Using ideas iv’e been developing in my book I decided to bring the fans popping out of my book into a 3D piece. I made giant fans and started to pin them on a mannequin. Then the idea hit me like a tonne of bricks. My paper fans would make a great ballerinas tutu. I pinned them all round the middle of my mannequin until they formed  a fanned skirt. It stuck out a foot all around which earned it the nick name “satellite dish”.

From this point I was stuck. How was I going to make it wearable? Would it be possible to be made out of fabric? Or would it forever just be a idea?

I wanted to make fabric masks. I had pulled my inspiration from both African masks and Venusian masks. The African masks focused on elongating facial features and bright colorful patterns. Venusian masks are more about making a generic facial structure but they also add fanciful extensions like fans or long curled stripes that look a bit like a jokers hat. I wanted to use some of these elements in my masks.

I decided to make a half mask with a paper mache base. I was a little skeptical on whether sticking the fabric down with PVA would work. However it worked quite well. For the half mask I only used one layer of paper mache and one layer of fabric. This, once dry wasn’t as strong as I would have liked, but still very wearable.

The second mask I made entirely out of fabric. I wanted a delicate mask that just highlights the eyes. I accomplished this by making it smaller then all my previous creations.  I started off by cutting out lace and gluing it down in the shape that I wanted. Once that dried I realized without backing layers it would just fall apart. So I used light cotton to create a backing layer. Allowing that to partially dry before I rebuilt the lace detailing. This mask worked well however if I make a similar one in the future, I will use a stiffer cotton for the backing.

I had a sculpture workshop in which we where experimenting with using modroc to cover 3D forms. I wanted to modroc faces. The only issue I had modrocing faces is that if your model moves the movement may create air bubbles between their face and the negative mold. These air bubbles then became nod-gels on the positive mold that I made from the negative mold. I wanted to use these molds to make masks in my studio time.

To make the masks I first thought about using card or clay. However I have decided to go back to basics and use paper mache.

To stop the mask from sticking to the mold I put a sheet of cling film between them. The only problem with this was that it kept moving on the mold. I asked around to see if anyone had any ideas. One of my peers suggested using Vaseline to stop the cling film from moving, while still being easy to remove. This worked so well that I used it for the other masks I made with paper mache.

The next problem I encountered was strength. The tissue paper I was using just did not dry hard enough. Its layers were too fine and flexible. I experimented with different types of paper to find what was pliable enough to not loose the shape of the mold but strong enough when dry. I eventually settled on good old fashioned bog roll. This could be molded and glued together easily and quickly, it also was fairly easy to paint over the finished product.

I got this idea from working with fans and my love of costume. I decided to make a neck ruff in a similar way to how I made the paper fans in my book.

I started by folding the fabric to make a concertina affect. This didn’t work as well as it did with the paper fans. The fabric didn’t hold the folds as well as I’d hoped. I’ll have to come up with a way to make the folds stiff, maybe some kind of starch.

Next I sawed every two folds together to make one side of the ruff fan out more then the other. I’m going to research ways to starch fabric and different ways to decorate it too.

Iv been studying my objects to find connections or if there are non disconnections. Two objects struck me the other day as having an obvious visual connection and yet I hadn’t noticed it. My bunch of feathers and this long coiling tin foil camping flue that I have. The flue can be compressed like a spring and if you just hold one side it fans out like the feathers do.

I began making paper fans, like a concertina. This worked very well except I had to be quiet precis or each fold in the fan would be a slightly different size. I think its safe to say that mine are no where near perfect but don’t look so miss-shaped that its obvious. I liked the idea of making my studio book a little bit like a pop up book. So I experimented at sticking fans into my book so that when you open the book they open with it. I like this affect and think it looks a bit like a tutu or a neck ruff. 

One thing I struggled with was getting the fans even on each page of my studio book. If you are even slightly off the fan will get a little bit scrunched up in between the pages instead of remaining neatly folded.

I used tracing paper to get a translucent effect. I also used inks to paint and pattern my fans. One of my objects is a computer chip which has about a hundred tiny little pins on one side. I used this to mark my fans with tiny little dotes. I feel like this was a successful affect, however because of the way I was holding it meant that it sometimes dripped making much bigger splotches. This created a funky affect in itself but if I was going for something more uniform i’d have to come up with a better way of holding my chip.

