For the past week I've been quite busy,
and my internet's been down for the majority of it too, so that's why there
hasn't been a new post recently.
Last week on Wednesday and Thursday I
was weeding underneath the solar panels again. This was, once again, a
painfully dull process that was incredibly repetitive. Being able to catch up
on podcasts was the only positive part of the experience.
On Friday I was at Butley again,
undertaking tasks for Laurence whilst doing my own thing. I began the day by
pouring wax into my wooden mould. It took a while for all the wax to melt, but
eventually I was able to pour two full buckets into the mould.
It was all going well for about five
minutes, until the mould started leaking, very slowly at first, but when I
tried to block up the hole the whole thing just collapsed in front of me. This
was very annoying, as I then had to scrape up all of the wax on the floor so
that it could be used again at a later date. I did manage to save all the basic
parts of the mould though, so that I could re-build it at a later date.
Later on in the day I carried all of
the moulds to the kiln and helped to clean out the second bath, these jobs
weren't too bad compared to how I had spent the previous two days. It was a
very slow day, as there weren't that many jobs that could be done by someone
with my low level of skills and I didn't really feel like working on my own
stuff because of the spill that had occurred in the morning, which was a shame.
I also saw my two bronze pieces that
were poured on Monday, they looked interesting, but very different from what I had
imagined. It was exciting to see them though.
Over the weekend I didn't do much in
terms of work, but I did play some interesting games. One was a mobile game called
Lifeline, which is a text based game that involves you talking to a young
student who's crash landed on another planet. The intriguing part of the
experience is that the game takes place over a three day period in real time,
so when Taylor goes to sleep you won't be able to play the game for another
eight hours or so until he's awake again.
Yesterday I went to Butley to work but,
yet again, there wasn't much that I was able to do, so I just worked on my own
art and burned a bunch of empty plaster bags. This involved me reassembling the mould from Friday, which took a while,
but I was eventually vaguely successful. Making sure to learn from my mistakes,
I used scrim as well as plaster to strengthen the sides of the mould so that it
wouldn't collapse again.
When it came to eventually pouring the
wax I had to use a wire strainer to filter out the dirt that had gotten into
the wax buckets, I'm hoping that I was successful in doing this, but I'll only
be able to tell when I open up the mould.
Unfortunately after I poured the wax it
became evident that there was a small hole near the bottom of the mould. I was
able to plug it up with clay though, so I only lost a small amount of wax. As
the work began to dry, the mould began to change in shape from a square to a
slight parallelogram. This was a shame, but I can always just photograph the
work and re-use the wax if I don't like the end result.
After pouring the wax I was shown how
to metal finish my bronze pieces using an assortment of electrical appliances
and wire brushes. Being able to manipulate a piece of bronze vaguely easily was
quite enjoyable and fun, but it was hard work, especially when the tiny metal
shavings get onto your skin and clothes. It was really interesting to see how
much the work changed during this process, as well as how beautiful and unique
the surface of the sculptures became once I had taken some time to sand them
down.
Today I've been thinking more about the
concepts behind the work, as well as reading a few more Philip K. Dick short
stories. In the next few days I want to think about how I want to progress this
project further and maybe go to Butley to check on my wax sculpture.
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