During the sculpture elective it was suggested that one of my failings maybe that I was too tidy,or that I may not like mess, so I'm about to turn that notion on its head and very willingly take the challenge to create something in a different way.  Again scale is another factor I need to keep considering, I still need to push this forward and create something bigger than myself.   In doing so I also need to look at materials and think practically about them.  Will the materials I choose give me the results I want in these areas.    However thinking like this, important as it is leaves me a little flat.   All I want at this point in time in the elective is the energy and buzz, the need to keep going, making, experimenting, letting things happen, letting the materials have their say, take over and then seeing what happens as a result of that.
So because of these thoughts, in my next experiment I have decided to use fabric, bamboo, tape, plaster and thread. 
In semester I came across the work of Tim Hawkinson and I liked the way he used materials especially as more often than not he uses things in a way you don't expect them to be used.  This thought process is exciting and one I love.   Diana al Hadid is the other artist I have been looking at
contextually and as suggested by Mike Canning trying to imagine what her studio might look like!
So this is what happened when I went to work with the elements I had chosen.

I used a lining fabric and because of its shiny nature there was some concern that the plaster wouldn't impregnate it.   It didn't and the plaster just sat on the surface of the material.   However it still set and I feel it didn't really take from the experiment as it ended up as a solid form but with lots of fluid movement in the drapery, the softness cocooned in the rigid nature of the plaster, all be it resting on top.   When I looked at it thoughts of Pompeii came to mind, forms and figures caught in molten ash, preserved forever in that fashion.  The other thing that strikes me is my use of the thread, why? not sure but I have brought this element through the elective, in the two sugar pieces and now into the fabric one.   For now all I can say is I like the contrast between the delicate strands of thread and the the thicker folds of fabric.  Maybe its the fact that they are both the same thing made of the same elements but they appear in very different forms here.  What ever it is, even if I don't understand it for the moment, I wanted to use this material  in the piece.

Sculpture Elective.

Revisited sugar sculpture over the weekend.   My task was scale, go bigger.   This I did using styrofoam or aerobord as a base for an underlying structure.  I worked with what I had gluing blocks together to give some height.   Its definitely bigger, measuring above my waist, but considering I'm just 4'11'' that's still not big enough.   I had been looking at the small piece I had made earlier and wondered how I might push it on, take it further.   Thinking how they looked like nature and how  I had liked the strands that covered the structure, I decided on the idea of maybe encasing the next one with thread or something like that.   Over the weekend the countryside was full of fog and I spotted some cobwebs that were emphasised more because of it.   These would never be seen except for the fog and with the light on them, they seemed to have a similar texture and glisten to that of the sugar syrup when it dried.   I wanted to try to convey this with the sugar structure, another experiment.  This is what happened.

From nature.

From the kitchen.

                                          

 Of course getting this in to the car to transport it to Limerick was some fun, even though its not huge it wouldn't fit in one piece, so nothing for it but to take it apart.   When I got down I put it back together.    After looking at it again it became apparent that it was like two pieces of work with all the interesting bits going on at the top.  I decided to put the heat gun on some areas to make it dissolve further, maybe this might make it more interesting to look at especially around the bottom.  I think it worked to some extent, but as its just an experiment and there is no real outcome expected the surprise element of what happens is exciting.  You can judge for yourself.

Adding heat.

After I had finished this I thought about adding colour with ink but decided against it.   The reason for not doing so was that one of the most thrilling and exciting things about this experiment was its unpredictable results.   With each batch of sugar paste the colour varied maybe only slightly but on balance I felt that this was colour enough.   I also like the whole translucent nature of the experiment so I decided its own natural hues were better.  Who knows, I may revisit it again and change this last stage.

20th February, 2012.

Today sees the start of the last Electives, mine is Sculpture.    After mind maps we picked ten words that appealed to us and after discussion narrowed it down further.   My two words were melt and stretch.   So I'm going to look at different materials that I can stretch and melt.   I have also decided to look at both sides of the coin to see what materials can be stretched and what happens if the same material is melted. Will it shrivel and contract or can it be made even stretcher if melted.   I started with a plastic building mesh used for plastering.  This is what happened when I stretched it.  As with a lot of fabrics the mesh was only able to be stretched when pulled on the bias.

 

Stretching and pulling

cutting into strips stretching and returning it to the square again.

The next experiment I did was stretching with tights, being nylon they stretched very well and could be pulled more than twice their original length.   They were easy to pull and stretch width ways as well.  To keep the emphasis on the stretch I used invisible thread to pull them apart. These are the results.

                                            

 

My next experiment was to melt and  do this I used sugar.  I used sugar because there are no fumes or strong smell from it and because of this I was able to use it very comfortably.   I put the sugar in a pot and added heat.   The grains dissolved into liquid.   I let it boil until it became clear and then I poured it on to grease proof paper.
Below  are the results.

 
                                 

When the sugar dried it became a solid form again, but very brittle and fragile.   When lifting the shapes off the paper they crumbled and broke.   I decided to make another batch and while I used the same method  I let it boil longer.   This changed the colour and texture but it was still brittle and hard to handle.   Originally I wanted to hang these shapes like icicles or stalagmites but this did 't work out so I put them together with a glue gun.    I used the glue like sugar strands let it fall and stretch over the sugar shapes.  I had no particular shape in mind when putting these together.  The hot glue did melt the sugar a little further in places, but not as much as I would have liked it to do.  They have a transparent feel about them in places you can see through them and they kinda look like ice or icebergs.   I also like the way some of the shapes have that slightly different colour and a different texture, being rough and pox marked rather than just smooth.   I'll let you judge for yourself.

The most exciting thing about this experiment was the unpredictability of it all, no result was exactly the same.   Even when I used the same method and allowed the same time there were still some differences.  Of course if I was using it in a culinary sense it would be totally frustrating but for this process it added another dimension to the experiment.  This is one I will revisit at the week end and when doing so,  I hope to think about scale and maybe incorporate some other material as well.