Concentration #5

             So this is the piece that totally evolved differently from my initial idea and actually ended up becoming two seperate concentration pieces. My original idea was to have the piece looking like it was about to tie itself into a knot. The industrial half would be rope, and the organic half I was thinking would be wheat. After general consensus, we agreed it would be better to not have the half of the knot be wheat--as rope is spun from wheats/grains--and decided to have the half be a vine.

 So with that in mind I started constructing the vines first. There was a nifty leaf tool that was kinda cool, but as I had a little trouble seeing the vine as a vine and not like a coil. Another concern  became evident that rope is generally thought as more of an organic type of material, so maybe I needed to look at something that screamed industrial and juxapose that next to the rope. What's super Industrial? A chain. And an even better idea--juxapose the chain to the vine.

I came back from the weekend and started extruding some clay for the rope part. But wait I wasn't doing rope anymore...A little oops on my part.

So I just used that clay as I started making the chains. (Side note-I had created chain links for one of my pieces last year, so I had a little experience. I'll post a pic of that piece later).

Looked like there was going to be a lot of extra clay right? Wrong! As I was making my chain link to go next to the vine, I couldn't get the two to make the tying the knot shape I originally thought of. It was looking too flat and I wasn't even sure how I would connect the two to make the "half" look I was going for. So I just kept making chains and went back to my sketchbook to look at new ideas.Whatever my idea was I knew I was going to need a lot of chains, so I kept up the tedious process while my brain went back to work to what piece I was actually going to make.

 So I kept thinking and thinking and one thing that I like was the idea of having a tree and chains juxaposed together. However, I couldn't quite visualize construction for it so I kept thinking.  I wanted to something with a tree or with twigs for one of my concentration pieces; so I also thought of nest piece. I loved it so much it actually became my next concentration piece. For my chain piece, I ended up choosing to juxapose the chains with a rock. To a certain extent, I view chains as "the rock" of industry--sort of like its foundation. 

The construction of the rock went incredibly fast for me. I was actually able to finish it during one block period. I didn't think too much about it and just jumped right in, starting with adding clay and pushing it outwards. I indented some parts, giving it more deminsions, and also used a loop tool to thin out the structure. Wetting it all with a wet brush, it was quickly smoothed and I went on to making more chains.

I would just like to say thank god we had our first Saturday studio when I was working on this project. I spent literally every spare second working on them: Lauren and I jamming out before practice, before games, and during lunch while we each worked on our pieces. However, nothing is as productive as a Saturday studio. Not only is the construction of the chains tedious, they can be very delicate. I struggled with them being too dry and I struggled with them being too wet when I was trying to work on them throughout the week. I often had to scrap the ones I made the day because I couldn't keep them soft enough to be flexible but hard enough to maintain their shape. By working on them for a whole day, I was able to kick them out and finish the entire piece.

As you can see, I attached the chains at the top and draped them in a way that would mimic a rock structure. Also, back when I created the rock I made sure to smooth the inside, as you can see through the chains to the inside of the rock. When I first started to drape the chains, I had them supported by clay chunks but the chains began to stick to the clay chucks. I was worried the clay would dry together that I wouldn't be able to separate the pieces without ripping the chains. That kinda terrified me so I went back and used newspaper to structure it instead. Also the beautiful thing about the Saturday studio was that we had plenty of snacks!

Reflection:
I changed my mind so much but it ended up being worth it. I felt I had a lot of artistic development as to what my vision was and what steps it would take. I experimented a lot and only stopped when I had reached an idea I couldn't bear to part with. I'm really happy with how my rock piece turned, even though it's nothing like my original vision of the knot. It's interesting how the creative process works sometimes.