Experimenting with materials...

Making a mould! - Learning how to use alginate, make a plaster cast and then a rubber mould. Fill that mould with plaster to get a cast, and smoothing out the air bubble from the mould. Then...

Made a soft latex mould from the plaster cast to make skewed faces. I experimented with inks of both, and scraping into the plaster on the green one. I thought that this could work well for something, but wasn't what I wanted to focus on, so instead I tried...

Wax faces! I did like these a lot, but one i'd made a few and tried adding colour, I wasn't too sure where to go, and whether I felt like these really fitted with what I wanted to get across. I am happy with them, but didn't want this to be my final piece for this project. So instead I went for...

A wire sculpture with a latex 'skin' sewn on, of texture made mostly from wax, but the final face was from clay pressed into a plaster cast of the wax texture.

It still isn't... quite? what I can picture, and what I want to get a across, but t's the closest I can get at the moment and I am very happy with it. 

Journal Update!

I've been making a wire figure with a latex 'skin' sewn on and I'm hoping it will work out. I really do wish I'd started it sooner as it really is what I'd wanted to do since I worked out I could sew the latex. I don't why I didn't.
I am glad I got the chance to learn about mould making of faces, using alginate and rubber but I could have spent more time on getting the sculpture I'm doing now to have more... focus, I think.

I've veered away from trying to focus more on expressing a distinct feeling, as I was finding it hard to communicate effectively, both at first in drawings and then from drawings to wire, but hopefully the shape of the figure links back to other things I've done and looked at. It definitely follows on from all my latex experiment, my wire face in the previous project, and possibly the work of LucyandBart

David Oliveira - wire sculptures!!!

I feel like I  will be pleased with the outcome, and I'm really enjoying the process. It isn't quite what I was aiming for, but I can keep making things after this course, maybe I might get across what I want at some point.

Making sense

Panoramafails / FKA Twigs

Found this saved as a draft?

Journal update!

Ok so here's where I'm at right now – I've got a backup plan that'll take a short amount of time to complete, and a 7 days to try and make something else...

The wax heads:

I aimed towards making these for my final piece, so the past couple of weeks were spent experimenting with plaster moulds and seeing what would work to make a wax cast from. Rubber moulds seems to be the best to pour molten wax into and get the solid cast out of at the end.

The method of pouring the hot wax onto the forehead of the wax face, then pouring more as the face is put in a tall bucket of water to make the shape attached does work as I’d hoped, and looks better when all white as getting the colour mixed nicely into the wax is very difficult to get right, and if the shape coming out the front goes wrong I can't easily snap it off and melt it back down.

I felt like I learnt a lot of new techniques and how to use things like alginate and rubber to make moulds, and while I'd be happy with having the white wax faces as my final piece I just don’t feel like it's what I was aiming towards, from looking at my artist inspiration.

I feel a bit like anyone could have made it, and I know I was told 'but they didn’t and you did' that wasn’t so much what I meant. If it's my last project on this course I want to make something that has more of personality or style or 'whatever' in, not something that... doesn't?

On the other hand I’ve not got much time!!!!!!

so that's why I’ve been feeling a bit weird over this whole thing and unsure of what to do.

But I think I’m just going to go for it and hope for the best because worst case scenario is, I make something ok that I'm not too happy with ?

Experimenting, Week One!

Time to evaluate...

So I really didn't have the most productive Easter, but I did do research into artists who use performance, and / or express interesting feelings, often connected to an idea of ... struggling or working with something? Like Marc Quinn's Emotional Detox shows an internal (physical and mental) struggle with alcohol addiction in a sculpture, casts of his own body 'fighting' with himself. 

The performance art I looked at (the crochet work, and the ice block) have hours of work to end at... stillness? or something like that? Camacho is trapped, or safe? and Alys is left with nothing, no more work to do. - both have finite end points and they just have to finish the job.

I had a nice time experimenting with latex, but I need to work out what to DO WITH IT

also I need to refocus on emotions and expressing them - lots of drawing and trying to ignore feeling like I'm drawing something rubbish next week I think?

emotions is part of your theme so come on sort it


PICTURES AND LOOK BACK ON SPECIFIC THINGS:

First week back I began some experimenting.

