T1-MMT-P5-s1 Review – part 2

Over the past week I have continued to work through my past blog posts, noting down ideas and generating still more. I am amazed at the amount I have done and the volume of possibilities available to explore further. Even with my tentative restriction to “collection of vessels” there is so much. Some of it is repetitive, and many of my notes go beyond vessels. My main goals remain using materials already identified, combine ideas from multiple parts of the course, a collection where the whole is more than the sum of the parts, and to edit fiercely.
Theme – mold as a record of what was.
Spaces between
A captured moment
Fragility; barriers; memory; venees that crack and reveal; scarring; traces
Emotion of folds in material

Materials: plaster, resin, plastic horsehair, chicken wire, glue as an inclusion; composimold – make use of flexibility

Shapes: glass brick; fluted wire armature; joins; manipulating interior space when casting; lettuce or cabbage leaves; balloon centre, pvc outer

Ideas and techniques: Indeterminate edges; stitch or other construction method in casting revealed/recorded in result; pvc pipe to form voids; play with gravity and tilt when casting

p5-sketchpage 016; 20160110

Tea dance by Olive Cotton. Repeated shapes, but rotated and grouped to create co-ordinated movement. Importance of lighting.
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p5-sketchpage 017; 20160111

Continued playing with ideas of variations on a restricted theme. The thought started with glass brick windows. Using a regular shape rather than a vessel could simplify casting. Bricks of plaster and resin, using the dynamic plastic horsehair to create shapes within the bricks and protruding – a way to break up space with more interest, perhaps even join multiple shapes.

PVC is another possibility as a mold for casting, embossed to create texture. Chicken wire or similar, as seen in Rosemary Christmas’s work, could be used as armature which could be dribbled with plaster or resin. It could be used in combination with other techniques, but again I wonder about trying to do too much.

Re-reading my old posts, there are so many intriguing paths I didn’t explore.

In my discussion of Victoria Brown’s work I mentioned the spaces between. I want to make the spaces between just as important as the items themselves.

P5-sketchpage 018; 20160116

P5-sketchpage 019; 20160112

Various ideas for molds for a cast. Tilting a vessel while setting then putting a different layer on top could be a simple but effective combination. I’m noting artists to research in part 2.

P5-sketchpage 020; 20160113

Joining composimold and polymorph using resin?? I suspect this is trying to do too much, but I enjoyed the group photographs I’ve done, so it’s worth considering.

Joining leads to the idea of unjoining. Could composimold be used as a mold for say plaster, then partly peeled off? Would that give interesting shapes, perhaps a way of showing boundaries or history? Tutor feedback on earlier work mentioned “a combination of materials can create tension and distortion”. There was weaving photographs, and also joining crepe paper and organza which was then heat distorted. I know there is more to explore here.

P5-sketchpage 021; 20160114

More ideas for combining materials and creating molds. The lower sketch is based on work by Liz Williamson. I put a request on the OCA textiles forum asking for research suggestions, and some interesting leads have resulted.

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This page was an early attempt to summarise some of my strongest ideas and to start planning a set of work for the sampling part of this assignment. I’ll come back to this in the review wrapup.

P5-sketchpage 023; 20160114

I’ve been away from home a few days, and the top sketch was made looking at a plum tree on a property in the Megalong Valley where we spent last weekend. A group of 18, four generations of one family, had our annual weekend away together. I could attempt a link between containers and family units and houses full of adults and children, but really I was simply looking for a quiet moment.

The word “tension” came up again, this time in reference to the work of Henry Moore. More research to be done.

P5-sketchpage 024; 20160115

Themes of scarred shadow, an imperfect memory arise. I’ve noted lots of samples with elements that attract me, then came to one of my current favourite ideas – hollow columns, corrugated surface in a range of materials and dimensions.

P5-sketchpage 025; 20160115

One interesting thread I’ve been following in this process is the development of the dribbling resin idea, tracing its beginning in a failed sample, then leading to some interesting work and ideas. I think this should be a strong contender for use in the final pieces, allowing me to show all the stages.

I haven’t put my normal links and photos in this post – too difficult on my travelling setup. It made need an edit when I’m back home next week, or perhaps it will be my classic “could be good, but need to move on”.

T1-MMT-P5-s1 Review – part 2

Part 5: A final piece

Stage 1: Review

Part 2