Going to London was an amazing experience. I’m not used to big cities so I felt quiet dwarfed by everything. However it was an inspirational experience that I feel has opened my eyes to the possibilities out there for me.

Richard Wilson 

In the Hayward gallery we went to see a exhibition called Space Shifters. This exhibition was all about distorting space to give the viewer a odd perspective of the room. Richard Wilson created an installation that aimed at confusing the viewer as to which way was up and which way was down. Picture this, your walking out onto a platform surrounded by a perfectly reflective crystal like surface, that created a reflection of the ceiling in it. Maybe it’s water maybe it’s glass, liquid or solid but it doesn’t matter. The important thing about this installation is you end up feeling like your floating in a mirror dimension. A world where you can’t tell which way is the way out and which way will lead you to walk into a solid surface. It turns out that the reflective surface was created using engine oil. The heady fume of this added to the sensation of not being in the right dimension. As I walked out onto the platform in this installation, I felt like the floor might cave in and I would forever be floating in a mirror world.

Barbara Kasten

Barbara Kasten’s painting was in the Tate modern exhibition called The shape of light. At first I didn’t think much of it but at second glance it pulled me in like a magnet. It made me feel like I was floating in a void. Forever falling like when Alice falls down the rabbit hole. Drifting through a timeless dark space. It wasn’t unsettling in fact it felt quiet safe. It was like receiving a hug from someone twice my size, you can’t see a thing but you feel totally safe.

I find the idea of altering a spectators perspective or affecting how they feel a concept I’d like to involve in my work. I want my work to tell a story to convey how you should be feeling in relation to the work.

Fashion from Nature

Going to the fashion from nature exhibition re-vitalized my love for fashion and costume. It was amazing to see clothes made from processes I’d not even heard of. Such as clothes grown from mycelium or made from bolt threads.

I love hats. Especially what would now be considered as costume hats.The kind of hats that are decorated with elaborate feathers and models. So when I saw this Modes du Louvre hat, from 1885, I almost cried. The craftsmanship involved in making something like this is incredible. The hat itself is made from felted wool in a ocra with orange braiding and gold beads around the edge. The complex part of the construction of the hat was the decoration. A whole starling has been used to adorn the side of the hat. The bird has been bleached and died peach before being positioned, in mid flight, on the hat. Feathers from larger bird have been used as a back drop for the starling. However the truly amazing thing about this hat is that the feathers on the bird have been hand painted with metalic flowers.

I would love to make something like this but I would make mine without harming any animals. At the fashion from nature exhibition there was also a ahimsa silk dress made by Naomi Bailey-Cooper. Ahimsa means non-violence, so the silk is taken after silkworm has emerged from it’s cocoon. The dress was decorated with spun glass feathers. Spun Glass! I would really like to find out how this is done. It would be truly amazing to make a ‘dress’ hat in winter colours to match the spun glass feathers used to decorate it.

My education has some holes in it because we moved a lot so Iv never made a colour wheel before. I found this process very usfull when I came to do painting later.

Primary colours cannot be made:

• red
• yellow
• blue

Secondary colours, are colours made out of primary colours:

• green
• orange
• purple

Tertiary colours, are made out of a primary and secondary colour.

We got our first assignment on the 17th of September. We have to create a body of work to explore the idea fix. To start of we had to go find lost abandoned and now useless objects to respond to under the term fix.

Hmmmmm, fix. To fix two things together. Using different kinds of fixatives, like glue or stitches.

How do you fix something that’s broken? Do you hide the break (restoration), or do you make a feature of it? Making a feature of an objects breaks and flaws is called wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is a Japanese term meaning to accept the flaws and imperfections in objects, and looking at them in a new light so that you see the beauty in them.

I went for a walk to the beach. I was really looking to find discarded or lost objects. I was just about to give up when I came across a circle of feathers. Obviously a bird had been got by a dog or something. I picked up a clump of feathers still attached to each other. This sounds strange but the more i looked the more i felt like I had struck gold.

Birds to me have always reminded me of freedom. Flight is the closest thing I can imagine to true freedom. Whenever iv been really down I imagine flying away to just feel less heavy.

In college i started playing with photographing my feathers and the other objects I’d found round the house. I decided to experiment with light and shadow. So of the shadows coming of the feathers looked like birds in flight. Like the ghost of a bird. The feathers are no longer attached to a bird but they still hold the memory of flying, the feeling of being free.

