After making my two part plaster mold, I found that one side of it was not hard as I expected it to be, but spongy and crumbly when I touched it or tried to put clay in it. For that reason, I decided to put it in a drying oven, and just use the other half, to see if I could get any casts of my glove from that while the other half was drying.
I think this worked well, because the textile texture transferred very well to the clay, and was very realistic on the surface.
Next, I coloured some clay, and put some of that in before the rest of the clay, so it would come out on the surface. I liked the effect this had, but unfortunately, the clay had dried out a bit, and the thumb cracked off. At first I thought I would just crumple it up and try again, but I felt this was a waste of the spot pattern I had made, so inspired by my research into Tania Covo and Cleo Mussi, who both use shards of reclaimed pottery in their work, I decided to carry on, and used a needle to make holes in both pieces, to sew them back together later. Just because it wasn't perfect, didn't mean it couldn't still be used. After this, I decided to do some more research into casting, and found Janet Haige, who also used stitching in her casting, and used textiles and lace to make imprints in clay.
In my next casting, I cracked it even more, so there would be more emphasis on the sewing.
When the other half of my cast came out of the drying oven, the plaster was a bit harder but still stuck to the clay quite a lot, and made it very difficult to get the clay glove out of the cast. My clay glove from the two part cast also cracked and stuck in the cast, so I made holes in this one as well to sew back together later.
One of my casts from the two part mold did come out whole, and I used the coloured clay to make patterns, but I found that this didn't look as exciting as the ones to be sewn together.
Close-up of the coloured clay and texture of the glove.
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