FMP

Theme and first experiments:

My FMP theme utilises something I do naturally. I aim to experiment with site specific installations and sculpture to demonstrate my theme: Evolution.

This theme allows me to challenge myself to create art while consciously thinking about how the object would change, whereas in the past, I have been doing this subconsciously. I will be experimenting using natural elements, such as the wind and sunlight, and unnatural elements, such as artificial light. 

After my experiments from last week, I decided to experiment with technique I had tried in the past, and also decided to try something that I had done before accidentally.

When experimenting wit plaster in the last project, I had used a bad batch of plaster that didn't set. Because it hadn't set it meant that I could change the shape and experiment more with it. In the process of experimenting with the plaster, I decided to put an old plaster cast into it. 

As I watched it, the colour of the old plaster cast began to change as it absorbed water from the under plaster.

I decided to experiment with this to see if I could change the colour of plaster by adding ink to water and letting some plaster sit in it. The plaster I chose to use was a small segment from last weeks project. It was fully set and dry.

I initially stood the sculpture in blue ink and water, which rose up the sculpture reasonably quickly, but as it was soaking up the water, the ink spreading began to slow down.

It reached a certain point where it didn't seem like it would go any higher up, so I decided to switch the colour to yellow.

At first, It didn't seem like it would spread any further than it had after two hour, however, when I came back the next day, the yellow ink had spread trough the sculpture and had created a small garden between the blue and yellow. Unfortunately, a small amount of the plaster had fallen off because of the water content. Above the blue ink is a pink tint where some of the pigment from the inks has risen higher than the actual colour.

For now, the plaster has been taken out of the ink to allow it to dry so that it doesn't crumble, and I will resume with a different colour once the plaster has dried again.

I left the plaster to soak up the ink while I started other experiments rather than waiting for something to happen.
After last week's experiments with making glove casts, I decided to try t again, but this time using plaster mixed with, and also tried some different gloves as well as the first type I tried.

For the glove I tried last week, the results weren't all that different, however the glove didn't split, as I avoided trapping air into it. 

The second type of glove was stronger in comparison, but rather than pulling the cast out of the glove, I decided to leave it in because of the texture the glove had.

I used another of the stronger gloves for a different experiment, and liked the way that it formed once the plaster had set on and inside of it. It is still slightly flexible, but the plaster crumbles off of the glove when it is bent to far.

Using the glove above, I decided to experiment with a technique I had tried over a year ago where I would fill the glove with plaster and then cut a small hole on one of the fingers and squeeze the plaster out of the end.

The result of the experiment created a small tower of noodle like strands that had formed as I squeezed out thicker plaster. The base of the experiment was made using the same plaster which hadn't thickened enough to make the patters it had as it got thicker. It is a combination of smooth and textured plaster, especially on the bends of the plaster where it seemed to have stretched almost beyond its limitation.

For this part of the experiment, I had used plaster coloured with concentrated ink. The ink did change the colour slightly, but if I were to want extremely bright coloured plaster it would require a lot of ink. In places, the ink had left some of the plaster white.

After this experiment and the interesting textures it produced, I decided to try focusing on creating texture alone, and chose to use clingfilm to do this.

I laid plaster on the table and moved it around so that it wasn't flat and laid some plaster over the top of it. While it was still wet, i put some more clingfilm over the top of the plaster.

The texture on the bottom is very prominent and has very interesting textures and small vain like gaps running through it.

The top of the experiment, on the other hand, only has the texture transferred from the clingfilm on certain areas on the plaster, as the plaster had already started setting when I laid the clingfilm over the top. However, I think that the small areas that the texture transferred are really interesting to look at.

After this, I decided to go back to using plaster without colour, as I felt that it suited what I was doing. Somehow, the coloured plaster for me had an almost tacky aesthetic to it when I compared it to other peoples experiments with coloured plaster. I much prefer using the plaster in its purest form.

I decided to go back to how I could incorporate plaster, a very solid and almost unchanging material, back into my theme of change. My first thought, as with last week, was to incorporate something into the plaster that would change, like a plant or a leaf. In the end, I chose to use a couple of big leaves I had found outside the building, and to trap the in plaster.

While mixing the plaster, I was contemplating how I would trap the leaves in the plaster, and eventually decided to almost cast one lea while having the other one running through. 

I let the plaster thicken before pouring it on top of the leaf, which I had placed inside a small enclosure so that I could get a precise shape.

The top of the experiment was very rough and textured from where I had placed and moved around the plaster to fill the enclosure. I like that the plaster has got onto the lea, but do not like how the leaf sits into the plaster or the angle at which it set. Next time I will experiment with bending some of the leaves into the plaster.

Because I chose to wait until the plaster thickened, it meant that it would weigh down the leaf rather than flow around it, and would push the leaf to the bottom of the plaster.

The end effect shows the thickened plaster in the small gaps. I like how it turned out, but I also want to experiment with using thinner plaster to see how it will trap the leaf.