Week 4 Sculpture

Measurements and Scales

Using a world map I decided I wanted to create a A1 sized piece of sculpture, I feel this would be a suitable sized piece to show a clear and readable map out of letters. I have sectioned up my letters into the right letters for each country. I now want to place the letters of each country in the shape and vacuum these into moulds of the correct country, this is becoming quite exciting project.

Now I have the basic shape for my countries I began placing the  letters onto the country they belong. Once I have placed the letters onto the right country I took a vacuum form of the letters in the shape of the country, it took a few attempts to get the right shape and the letter placed in the correct posistion.  

Overall I came out with ten different moulds, each one looked unique and interesting representing the correct country. The use of the letters almost added terains to the country creating a life like and quirky piece of art.  Now I needed what to fill the moulds with, I thought perhaps filling them with ice, and creating a statement to do with global warming. 

I tested out this idea by filling one the mould with water. However when I popped out the mould the ice sculpture   was very loose and it was quite hard to see the shape of the country and all define the letters within the country. This is a real shame as I think this would have made quite an interesting final piece.

After the ice moulds didn't work I needed to think of a better substance in which I can fill my moulds with. After some careful thinking I decided substance best for this would be plaster as this is a tough medium which I could fill and carve into the correct shapes, also plaster with clearly define the letters placed in the shape of the country. 

This the final piece I came out with, overall I am really pleased with the final outcome, although it looks very simple. I feel a great sense of achievement as it took a lot of time and effort to produce this piece. Overall I feel I have gained more creating than just creating a final piece. During sculpture I have learnt a lot, how to manage my time, work with idea and develop it. Also I have learnt how to use a lot of equipment within the sculpture room, also I have developed my knowledge within art, I have researched an broadened my knowledge on sculptors and text and image artists.

Week 3 Sculpture

 

I spent some time carefully thinking about text is used within other day to day places, such as notice boards, posters and maps. Using some magnetic letters I already had I began creating shapes and countries from a map, I could really see this idea going much further. Seen from the picture on the left, I used the letters from the country to create the shape. I really liked this idea and couldn't wait to take it further. Therefore have been spending the last 3 days slowly vacuuming forming letters and filling the moulds with plaster. Although this has become a slow and annoying process, the results are really pleasing and has taught me how to create the perfect consistence of plaster and how to use the vacuum former, a key skill I can always look back on and use. I cant wait to start assembling my countries with the hundreds of letters I have moulded and created.

After popping out all my plaster letters, I had to fill down the edges of each letter I found this to be quite a time consuming process, however I did get a nice sense of achievement as I completed each letter. I found the letters alone make quite an interesting and iconic piece of art on there own. I may work on this idea a little later within the project. The next stage is decide on the scale, measurements and sizes from the final piece. 

Week 2 Sculpture

After creating a simple clay sculpture, I felt I need to expand my skills and knowledge within the subject of sculpture. I really enjoyed researching into  Robert Idiana, however I felt I have just been copying his work rather than creating my own unique and individual work. I want to include words or text into my work therefore I have spent some time researching into other text and image artists. The ones I found most inspiring were:

Bruce Nauman

Claude Oldenburg
Roni Horn
These artist really experiment with the use of text within there work covering images with text, or just using text as a final piece.

This piece by Rorn Horn really inspired me to try out and experiment with the idea of covering an existing piece of furniture or something simular with text or sentences.

 I sketched out ideas and came up with the idea of  taking a chair of dinning set and covering it in text. I think this will create an exciting, bold and iconic piece of art however don't feel I can take this piece to another level.  Still using letters as a base, I spent some time designing a few ideas of how I could use text within sculpture. 

Using a simular idea as before by placing text onto an excising object,  thought about creating an object out of text, perhaps the name of a word relating to the item. I really liked this idea and began expanding on the Idea.

Above I tried  to create perhaps a set of  of tool made out of text, either a make up kit or a tool, I really like this idea of creating an object out of text however I feel this Idea has been done slightly before, to take this idea further I need to do a lot more research and development into the idea. 

Bob and Roberta Smith

Week 1: Sculpture

Today was my first sculpture, a few weeks ago in one of the lectures I had been really inspired by Robert Indiana and his LOVE sculpture, I love the idea of creating text into a visual sculpture. I really the scale of this sculptures, how a simple object word or quote can create such a bold, exciting and inspiring piece of art. 

 I was really excited to start a project with an idea that had been bouncing round my head for ages. Seeing all the materials and around and learning what they could do was so inspiration.  Using this idea I created my own "LOVE" out of clay in which I placed in the vacuum mould which created a plastic mould of clay letters. 

This is my vacuumed "LOVE" it was great fun doing this however there was not a big enough gab between lines within the "E" resulting in the plastic not being able to fit in between some of the gabs. After scoping my clay out of the mould, I mixed together a mixture of water and cement to pour into the mould to set. I cant wait till next week to see how my sculpture has turned out.

This week I have also done some research into sculpture to help with my project, I was really inspired by the work of Jack Pierson, he uses old shop letters to create new sculptural words.

I really like the use of colour within his work even thought his medium are not bought, only found it still fits together well. He has really considered the use of shape, colour and composition of the letters placed within sculpture.  Also the use of the wording seems to be really important within Pierson's work he has taken into consideration the look of the individual letter. As seen in Fame the letters are lit up with a fancy modern twist to the overall piece much like the word being shown.

Week 4: Print

I didn't get to make it to print this week as I had to go home for a funeral. Therefore I decided to do some printing at home, as I didn't have many resources available to me I went back to the basics of printing potato printing. Using a spoon I carved out my a thistle shape into two potatoes.

Even though this has slightly differed from the brief I really like the effect I have created, I stamped the two colours on top of each other to create a bold looking pattern this work has very much reminded me of the work of Rob Indiana.

Indiana's work looks eye catching and often consists of bold, simple, iconic images, especially numbers and short words like EAT, HUG, and, his best known example, LOVE. I really like the way he has used simple serif text to create a really exciting piece of art, this has made me really want to try and print some text similar to this. Using this idea I tried to create own image using different text on photoshop. Now I really want to try printing some of  my own.

Print

While researching something else I came across this gorgeous line etching by John Urban The Walrus 1969. I thought it really linked in well with my project by using nature and the environment as a theme. I really like the way to create the sea weed and other plants John Urban has used swirls and repeated line. Although the print is far from lifelike the careful detail and use of rubbing has created a really contrasting bold highlighting the life underwater.
Today I also tried to lino print my image at home although I did end up with a disappointing print. Resulting this I think I need to make a trip up to Sion Hill.

I quite like the sketchy feel to this print. The thistles look quite good however the patchy printing really lets the overall image down. I think it would look so much better with a deep block black highlighting the white detailed thistles.