An Overview of the 3rd Semester Project "Object"

The Initial Object

I spent some time exploring the potential of several objects including shells, one of which I worked on for several weeks before dismissing it due to its limited potential, though I haven’t dismissed the idea of using shell forms in later work. I also looked in depth at driftwood, horseshoes, and pebbles before finally deciding on the pebble above, not only because of the interesting natural shape and smoothness of its basic form, but also because it looked similar to a sweet (humbug) that I loved as a schoolchild.  It also resembles a ceramic piece that had been “Naked Raku” fired, something that I had only recently tried.  This gave the pebble a link to both my past learning experiences and the present one. I saw this as a sound foundation from which to work.

                Having attempted to replicate the structure of the pebble in card and with wire and art straws, it became apparent that I was concentrating far too much on the surface pattern and form of the pebble and not on the 3 dimensional structure of the object itself, which is why the forms I had been working on looked like drawings of the piece in paper and card.  In effect I was not allowing myself to see the wood for the trees right in front of me.

Prime Object 2

                It wasn’t until I had this pointed out to me and discussed the problem in “Crit” that I was able to re-visit the pebble afresh and explore its form enough to move forward. This visualisation of the pebble as a solid object brought about the structure shown above, which became the basis of my further work.

                I began to see the lines and flow of this piece as something inherent in its shape and structure rather than surface texture and this led me to explore the symbiotic relationship between skeletons and muscles as well as looking at scaffolding and the buildings that were usually hidden by them.

                I made several models, some of which survived and a few that didn’t, exploring and pushing my knowledge forward.  Although I haven’t made what I would consider to be a final piece, I have explored deeply the objects I have had and moved forward in my education.

The most recent piece.

There are a few things that I would like to explore further for this project before I would consider it finished. The casting of a tubular joining piece for framework construction, layering of slab rolled muscles on a solid frame and a final piece are some of the avenues that I would have liked to explore and I may well come back to this at a later date.