Broadhaven

We spent Monday the 10th and Tuesday the 11th in broadhaven. This trip was to get us to know each other better and to make us use our new drawing skills out in ‘the field’. I found this difficult at first as I don’t particularly enjoy drawing landscapes, as they are the kind of scenery that instead of hocking me, they help me to get lost in thought. However i got very carried away with taking pictures. So much so that I kept suddenly stopping causing the person behind me to bump into me every time I toke a picture.

Every time we were asked to stop we had between 5 minutes and 1 minute to draw what was in front of us before we had to turn on the spot and pick a different view point. One of my drawings is of this rock face. Personally I found drawing this engaging because  to me the rock in center of the picture looks like the head of a fallen giant. The next day when we had to critique our drawings I found the one of the giant and one i’d done looking up the path over my peers heads, in unorthodox hand, the most successful. For the fallen giant I combined lots of different marks to make it an interesting piece that really stood out. The unorthodox hand drawing was engaging and different from my other pictures because I’d totally relaxed which allowed the shaky and unrefined marks of my left hand to grasp the proportions and feeling of what was in front of me with ease.

The next day we were tasked to beach comb with the intention of turning our findings into interesting mark making tools.

I managed to make all of my tools just using what I had found on the beach. I made a drawing tool with a feather and a long spindle shell, a pattern printing tool with a flat shell and a seaweed root ball and a double ended rope drawing tool.

when we returned from broardhaven we realized how heavy cardboard really is as half the installation had fallen down. So we went tape happy putting every thing back up. The coordinators of this task ended up being the people with the best pictures of the installation.

Cardboard Catwalk

On Wednesday we were charged with making sculptural cardboard clothing for a ‘cardboard catwalk’. We did this in pairs so one of us would end up being the model for a small film shoot. In the end I was in a cardboard costume that looked a bit like a samori’s armor. The ‘breast plate’ was easy enough to make. It was the ‘skirts’ that caused me issues. They were made out of three bits of corrugated cardboard, each at a meter and a half long. We then had to fan fold them, piece holes all through the top of the fan and lace them on to a piece of string. The string would be tied round my waist to create a pleated skirt that in my opinion looked like shielding. However good the idea for the skirt was I almost gave up on it. To thread the skirts I had to thread through each pleat individually but once they were on I had to keep them a tightly folded as possible. If you release pressure on them they fly off the end of the string, This is frustrating and time consuming plus we were being timed before the catwalk.

The actual catwalk was hilarious. Everyone had a different walk and set of poses that had everyone in stitches. As for me I just couldn’t keep a straight face. Suffice to say i won’t be a professional model anytime soon but it was allot of fun.

3D and Performance Art

Thursday morning was all about research. We were split into groups of seven and given three artist to reference in the last bit of work we were adding to the installation. We were given Rebecca Horn, Nick Cave and Ritta Ikonen. The theme we got from these artists was camouflage.

We created part of the installation to hide two people in cardboard camouflage.

 

The induction period was a whirlwind. If I hadn’t been there and experienced it myself I wouldn’t have believed the work we did was done in two weeks!

I learnt so many new drawing techniques such as:

• speed drawing
• dotes and manic marks (drawing using only dotes and aggressive fast passed marks)
• tactile drawing (drawing throw touch)
• continuous line drawing
• unorthedox hand
• ghost drawing
• negative space drawings

I found that the drawings done with dotes and manic marks the most successful. It was a freeing experience to almost attack the page with the charcoal, it reminded me of drawing as a child. I was surprised at how such an aggressive drawing technique could prejudice such a beautiful result.

During induction we did allot of critiques of our own work and the work of our peers. I have never done this in such detail before. This experience gave me a whole new insight into what made a successful drawing. Now explaining why a drawing is successful is allot more difficult then saying why you like a drawing. For example you have to consider the depth, tone, perspective, the subject matter and whether the technique was carried out successfully. Only after you considered every other angle can you truly say that you love a drawing.

Cardboard World

Once we had selected our most successful drawings, we were introduced to cardboard world. this is a concept where we would create an entire exhibition out of cardboard.

This was the first layout of where all of our images were going to go.

A rough description of how the focal point of the installation was going to look like.

When drawing on the installation we had to negotiate with the person working next to us to make sure that we weren’t cramping each others style.

                 As you can see at the end of one week you could say we had a finished installation, but we weren’t done yet.