Sunday, 21 April 2013

Unit X: Sampling

Following on from our meeting, this weekend I have been busy sampling with various material. My initial research looked at objects that were used in Voodoo rituals so I thought it would be a nice idea to make casts of objects, maybe those that had sentimental value, to display as part of our installation. For this I decided to keep it simple and use watered- down PVA glue to fuse various materials together in a moulded shape. Inspiration for this came from Lizzie’s research into the work of artist Anna Mortimer who uses heat fusion to mould fabric into delicate cocoon-like objects which she embroiders and puts together as beautiful globular clusters.



So I started by covering a small vase with patches of loose wool fibres (kindly donated to me by Flavia) and soaking it in watered-down PVA glue. I was quite happy to keep my layers quite uneven and haphazard as I was interested in the way light would pass through the varied densities.




Whilst that was left to dry, I repeated technique by wrapping thick string around an ink bottle and some thin yarn around another vase. Again, my aim was not to be too precise and leave random gaps in between the layers to allow for light to pass through. 





As I had really soaked the pieces I found that it took ages to dry! But as it was a nice day I was able to take some pictures of my experiments in good light. In some ways this worked better with the coloured glass as a base for the wool and string outer shells as it accentuated the light and shadows. 


Once dry, the samples weren’t quite as successful as I had hoped. I found that the samples simply didn’t hold their shape once they had been peeled off their bases. Particularly, the wool fibres began to come off in clumps once it started to peel it and would probably start to shed every time I handled it! But this might simply be down to my PVA to Water ratio. What might have been a half-success however might be the string and yarn structures. Again, these did not hold their shape properly but once removed from the base structure, it was almost as though the yarn took on a skeletal resemblance of the object that formed it. 

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