Research Week

After my progress review I was quite happy with the way it went and was unsure and a bit hesitant on where to take my idea next. So I decided to research artists that's were doing similar things to me to get some ideas. I was researching Berlinde De Bruyekere and really thought that her wax rendering of the human skin was similar to what i was doing. Also her use of deer's and deer antler is very similar to what i was doing.
she also uses horse skin and hair, though  since the early 1990s many of her major works have featured structures involving blankets. Their use is symbolic both of warmth and shelter, and of the vulnerable circumstances such as wars that make people seek such shelter.
Her well-known sculpture melds organic forms with the figure and the strain or inhibition of the respective components. She is an activist at heart. Almost showing the cruelty to animals in her work. When asked about her rendering of the human body she said '' I use it because it's an extension, like you extend the intestines and it's fleshy and big and hard at the same time. There could be nothing from the human body inside yet it's talking about human feelings. It's not that I really need the body to tell you something about the human condition. I do it very often with horses.''

Here are some examples of her work:

Discovering the Vacuum Moulder

I asked Des if I could use the Vacuum Molder to try it out and then cast into it.
It was really cool, you put an object in the machine and make sure its below the the lid on top.
You then choose a color of perspex and place it over the top and pull the heater over it.
Des then presses a button to melt the plastic just enough so that its bendy. You pull the heater of and push the peddle then press the vacuum button and watch as the plastic gets pulled in around the object, and press eject and the object is released.

I did this first with the deer skull but had to take it out early as the skull is unevenly shaped and close to getting stuck in the plastic forever.

I then put an antler, on its own from another dear skull I had , but it wasn't very effective.

I put in my crab claws and shells but they were close to getting stuck so I had to eject it early, but it still very nice to look at.


This is the front.

I did many of these, well as many as i was allowed , and these were the best ones that i have up.




This week I have been working like a mad man trying to get things done for the upcoming progress reviews.
I was told that I had to write a short paragraph about my concept. I'm finding this increasingly hard to write. I know what my concept is but i'm finding it hard to explain it to others.I know my project is about found empty vessels and negative shape, and turning an empty vessel into an object.
My mind is muddled


I found this great article by the independent about Racheal Whiteread, it talks about her work and why she does what she does.


http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/rachel-whiteread-ive-done-the-same-thing-over-and-over-2068718.html

Casting, Casting and more Casting

This week I went a bit mental with the casting, I ended up spending the whole week doing cast after cast after cast in different ed ones and mixing my own colored wax so i could get the desired effect.

I then experimented with dropping the pigments into the wax so you could see the inky like pigment when it dried.

I ended up with about 18-20 crab claws in different shapes and colors.

The hard part is to figure out what I'm going to do with them, hang them, line them up? make a wearable piece? and installation??

I also asked Pat if he would do some in resin for me, which i really like, but its annoying being only able to do 2 and then leave them to dry for 12 hours, where as with the wax I could knock ten or so out in a day and in as many colors as I like. If i had it my way I would do it all in resin, all resin. But I don't have enough molds, and I'm fairly sure there isint enough resin for just a 1st year to take.

Towards the end of the week I made more molds of actual crab shells. They were very strange looking and didn't exactly look like crabs at all.

I really liked them though and cast them in wax in different colors but ended up casting a lot in a green-ish yellow color which was very effective and made them look like something else entirely .

Sewing into my wax molds.

My Crab molds together.

Found this video on Louise Bourgeois, I couldn't get the full version up, but the full version is well worth the watch.

Casting

This week I decided I would start casting my molds in wax as it only took a half an hour to dry.
I went down to the technicians room and asked Des to show me how the wax pot works.
First you dip your Styrofoam cup in , take a bit of wax and add a color if that's what you wanted.
They had red, yellow, orange, purple, black and green.

I decided to do my first one in white wax.
and the end product was very successful and then I did one in green which brought out all the detail.

I did a few of these and decided to make another mold of one of the claws as it worked so well the first time. I did the same as before and pushed it into clay and built a wall. I left it to dry overnight with the plastic in it and came back the next morning and popped it out and poured wax in.
I tried many colors and liked the darker ones the best as it showed the most detail.

Making my Moulds

This week I went down to Des and Pat in the technicians room and brought down a box of found objects and asked if i could cast them and what i could cast them in.
I brought down a box full of washed up crab parts and a dear skull.
I really liked these objects and wanted to keep them for the rest of the brief so i asked if i could make molds that wouldn't damage the pieces themselves.

I really liked these objects and wanted to keep them for the rest of the brief so i asked if i could make molds that wouldn't damage the pieces themselves. Pat showed me a material that they use on relics and he said it wouldn't damage the skull at all so i decided to get to work.

This is the skull in a plastic mold face down.

I then wanted to do this skull in wax but I couldn't pour the wax in because it would all fall out.

So i decided to let the wax on the cup get a little thick and then paint it on with a paintbrush, I had to do this really quickly as wax dries fast enough when its thick.

This was the end product.

I then had to get started on making my crab claw molds which were very hard to do.

First i had to get a slab of clay and press the crab part in about half way and then begin to build a wall of clay on the outside of the slab so that when i our the plaster in it wont leak out.

I did 1 of these at first and left it to dry for 12 hours and then i got this mold.

I really enjoyed the beginnings of this process as it was very exciting and it reminded me a lot of what Racheal Whiteread was doing with random objects from a house.

 As seen below