Module 1 was a lot of fun for me – elemental, you might say. Earth, air, water, fire; this lead to many ideas and creations from the wrapped rocks, to the woven sticks and the washtub that evolved the more I worked on it. The washtub is by far my favourite piece, and this is why it is my official resolved piece for the module. The tin itself tells the story of how it came to be the sculpture that it is came to be. The pressed tin comes from England and is known as Lysaght’s Queens Head. Flat sheets stamped with the logo were shipped to Australia and then pressed into the items required. The logo is inside the tub, and upside down. In researching Queens Head, I found that the washtub would have been made anywhere from the late 1870’s through to 1920, so it is quite old. This then changed my mind of painting and sculpting on the tub itself, to making a sculpture that can be dismantled without causing damage.
Module 2 was to do with the body: armatures, restrictions, body form and body impression. I began making a restrictive boot that both feet go into at once, causing the wearer to only be able to jump around (this idea came from the ‘Dufflepud’ creatures featured in ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ by CS Lewis). This is an incomplete sculpture. I then worked on a body impressions and form idea, and created alginate casts of my hand and my lips. The hand was cast in plaster; lips in both plaster and wax. In cleaning up the hand one finger snapped which led me to combine both the hand and the lips together to form the sculpture “Thinking, thinking”. I would like to extend this sculpture in the future by making more lip impressions and casts.
Module 3 was a mini animal kingdom/fictional world. Growing up on the south coast of NSW has created a love for the ocean, so I decided on an oceanic theme. I enjoyed learning how to make the pinkysil mold of the purchased toy sealion, then learning to cast it. It was cast three times in acrylic (first clear with wattle at the heart, second tinted blue, third clear with a leaf at the heart) and once in soy wax. I would like to cast this again with plaster. The first cast was the most successful, as future casts were missing a flipper. I also cast other small sea creatures with acrylics and also with Sculpty oven backed clays. We had some styrofoam boxes at home that I decided to use for this mini world, as I thought each ‘hole’ could represent a different ocean area. A trial of painting was conducted on one piece of foam, to make sure that the paint didn’t ‘eat’ the foam. Once this was done I then painted the box with a ‘Southern Cross Starry Night’ theme (I am a fan of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ and wonder how he would have painted our skies), and each opening a slightly different colour to represent the different colours seen in the ocean. I had a lot of fun creating this piece.
Module 4 is our final resolved piece, and I have created ‘Ode to my Grandfathers’ with styrofoam, plaster strips, acrylics and beading. Both my grandfathers have really influenced my life for the better, and both had a fascination with the earth and digging. My paternal grandfather had an amazing vegetable garden and fruit orchard at Gilgandra, along with share-farming a wheat and sheep property; in his later years he dug for opals at Grawin and Lightening Ridge. My maternal grandfather dug to bury things instead of taking them to the tip (one part of his yard ‘bounced’ due to old car seats being buried) as well as digging for fun. He dug out under the house (he build the house from items found at the tip!), and used to store the home made ginger beer bottles in the cool. One Christmas they all exploded creating a massive mess under the house. This sculpture has a clear acrylic house to represent both my grandfathers and the fact that their lives were ‘open books’ – no secrets hidden away; they were true in their representations of themselves. The water side represents the need for water to soak through the earth before opals can be formed; the dirt represents what they both dug in, and the ginger beer bottles represent my memories of Christmases spent with my grandparents.
Golden thread, white background.
Crochet macrame thread to a stick.
