Art Studio IIIA - Easter Break

Vessel Maquettes - testing of forms and construction techniques

Simple round container, paperclay, burnished with a pebble. The idea is to pit fire this example with some foliage to add a pattern.

With additions of grooves for tying the vessel shut

With string ties

Square vessel with handles for ties

Representing Neurons and Connections - Research into practitioners and experiments into techniques that could be used.

Practitioners

MEGAN DYCK

 

Perimeter; Vessel, 2012. Stride Gallery, Calgary

MeganDyck.com - Perimeter; Vessel

PERIMETER;VESSEL investigates a visual delineation of physical positive and negative spaces as happenstance by-products of linear plain breakdowns. These hap-hazardous structural breakdowns bring forth a sense of duality as both skeletal structures for the potential occupation of form, thought, or being, and as positive forms that interact with their installed environment. These invasions of overlapping and intertwining lines may frame space or serve as the contours of the absence of something once more whole that has since disappeared, dissolved, or decomposed.

CHIHARU SHIOTA

Stairway, 2012. Block and black wool

Trace of Memory, 2013. Black wool, metal bed, wooden chair 

Absent Bodies, 2016. Wooden Chair, Red Wool

What I love about this work, is the full immersion of the viewer in the works. There is no escaping the work, you are fully part if it and present. The use of wool, intertwined speaks to me of the tangle that goes on inside the mind - trying to unpick the threads of thought and connection. Shiota's work deals with the human condition - life, death and relationships. The taking of space, filling the space using a small fine material. 

Shiota says that 'weaving can explore space and time like lines in painting' 

'Her works, which are usually inspired by her personal experience and emotion, extend beyond the personal to encompass the concerns of all people, such as life and death, memory and interpersonal relationships' Shen 2022

Shen, Xiwei, Ling Wang, and Mengting Ge. "The Soul Trembles: An Exhibition of Shiota Chiharu's Art and Design Work. Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai, China, 12 December 2021–6 March 2022." The Design Journal 26.1 (2023): 163-172.

Methods 

Plaster Wrap on wire

Part 3 - Clay Forming on the Wire Armature - Plaster-Fabric Wrap - YouTube

Ink blowing

Experiments with Ink blowing to create neuron type images. Just using Indian ink this stage. The next step in to manipulate this image in photoshop to create different effects and create a short video.

The above examples are inverted and adjusted with colour balance and hue/saturation, with added lines to try and show the neurons changing and growing new connections.

I tend complileda  series of these files together as a video, adding on sound.

The sound chosen was a calming, river/bird sound to represent the normal state, interspersed with uncomfortable sounds to represent the trauma associated with the new neurons making connections.