Concepts and Voyages

On Thursday I began forming the basis of an idea, thinking a lot about the pros and cons of all the materials that I have used in the past year as well as the range of sculptures that I have made. I eventually decided to start experimenting with plaster and wax, creating shapes that come out of the wall, slowly increasing in size. I started drawing my ideas and eventually decided to use Google Sketchup to visualise my ideas easier.

On Friday I went to Butley again, in the morning I was simply cleaning the studios and shovelling grog. In the afternoon however I made some concrete heads, this involved going to a cliff to collect sand and then mixing the concrete in with the sand and water, three parts sand to one part concrete. After creating the mixture I simply poured the concrete into the plaster moulds. I hope to do this again so that I can improve on the mixing process.

Over the weekend I started to experiment with plaster and wax, creating card moulds to pour the materials into. I also tried using wood too. I want to work more with these different mediums, finding out which works best. For the moment though, wax looks the most promising, as it slowly dips into itself as it dries, something that is essential to the concept behind the work, which I will talk about later. Plaster and wood doesn't do this, but I'm going to see if I can simulate the effect, rather than it occurring naturally. Although it naturally happening may be something to think about in terms of the concept further. The one con about the wax is that it will melt in high heat conditions, I'm going to look into how to stop this from happening by researching online.

As I make the moulds I have been doing drawings of the possible designs, I feel that these could become artworks within themselves, so as this project goes on I'm going to slowly amass them in a book of their own.

I also finally decided on what the main concept of the work is going to be, that of moving forward. The work coming out of the wall will symbolise this, but in the centre of the sculpture there will be a slight decline, going backwards to the wall. This will encapsulate the idea of not wanting things to move forward, but to move backward, back to the ways things were at the beginning of the sculpture. I think this perfectly describes how I feel at the moment, during the transitional phase between living at home and going to university. It is also looking at my whole life in general, moving forward, but at the same time wanting to keep parts of my former self intact.

In the next few days or so I'm going to think more about this, trying out the materials and ways to increase the size of the pieces, probably by using wood as the barrier, rather than card. As well as this I want to upload the images of my previous work onto my main site, as I am yet to do that, but I did manage to put prices on all of the pieces, which will be helpful for anyone wanting to buy my work.

Even though I have now decided on taking this work forward, I'm going to continue to save my Snapchats, as it will be interesting at some point to make them into one huge piece of work, whatever that may turn out to be.

Finally, I played a range of games on my phone, one was called Framed. In it you change the positions of sections of a comic strip, allowing a masked man to traverse from one side of the screen to the other, this was a really interesting mechanic. Another game was Last Voyage, which is made up of beautiful mini games, including a section mimicking the time travel scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The final game I played was called Adventures of Poco Eco: Lost Sounds. This is kind of a very simple point and click game, where you solve puzzles involving music and brightly coloured environments. All three were intriguing in different ways, be it mechanically or because of their aesthetics and I highly recommend them all.

Website Update

Today I decided to re-invigorate my main website, so I began to document all the work that I have made in the past that isn't already on the website. This includes the project that I recently finished, but unfortunately the majority of that work is still at college so I won't be able to add it to my website for a few weeks at least, which is unfortunate.

The majority of my work that isn't on the main website is the books that I have created for work in the past. A lot of these are companion pieces to a physical sculpture, or a compilation of photographs made into a piece of art within itself. It was fun to re-visit my past work, and think about what I would do differently if I were to make them again.

As well as this I also started to think about putting prices on my work so that if anyone wanted to buy a something they wouldn't have to send me an email to enquire about prices. This is a tough process, thinking about how much I value my own time and the art work that I create.

Tomorrow I want to spend some more time thinking about what I want to do with my new project, delving into what I'm interested in as well as thinking about what I actually want to do. I may just need to be in the studio for a bit, to play around with random materials so that I can learn by doing rather than solely thinking about it in my head and in my sketchbook.

Studio Space and Life Is Strange

I was working at Butley again today. I began by opening up the moulds that had been poured on Friday. This involves hacking into the plaster with an axe to rescue the bronze. On a side note, the mould that encased the bronze is used as grog to create more moulds, this recycling of materials was interesting to learn about. After this I had the unfortunate job of spraying all the bronze pieces to remove the cement mixture from the inside and outside of the work. This is a very tiring and strenuous job, as you get very wet and tiny pieces of dirt get sprayed into your face.

After lunch I helped to fill the furnace with new moulds, so that all the wax can be drained out of them in the next few days. There was also a small bronze pour, which meant that I had to hose down one more bit of bronze. Towards the end of the day I was given my own studio space to work on my artwork, which is really helpful, as I can now come in and use the facilities and equipment when I'm not working for Laurence. After being given the space I quickly put together a desk made up of scrap wood. I'm now really looking forward to starting a new project, and filling my new space with art, as well as using the processes I have learned for my own work.