Tried sewing on latex, works well but a bit time consuming? -CAN I JOIN LATEX WITH LATEX? and use sewing more for the look of it where i really want it.

The latex would need to be pretty thick too, or not have much strain put on it.



Looks a bit 'Frankenstein' which is cool, and fits with the grotesque and horror inspired idea, while still being connected to humanness - look into medical illustration???!!!

Phoebe was making wax sculpture, dipping molten wax into water. Ciaran suggested pouring water onto the wax.  - texture much better than just painting latex, and clingfilm - looks more organic, both random and flowing, bit like organs or erosion on rocks.

 plaster cast of above wax shape

latex from wax mould, tried it as a bracelet just too see. Should have left to dry longer i need to be more patient! like the texture though

this didnt work. i was thinking about emotions becoming overwhelming and escaping in some way! which lead to... this... and it didn't look so great but i tried something.

i hoped for something more like this: 

Bleeding Tooth Fungus

???

Grotesque? Women?

A bunch of images to begin with...

Hedy Lamarr One - Shary Boyle

the Cave Painter - Shary Boyle

the Cave Painter, with projection

I love the colour and excitement added with projection!

Triumph of the Will - Shary Boyle

Moths Drink Tears - Shary Boyle

Regret - Shary Boyle

Judith Scott

I’m not sure where I first found out about Scott’s work, but I didn’t know anything about her at all, I just thought these huge wrapped up sculptures were brilliant.

photo by Leon Borensztein

This picture in particular! I don't know if it's staged or she's just hugging the work anyway, but I like that she's now wrapping herself into it almost, with this feeling of a connection to the work, even though in another book it says she would discard them after making them.

“Judith  Scott was a visual artist isolated by Down Syndrome and profound deafness, who achieved world recognition for her enigmatic fiber sculptures.  Born  on May 1, 1943, in Cincinnati, Ohio, she spent the first seven and a half years of her life with her family in a semi-rural community on the edge of the city, always accompanied and aided by her twin sister, Joyce, who served as guardian and interpreter.  However, it is Joyce who insists that it was Judith who was her guide and her teacher always.” (from the website Judith & Joyce Scott)

I’d been trying to work out what it is about her work I like so much, and I think it’s that the objects themselves are quite tense, tightly bound and knotted, but that I guess that Scott must’ve felt relaxation, happiness or calm while making them- or why would she have made them. It makes me think of how many people (myself included!) like knitting or crochet for the calming repetitive nature but also a creative outcome.

There’s a lot said in documentaries and books about people’s interpretation of how Scott must have viewed her own work, I’m sure how to express this properly, but I think I don’t want to assume anything about what she was trying to express in her art, and whether she was trying to or not – I just don’t know, and don’t know enough to want to start speculating.

In terms of how this might relate to my own project, it’s made me consider the ideas of pushing any negative feelings into a piece, as a form of therapy, cleansing or ‘exorcism’ of those feelings, leaving you feeling happy and calm, while you work is ‘holding’ any tension or fear for example.

I also found this interesting, with the focus on process over outcome:

“Since Scott attaches no lasting significance to the work of art (she discards each finished work), the repetition abides with the process of creation, not with the object produced. Scott often weaves goodbye to her work, as if to signal that the activity of creating is the remainder, while the work is dispensable…” (Davis, 2009: 208)

Things! to Look At

Here are a few pictures I've been looking at that might inspire something a little later.

This will all be jumbled up and disconnected, perhaps I'll find a common thread.

Jan Švankmajer

Fusion of real and fake. - his style of filming (and some of it seems to me quite usual for films 20-30 years old?) have this lovely quality of having everything in focus, but also everything is a bit too beige and mundane looking, added to really strange stop motion action.
I like the massive big heads of the puppets from Faust, as well as moments in the film such as when a man falls into card waves in a play, and it cuts to him falling in an actual lake.

Other Things

  

    

 

Kim Carter, Megan Mitchell, Annegret Soltau, Judith Scott, MC Wolfman, Harvey Roberts.

LucyandBart

Goes with the theme of Frankenstein type creatures and monsters and mutations. - Sort of costumes? Need a person inside then, and it transforms them into something strange. The materials used are apparent but it doesn't distract.