Metalwork: Making wire.

Wire is a very versatile material in metalwork,  and I have now learnt how to make my own wire the diameter and shape I want it. This means I can make the wire to suit the piece I want to make, rather than changing the piece depending on the wire. I started off with a rod of copper, about 4mm diameter and about 6cm long. I used the rolling mill to roll it down, making the diameter smaller and a slight diamond shape. This also made it longer because the metal was being squashed through the roller.

I then used a draw plate to make the wire thinner, and give it a square cross section. I decided to make it square because wire is generally round, and I thought square would be more interesting because it could be twisted to create different effects.

The end of the wire is a little bit chewed up because of the pliers I used to pull it through the draw plate, so this little bit is unusable, but could be made into something else or put in a scrap pile to melt down later.

Self directed project.

I've just started semester two, and our new project is entirely self directed, we haven't been given a starting point, or a certain media to use, but we can sign up for whichever workshops we want to do. I've decided to continue researching the theme of unnoticed, which I've looked into quite a lot in the past. I've decided to focus on how art can make the unnoticed very obvious, or how artists can make something that goes overlooked because of its scale or how they present it. In my initial research I have looked at artists who use these themes.

 Susan Collis makes everyday objects, which are often overlooked in her exhibitions. Many people think the exhibition isn't set up yet, but in actual fact they haven't looked at the objects properly. 'As good as it gets' looks like a screw in a wall, but is made from 18 carat white gold, white sapphire, turquoise and onyx.

 'The oyster's our world' is a wooden stepladder, which looks like it's been splattered with paint, but the splashes are actually mother of pearl, shell, coral, fresh water pearl, cultured pearls, white opal and diamond inlaid into the wood. I think these works question the way we see things and how we assume things about what we look at without investigating them properly.

 Grace Eun Mi Lee is a ceramic artist, who looks at microorganisms and uses the shapes and patterns from these to inspire her work. I really like how she collects them together, hundreds of tiny pieces making up one monumental work of art. tiny creatures and dust particles are everywhere, thousands of them, and her work makes people thing about 'another form of existence' which coexist with us everyday.

The Boyle family are a family of artists, who are quite well known for their replicas of places. they travel to an exact spot and use various media and pieces they find on location to create exact copies. I think the thing I like best about these pieces is how they are displayed. These pieces are not recognisable pieces of land, they don't have specific defining features, but presenting them vertically, it makes people really look at the patterns and shapes, which ordinarily they would have walked over without a second thought.

Glasswork: Blowing glass

In the hot glass workshop, I had my first go at actually blowing glass. I found it difficult to keep turning the iron, and keeping the glass on center is very important so the bubble is in the middle and the sides are even.

I used the newspaper pad to shape the glass, before thumbing in a bubble. I used the jacks to cut in and did eventually end up with some sort of small vessel type things. This seems to be something that needs a lot of practice.

Vision: Changing how people see

For our theme of vision, i wanted to take a very everyday item, and change the way people see it or think about it. i decided to use a leaf, because leaves and flowers are one of my favourite things to photograph, because they have details in that people don't notice usually. I decided to make these details obvious to everybody. I chose to look at veins in the leaves.

I first did this by photographing the veins close up to show them very obviously.

I then decided to cut out parts, to make the veins more prominent, because the parts in between are taken out.

I photographed this against the window, to get the light coming through the gaps. This photo also has the cityscape in the background which i really like.

Eat: art about how we use food

I was thinking about food, and how we use food. I wanted to make an artwork that would show how we waste food and how some people are greedy while others don't have enough. I did this by using rice, first to make images, of a skull and a skeleton.

I then decided to use words rather than images to get my point across. I thought of words related to food, and lack of food. I also did some very small illustrations. I did these actually on the grains of rice.

I photographed these on my hand to show how little rice there is, to show how much some people have to live on (while others have enough rice to waste by drawing on it)

Still life: a modern vanitas

I did a still life based on the Dutch vanitas paintings. these paintings showed wealth, and often showed things like meat, but their aim was to show the passing of time, to give the idea that wealth doesn't last forever and death is inevitable. They show the meaninglessness of earthly belongings. The paintings often showed egg timers or clocks, skulls and bones, and flowers. i wanted to merge this idea with modern life and consumerism, to show both how short life is, and how much people rush nowadays. The traditional vanitas paintings were painted in a very realistic style, so i wanted mine to contrast to this by being a very simple line drawing.
I drew a digital alarm clock, to represent time passing, a chocolate wrapper to show how people don't eat proper meals a lot of the time and instead rely on pre-packaged foods and snacks. I also drew a dead leaf, instead of flowers, because many people do not have gardens any more and the only nature they see is on their way to work. It is autumn at the moment and there are beautiful leaves all over the floor, but nobody stops to appreciate them.

Glasswork: cold processing

we learnt cold processing, as an introduction to some of the machines that could be used to finish off our pieces. The first machine I tried was the sand blaster, which fires grit at the glass, to create a texture on the surface, and can create depth if used with a resist.

I then tried the engraver, which can be used to engrave patterns or writing in to the surface of the glass. I wrote my initials, and it was a lot harder to control than i thought it would be. The glass has to be kept wet at all times because the engraver creates dust, and needs to be kept cool to stop the friction heating up the glass too much.

I then had a go on the grinding wheel. I started off on the wheel which uses larger grit, and used this to flatten the base of my animal, and take off the sharp bit, then i used a finer grit to make the surface more smooth. this also has to have water on it at all times, to move the grit between the glass piece and the wheel.