Final Sculptures

These are the images of my final sculptures, I found this project I huge success. After the first tutorial with Dave I was left really interested with the theme of Art and Reproduction but was confused about how to portray any ideas through sculpture. The casting workshop with Rob really engaged me in the possibilities of creating sculptures through casting and inspired my research into artists that use plaster casting in their sculptures. The idea I decided to pursue required a lot of persistence and continuing visits to the workshop over the period of the four weeks in order to create the five moulds as was set in the criteria, but in the end I created a set (or mini army) of sculptures that have interested me and shown my progress with using many casting techniques for the first time. 

This exploration has really opened my mind to the potential of sculpture in my art which I had previously found overwhelming as I had kept in my comfort zone of painting and drawing. I look forward to exploring sculpture further and taking advantage of the resources available. 

Creating Book

Below shows the pamphlet book I made to discuss in the next session. When deciding what taxonomy to fill my book with I chose to link back to my previous drawing elective and incorporate the Mandala designs I had created, which represent the world and are symmetrical. I thought these would be pleasing in a book and interesting because naturally the readers view of a book would be from left to right, however with a mandala design the eye is drawn to the center of the page. 

I made small changes to the cover template in order to accommodate for not having paper 5x the width of the pages, so I created a tab on both the front and back of the cover. To create the end pages I covered a sheet of paper the same width as the pages unfolded and covered both sides with pink dots using a blotter, this added some colour and interesting shapes to the book. 

Week 3 Creating Sculptures

Once the latex had dried by the third week I needed to create a two-part mould over the latex which would be removed and used to secure the latex as the plaster was being poured in and setting. This required estimating how the mould would have to shape around the latex to be easily removed and re-applied. The problems I found once I had removed the two-part mould was trying to remove the latex from the dolls. As I suspected it damaged the wax beneath by pulling it off with the latex and it even caused one of the dolls heads to fall off (though I found this interesting due to the significance of the contrast of the head and body in this project), so I was glad I kept one doll as wax in order to preserve that stage of the process.

The last image shows the plaster poured into the latex mould being supported by the two part mould around it.

Lee Hassall Lecture

This lecture focused heavily on the idea of the culture and context of art. 

E.P.Thompson (1924-1993) was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He was also a member of Workers' Educational Association (WEA).

Hassall commented on his own experience of culture, saying the culture of London for example is on the surface with public museums, galleries and theaters. In contrast to the more remote areas of Wales, where you have to become more involved with the landscape and the people in order to immerse yourself in the culture. An experience he commented on was a walk through the landscape in which he found an arrow head and pondered on the idea that he was probably the first to hols this since the person that used it, questioning when did this object become aesthetically pleasing and not functional?

Hassall also spoke about his own piece of art entitle 'Fetal', in which he spent days in an old storage room of a wine cellar whilst people could come and view him at work. This mixed audience, of people who knew about the show, as well as people who happened to come across it, creates a god-like perspective of looking down on the artist at work. The idea of working in an enclosed space is also somewhat meditative.

In conclusion, I took from this lecture to consider how I can determine my own cultural map. Is it by judging the types of clothes I wear, the types of clubs I go to, what I vote for? Ultimately, my cultural map is a mixture of everything, being subjective not objective and in a constant flux. Culture can be both ordinary and extra ordinary.

Book Binding Elective

In this first session we explored different artists that use book binding in their pieces. We also made a pamphlet book.

History of book binding in art...
Since the creation of paper artists made books, including monks hand painted illustrations.
William Blake, early pioneer 1789.
William Morris, set up Kelmscott Press 1896.
Book binding one of the earliest forms of collaboration in art.
Pierre Bonnard Lithograph 1900, a form of owning a painting and poem at the same time.
Dieter Roth, series of diaries 1967.
Ed Ruscha, pioneer of American Art Book Movement 1962-78.
Laura Oldfield, 'Savage Messiah' 2006, borrows form from press/political pamphlet.
Richard Tuttle, series of compositions and colours.
Lawrence Weiner 

Below is the pamphlet book we made in this session, you can see the fold of the cover, which helps to hide the spine of the book, as well as the middle page of the pamphlet where the stitching can be seen. For next session we have to create another pamphlet book, this time also including an end paper, and fill the book with a taxonomy similar to the work of Lawrence Weiner.

Painting Experiment

In trial for my larger scale painting, I explored working on a smaller piece of canvas stretched over A5 size mdf board. This allowed me to explore colour mixing and colour contrasting. 

Week 2 Creating Sculptures

The process of covering the dolls in latex was equally as time consuming as building up the layers of wax. I first had to secure the dolls to boards using moulding wax, as well as fill in any large gaps or over hangs from which the latex could not be removed from after setting. Then I started coating them in the first layer of latex, I continued with a further 5-6 layers of the period of the week to allow the latex to be really strong and able to be removed from the dolls and make casts from.