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.