#eswresidency

Installation

| harussell1

In this workshop we viewed many different artist installations in a presentation as inspiration for making our own.

We were asked to spend 10 mins in silence taking in the room we had been working in for the last week,making mental notes about the size,feeling we got from it,structure etc etc.

We were then split into two groups.Our group only consisted of four people in comparison to the other group which was much larger.

I found this task particulary difficult mostly because we had to work as a group and I felt that one half of the group did not take any ideas from myself and another person within the group So I didn’t feel that I had any influence on any of the ideas or that I could identify with any of the final outcomes.

I felt that the other groups ideas were alot more sucessful as they seemed to think on their feet where as our group spent more time thinking then making and would last min throw something together and hope for the best.

Image with the chairs and red board was meant to be about creating a safe space within such a cold clinical room and creating a barrier from the other installation yet inviting people to look at it also.

Other image was about reflecting the slant of the ceiling.

Resin Casts/Armatures/Final clay piece. Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

| harussell1
In this workshop we took elements of what worked in our sculptures and made it into casts.I had taken a series of close up photo’s of my sculptures and decided to focus on features such as vessels had made in the clay,the folds of the clay and the shape of the holes in one of my sculptures.I also decided to look at the form of one of my sculptures too which had a very femine form which i felt related to the vessel like shape and to combine these two shapes together.

I had to remind myself of how to create these shapes in order for them to have the desired effect in the resin.On the first piece i forgot to invert the folds in order to make them come out so did this on a second attempt.
I feel that the most simple cast using the vessel form and femine shape was the most effective and therefore I decided to make three armatures based on this shape using a mixture of chicken wire,hessian and thick plaster mix to give a more textured approach. I created a big piece and two smaller,one free standing and i cut the chicken wire at the bottom of the smaller piece and bent it and did the same with the larger piece altho this may not be the best approach due to the height and i proberly should of added more plaster to the bottom in hindsight.
  • Vessel like shapes created on the back
  • ‘Folds started to have an almost ear like quality about them.
We were then asked to take our favourite medium and favourite qualities from the pieces we have made and to make a ‘resolved’ piece. Iniatially I aimed to make a clay piece based on the vessel shapped pieces but I really struggled to get the form right and the piece kept becoming too ‘top heavy’ again. I then turned it onto it’s side and when i did this was reminded of the fold shape that I had been using also and decided that this natural development within the process had worked to my advantage and therefore decided to move with this and created lots of these folds on top of two hole like shapes whilst adding in the vessel type shapes at the back.This taught me to be less precious about my work and to experiment more as felt that there was a more sucessful outcome from this and the mixture of techniques worked well.
A collection of everyones works together.I thought it was interesting to see everyones different techniques and pieces together.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

| harussell1

Due to us spending next week at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop we were given an induction where we were introduced to all the diferent machines within the wood workshop.We were then asked to do practice pieces using these machines before being given several pieces of wood and asked to make a final piece using the equitment provided.

I felt quite aprehensive about using the machines as it’s not an environment that I am used to and there is alot of danger attached to using these machines should you loose focus or not follow the safety guidelines.Over the course of the afternoon tho I did start to feel slowly more confident.

Final piece.Decided to go for something very simple based on one of the shapes produced during my 2D work and hung as a final piece.The triangles used very thin wood and would be quite intricate to cut on the bandsaw so decided to use a table saw as a normal saw seemed to be too heavy and splintered the ends of the triangles.Forgot to sand the triangles which you can see by the rough edges.

We got to have a sneak peek at an exhibition currently taking place within the sculpture workshop and also work in progress which included a pair of (legally aquired) silver casted swans wings which could of been interpretted as angels wings.Also alot of bronze/silver casted items that looked like they belonged to a movie set such as a giant set of horns,gas mask,shoes.We were encouraged to talk to artists using the workshops to find out about the processes they are using in order to inform our own processes.