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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