**My drawing projects just took a 180 and are now sculpture cross overs. Ooops. Regardless, I still ended up with a piece that is the complete opposite from the norm, and I might stick with it for awhile to see how it plays out**
This project was to create a finished piece based on doodles that you do. Something I doodle a lot are hands, and this was one of the first things that popped into my head. I really wanted to work with plaster last semester in Sculptural Forms, but I never did so I decided to do it here. Originally I was going to have a cascade of hands flowing out of the wall, but things didn't work out, my opinions changed, and all of the various art induced decisions that I made lead this to be further and further away from a piece coming from the wall, and turned into a piece going to the wall.
Here we go~!
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| The entire installation as seen by my class. |
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When it comes to the hands that I plastered, there are three types of hands. The first are fully rendered hands, which I cast, and then brushed charcoal onto so the hands them selves would be fully rendered (there are three of these). The next type is the cast hand, where I just simply cast a hand and let it be (there are six of these). The last type of hands are the destroyed hands. These were cut off of my hand while being cast without being allowed to dry fully, and I did not patch them up, so they appear broken and dismantled. The remaining four are this way. All of them combined represent my growth as an artist technically through stages. From being barely able to draw hands, to slightly understanding how they work, and finally to mastery of that form. This piece reads vertically in that direction as well as horizontally. While horizontally, the viewer goes into the wall, going from the physical world where you have the objects (the hands) to the marks that are made (the charcoal dust print) then the ideal final form (my hand prints on the wall). This dual growth adds another layer to the engagement plane, taking it to a metaphysical level along side physical and personal.
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| Different angle. |
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| The bottom two thirds, the lower sections is a pile of hands, covered in Charcoal. |
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| Hand prints at the top. Symbolized the ideal when it came to drawing hands. |
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| With this, I had the hands piled up in the exact same way as the actual pile, but I proceeded to blow the charcoal away, to create this negative space-esque drawing. |
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| This is the pile of hands, each one was plastered by myself, and are of either my hands, or a few friends who let me plaster theirs. This is how the other section looked before I blew all of the charcoal off. |
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| Different angle and better lighting. |
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After critique, I did not know how I would carry the installation home. so I cut off the two areas that I like the most, and knocked the charcoal dust off. Then rolled it up and brought it home to the studios. When I unrolled it again to pin to the wall to flatten it, this is what it looked like, and I am really happy with it. I might do one last impression, and try to seal some of the darker black charcoal marks onto it so there is a wider range of value, but who knows how it will turn out. I will post a picture once I am fully finished. (Hopefully in better lighting than this @_@)
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| The drawing that it turned into |
Well, that's all for tonight~!
Ta ta~
-Ben
