Bottle slumping

In another lesson we learnt how to create a holder for our slumped bottles.

Bottle slumping is when you put a wine bottle into a kiln and it 'slumps' into different shapes a can make a holder or many other objects.

We decided to make the holder for our bottle out of clay as it will not melt in the kiln and will mould the bottle into the correct shape.
The equipment we need are

-A mat                       -A water pot
-A rolling pin              -A knife
-A fork                       -Clay                 -Cheese wire

The instructions we decided on are as written down,

Firstly you cover the Wine bottle with paper towel and masking tape,
Next you use the bottom of the palm of your hand to flatten the clay evenly.
--the slab thickness should be around 1cm and the length of the bottle plus a few cm.
After you cut around the slab to the rough shape of the bottle.
Place the slab on top of the Bottle
 Then take four pieces of clay and roll them into spheres.
At four points cross hatch a small part.
Cross hatch the four spheres on one side
Use water to stick the spheres on the slab
Then mould the spheres so they become more into four stands to prop up the bottle
Leave for 2 weeks until it becomes bone dry
Place in kiln at 1100 degrees celcius

This is our plan for bottle slumping, this is what an actual slumped bottle will look like,

Recylced Flower making

In one lesson we experimented with making flowers from recycled magazines and cardboard. We started by rolling up a double sheet of a magazine finely into a very small tube.
We then used masking tape to secure the edges and cut off a few centimetres at each end.
Taking a pen I rolled 6 pieces of 2cm wide cardboard strips  until they curled. I cut the bottom end to be thin and pressed it so it could fit into the slot at the top of the roll.
 I then did this for the other 5 strips experimenting with size and shape until I couldn't fit any more inside.

The class then put together all of their 'flowers' and created a cool looking bunch of flowers!

Relief Form

This lesson we moved from working with books to working with magazines. We were given the brief to recreate in our own way the work of Cara Barer- particularly her piece Sea Nettle,



To create this we were given a section of a magazine that had been cut at the spine so it was divided up. We then spread out all of the pages and started to roll them up and curl them.
 Adding another page at a time we used paper clips to secure them to each other.
We wanted to make sure we kept the feeling of Sea Nettle by making sure the piece almost looks like it is floating in the air so we kept that in mind.
Once we had paper clipped the whole of the spine we used a glue stick to secure the pages together.

Cara Barer has also done many other pieces in which she made look like they are floating in the air.
For example Argon has the same structure except colour has been injected into it making it slightly more eye catching than the others.
 It is also more study looking than Sea Nettle due to the fact the pages are more sticking out and straighter.

    Aragon by Cara Barer

Here is my attempt

I am quite impressed with how quite a simple constructing of the piece creates a complicated looking sculpture and I think this is effective.

I do think that my piece isn't as good as Cara Barer's  though because she used every single sheet really neatly and used a whole book as we used small magazines and glossy books so the loops and circles were more floppy and the radius of the circles were bigger, not squished.

I am very happy with how my sculpture came out because I was given a much smaller book therefore there was less width to be creative with. But there was an advantage, my book was much more sturdier and therefore not as floppy as everyone else's. This did make my book much more easier to move and to stick into place in my opinion.

I have connected my piece well to Cara's because I have tried to recreate the feeling of being weightless ,which is what I think most of her pieces are showing, and to create the swirls and circles that you can't see the beginning or end of and they finish in many unexpected places.
I also think that I have used spacial awareness and variety, not just making the same shaped loop every time, but varying the size, rhythm and structure of each individual curve.

3-D projecting form

This week we moved from 2-D work into 3-D artwork. The last few weeks we were creating 2-D flip up books but now- after being given a new book with a completely new genre we made, using newspaper (all recycled), something from the contents of the book to come to life and pop out of the book.

I was given a book that was all about botany and particular plants. I brainstormed ideas that I could use and in the end- because the flowers had big petals and winding vines I decided to do a viney flower blossoming out of the book. Also, to create maximum effect I stuck down ripped pieces of paper to create the look of the flower "bursting out of the paper".

We actually created the basic structure by rolling up recycled newspaper and modelling it using firstly masking tape. Then, after we had left it to dry, the next week we started to add colour or text ripped from the other pages of the book. I ripped out all of the green pictures and images and, using PVA glue stuck the small pieces on. I then used different yellow shades to cover the head of the flower. My art was not very sturdy, so I decided to use a twig from outside my classroom to prop up the sculpture. I then thought it looked quite natural so I decided to keep the twig.

This is my finished product-

A birds eye view

I am extremely surprised with how sturdy and well my pop out sculpture came. I am surprised because when I first started using the newspaper to sculpt the stem of the flower was extremely unsteady and I thought I may have to start again or try to make it more sturdier. But by adding a liberal amount of PVA  glue that helped make the base much more sturdy and supportive.

If I could improve it in any way I would try and use shading and make the colours that cover the flower much more obvious and easy to see e.g that leaf is a lighter yellow as the leaf at the side is more orange. This would make the piece much more aesthetically  pleasing by the colours blending in and making the flower more smooth and have the same texture of the flower.

My artwork closely resembles the artwork of sculpture Sachiyo Yoshida. As you see, I tried to closely replicate the 'bursting out of the pages look' which Sachiyo cleverly made here. But differently to my work this is much more sturdier because the artist most likely used wire to sculpt and hold up the shape of the ram, and then using the pages and alot of glue, maybe papier mache to make the 'skin' of the animal.