Retrieval Brief

I really enjoyed making my projects for my subject brief this year, for the Bams Medals Brief I decided on making two different medals: one looking at the tree of life the other looking at butterfly population. For my tree of life medal I began looking at religious symbolism and how the tree of life symbol changes through time and different religions, I began looking at the Mayan world tree then looked further into Egyptian, Nordic, Kabbalah and Celtic. After looking into these different variations of the symbol I then looked into artwork which was inspired by the tree of life and one I was particularly drawn to was Gustav Kilmt, because of the simplicity of the piece, and the design was easily recognisable as the tree of life, I wanted the same for my medal, I wanted it to be easy recognisable to all that viewed it. And so I started designing on coral draw simple tree of life designs looking at the more used symbolism of the tree in the circle, however I wanted to push my design further, and so started developing on what the tree of life meant to me and to myself I think of trees as the provider of life as they take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen to help us live. My idea what to create two sides to my medal which would open up to show the whole piece, on one side would be my tree of life and the other showed the tree flowing into human lungs the roots forming the veins, showing how the tree helps provide us with life. I also began looking at a piece to sit in the centre of my medal to break up the two sides, I decided on an acrylic piece which I would engrave with wording which could be seen through the sides of the medal, The wording used was a poem I came up with whilst sitting in a park, it worked well with the piece and gave it more depth and meaning. With my butterfly originally I wanted to look at the fragility of butterflies,  because as a child living in the valleys, I did spend a lot of my childhood catching butterflies and trying to keep them however always found myself upset as they either escape or died, My idea from this was to cast real butterflies in resin as a way to truly capture them, then design and make an acrylic piece which would frame the resin cast butterfly, after looking into this for a few weeks, I found that I couldn’t seem to carry my message across clearly, and so decided that the best way forward was to change and adapt my idea, and so I began looking into butterfly population and how it can be improved by planting certain flowers within your garden, I began researching into flowers and which was best to plant to attract butterflies.

A painting by Gustav Klimt of the tree of life which inspired my work.

For the making of this medal I decided to use wood rather than the traditional bronze, I decided on this because as I was looking at the tree of life, I thought that using wood would be more fitting with the piece, I began doing designs on coral draw software and laser cutting them into wood, to see which design worked better and would fit better for my piece, once I chosen the tree design I began working into how best to make the lungs so it looked like a complete piece when the medal would open. I first designed the lungs so that the trees roots completely made the shape, however when it came to laser cutting the design, I could see that the design was too delicate and so wasn’t holding its shape due to it being too fragile, this lead to me redoing the design to make the lungs into a more solid shape and having the root design engraved rather than cut, this worked a lot better and made my piece stronger, once I had my two sides made I began to look at the middle piece and what material would be best to use, as I wanted to break up the two different sides but still wanted them to be slightly seen, I decided to use clear acrylic which I would then engrave with wording, the wording would break up the two sides but still allowed them to be slightly seen through, once all my pieces were cut I had to look into ways that I can fit them together to create my medal but doing it so that the medal can open up fully, I decided on using hinges, which I would drill into the sides of each piece, this allowed me to move each piece freely and open the medal so that the two sides could be shown as the one piece. The hinges were rather tricky to place due to the size of them, I had to use two hinges to fit all three pieces together the one side of the hinges were overlapped and drilled to the centre piece using a dremel, I first tried this using a small hand drill however I couldn’t seem to get the movement and so found it too difficult to use, then the other sides were fixed to both sides of the medal, even though it was fiddly it gave the medal the movement I wanted and in the end I was very happy with the piece. With my butterfly medal I first began looking into resin casting which I had never done before, I first started with casting simple resin shapes, so that I could get use to the ratios of resin to the hardener, once I began getting use to casting I began on working on casting my butterflies. The cast had to be done in layers, the first layer was a small layer of resin which would dry to a tacky state this layer would hold the butterfly for the top layer to sit on, the bottom layer was for the butterfly to stick on so that it wouldn’t float in the resin, however few of my casts the butterfly did float which cause some of the body to rise out of the resin, and other casts didn’t seem to set completely leaving them tacky and soft. And so I began to look at other ways to cast these butterflies, I tried coating some in clear acrylic used for nails, it allowed me to keep the butterfly shape and the coat of acrylic protected the butterfly enough that the wings wouldn’t damage. I then began looking into the flowers and how I can fit them into my medal piece, I began making some flowers from paper and origami, to work out shapes, I then found out a flower design using paper, the way you fold the flower made it look like a bud, however when placed in water the flower would open in a blooming motion, I tried it for myself and found that it worked really well, and so this gave me the idea to make multiple of these in the specific shapes of the flowers that attract the butterflies, then when the flower blooms it would open to reveal the butterfly in the centre, these worked well however many of the paper flowers broke after once being dropped in the water, however I liked the fragility of this as it seemed fitting with the theme.

