evaluation

What went well? During both the project research and the final solutions.

For my ‘Natural forms’ project, I was assigned the task of research four artists, specialising in 3D work and wire. The artists I chose were Jane burton, Zemer Peled, Barbara Hepworth, Livia Marin, Julian Francis Miholics, Megan Gonzalez and David Zicker. I particularly enjoyed researching Jane Burton, not only is her work beautiful, but her life and processes were also very interesting and kept me motivated to present my work neatly. The research went well for me, I enjoyed the task as it expanded my knowledge of both past and current artists. I also used a selection of different mediums in order to create some pieces linking to the theme. One of these mediums was clay, I found that the medium worked somewhat well for me. Exploring the process of sculpting and shaping with wire and foam was very interesting during the development of my final piece. I investigated a range of different methods to explore different shapes and surface qualities. Overall I feel I could have done better with my clay work, and although our initial wire sculpture was scrapped, I find that the process was a very helpful learning process and I feel that this went well.

What went badly? Describe the things that you encountered in the project development that caused you to evaluate.

Throughout the process of sample making, we were encouraged to use a range of different mediums to create colour and depth, one of these being coloured slips. Coloured slip is a combination of clay and coloured dye or paint which is used to colour clay work before firing. The plan was to use coloured slip to finish off my final clay sample, however I found that the colours were very unpleasant and the slip applied poorly, creating an effect I disliked greatly. Also, another process which left me needing to evaluate was the process of creating my final 3D piece. We were assigned the task of designing a sculpture as a group and creating it with little experience within a day or two. Initially, our group jumped right in the deep end with a large and elaborate spider sculpture. However, we later found that this concept was far too ambitious and that we should start again with something a bit more realistic.

What specialist media, material and processes did you use/select and why?

For my final piece, my group attempted to create an elaborate wire, foam board and chicken wire sculpture. We chose these mediums because they seemed sturdy enough to stay stiff and allow the sculpture to support itself. The foam board was very lightweight but was still very sturdy, we hoped that cutting out a number of circles and stacking them in a certain order would work well as an internal skeleton for out sculpture. We hoped that the chicken wire would allow for a flat enough surface to apply paper mache and paint, as the initial basic wire frame would have been too sparse to apply newspaper strips to.

How the work could have been improved, done differently or taken further.

My work could have been improved significantly with a little more preparation, experience and thoughtfulness. I feel that one of my major downfalls with the 3D aspect of the natural forms project was my lack of experience and intuition in the mediums. I was very new to it all, Unlike the 2D project I’d done with Tony, where I had years of experimentation with various different fine art mediums. I also could have improved had I been a little more practical and listened carefully to the rules of each process, one example of this being me using too much slip during experimentation with clay, causing it to collapse and turn into mud.