At the end of the day I played an intriguing game called Life Is Strange. The game puts you in the shoes of a photography student at university who discovers that she can rewind time whenever she wants to. Aside from the supernatural abilities, the game itself is very much about the day to day life of a young person struggling to cope with everything that's going on around her. This is a short snapchat that I made whilst playing.

Abandoned Spaces

Today I went to a place called Bawdsey with a friend of mine, this was so that he could take photographs of abandoned buildings' interiors for an art project. First we went to an area that used to house a group of radio transmission buildings. The place had so many abandoned buildings and spaces to photograph, which were all really interesting to look into. It was weird to see how much time and effort had gone into creating huge structures of concrete and metal, to be simply abandoned and left to rot. But it was fun to use photography for art purposes, rather than just to document the art work that I create, as I don't think I have taken a picture to be viewed as a piece of art for at least five months.

Later on we went to an old Martello tower near/in Bawdsey. This was also abandoned but we managed to climb into the inside through a window, it was intriguing to see how much of the insides of the building are lost because of how thick the walls are.

I also thought more about my own art project, and started to save the Snapchats that I create on a daily basis. I decided that I may as well begin collecting them now, so that if I do decide to make them into something more in a few weeks I will already have some videos to work with. As the majority of my Snapchat stories are intended to be ironic, I think it would be a thought-provoking process to consider what the concept behind the work would be. This is definitely something to consider.

As well as this I thought about making art work to be placed outside in random spaces, slightly taking forward a small aspect of the last project. I am yet to think about what this might actually be, but I think the idea of putting something to be seen by people in the public domain would be an interesting one to explore.

Finished

On Thursday I completely finished my foundation, this involved bringing in all my experiments and sketchbooks from the project so that my exhibition space could be signed off. This all went smoothly and I was happy about how I had presented all of the sculptures that I had made throughout the past three months. I was a little sad about leaving a place that I had been going to for the past 9 months or so, as I was beginning to enjoy it, but all things must come to an end.

On Friday I went to Butley once again, this was a hard but interesting day. I helped to strap moulds in the morning, a process that occurs after they have been in the furnace but before the bronze is poured into them. Occasionally the moulds will crack in the furnace, so you have to use a thread mesh dipped in plaster to reinforce them, to stop the bronze seeping out. This took a lot of time and effort, so by the time we had finished there were only a few hours in the day left, spent cleaning up the main studio and shovelling grog. At around five o'clock a group of people from the nearby village came to watch the bronze being poured, as well as to have a BBQ, this was fun.

As my foundation has basically come to an end now, I'm going to start working at Butley on Tuesdays too, this will help me to learn the processes at a faster rate, slowly becoming more comfortable with it all.

Over the weekend I have been thinking a lot about my next project, thinking about whether I want to continue making work looking at my emotions, or start a fresh with a completely new idea. It will probably be the latter, as I feel that my last two major pieces of work have looked at my own personal emotions. So I think I'd like to stay away from them for a bit, but stay with the idea of my work relating to me personally.

Some of the ideas that I have been thinking about at the moment include compiling my Snapchat (bob.bk) stories into different categories, and having those as pieces of art within their own right. This would be very easy to achieve, simply saving every video that I create and at some point putting them together using video software. Another idea would be to make a piece of art surrounding the work that I do at Butley, creating simple sculpture from the off cuts of bronze. I intend to think about this further over the next few days, taking into account how much time I have to make the work (pretty much the whole summer) and what I actually want to achieve in that time.

Also over the weekend I watched the completely crazy film that is "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water". Although it's obviously considered a kids film there were some interesting moments within it, including a time travel scene as well as a talking dolphin, not to mention how many references there were for the adults who choose to watch this sort of thing.

Books and Final Day

Today I completely finished preparing my space for the exhibition, adding a final layer of paint as well as painting over the pencil marks that I made yesterday. I'm really happy about how it all looks and hope that other people will enjoy my work too.

I also started to design three more books, one for my evaluation, one for my bibliography and one for all of my blog posts. I am currently just finishing putting together the final touches on the blog posts book, which has taken me quite a while as this blog amounts to nearly 100 A4 pages, and I chose to bind the pages together in a relatively complicated way.

After I have made this I'm then going to put together the two other books, which will be much easier, as they are the same type as the books I have made in the past.

This will be the last page in the blog book, but I do intend to continue the blog even though this project is over, as I have enjoyed writing down what  I have been doing on a daily basis.