familiar subject in my
work, tools, and as a result have gained a deeper conceptual understanding they

41
have as objects and have looked at them in new ways. The resulting drawings
not only signify my experience with using the hammer but represent the
experience I have undergone during this project as a whole.
...the work of art tells something to those who enjoy it about the nature of their
own experience of the world: that it presents the world in a new experience
which they undergo. (2009: 86)

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