The tree of life that I designed on the software coral draw, ready to laser cut using the laser cutter.

This is the design cut into card, this allowed me to see whether the design worked.

This is another tree design cut into wood which I didn’t like as much as my original design.

This is my original design cut into wood, im really happy with the design.

This is my first lung design and my poem on coral draw ready to be laser cut.

This is the first design of the lungs being cut on the laser cutter, I could see here that the design was too delicate.

These are the lungs after being cut, the design didnt work as it was too delicate making the lungs too fragile.

This shows my redesign of the lungs which worked alot better, it also shows what you will see once the medal is open, it shows the tree’s roots flowing into the lungs making the veins.

This is the laser cut poem onto clear acrylic which would sit between the two layers.

This shows the hinges I used to fit my medal together, the hinges allowed the medal to move in the way I wanted to.

This was the hand drill, I originally used to try to attach my hinges to my medal however I had trouble using it and so ended up attached hinges using a dremel.

This shows the completesd medal, you can see the poem through the tree design, i think it gave a great effect and worked really well.

This shows the real butterflies that I used for casting, they were really fragile and often the wings would break.

This shows the butterflies in the mould after resin casting, some butterflies would float to the top of the resin due to them being so light.

This shows the flower made from paper that opens when placed in water, in a blooming motion.

 

For my Sedna piece I began looking into homelessness, and how the issue of homelessness is being ignored, how people ignore and walk past homeless people on the street without looking. I looked at a photo exhibition online called “what makes us care” by Kathryn Prescott which was at St Martins in the fields, it frames celebrities as homeless, I found the exhibition really interesting, the celebrities that pose as homeless people are nearly unrecognisable, the celebrities posed as homeless to raise awareness due to the number of people sleeping rough in London raised by 64 percent. And for you people aged 16-25 the percentage was even higher 129. The aim of the exhibition was to help break down stereotypes about those without homes. I also watched a social experiment video on youtube where loved ones pose as homeless people on the street and see if they are recognised, it shocked me to see not one of them was recognised and they family members walked straight past. I wanted to capture this in my piece the fact that homeless people are judged and ignored, it seems to be a growing problem. I first began sketching homeless people looking at what makes them stand out and shapes and ways in which they sit, as for my piece I want a simple silhouette rather than a detailed piece, I want this because people don’t look close enough to see the details or what a homeless person may look like, and so I want to keep it simple but yet still recognisable, so I want the shape to resemble how a homeless person would sit, I also wanted to include a dog as many homeless people have companionship from a dog, and people will tend to notice the dog more than the person.

What makes us care? Photo exhibition at St Martins-in-the-Fields frames celebrities as homeless

I began sketching ideas for my lamp design I came up with two main ideas a homeless person laying on a bench, where the light would be up lighting underneath the person, and another design of a homeless person sitting under a street lamp with a dog as companionship, the street lamp would be illuminated and would shine down over the homeless person and dog, to see both these designs in 3d I made mini models of each using MDF and acrylic, this allowed me to see each how the designs worked in 3D, it also helped me choose my design, I decided to go with the lamp post design as this would allow me to work the light in easier. Once I knew my chosen design, I then tried making it full size in card so that I could see how the piece would fit together and work out the size that I can work with using the laser cutter as the laser bed is limited to 600mm by 400mm and so my piece would have to work within this size limitation.  My first card model was slightly out of proportion, the top of the lamp was too big and looked odd compared to the rest of the piece, so when making my 2^nd card model, I made the head of the lamp smaller which made it better proportion to the rest of the piece, once I was happy with my card model and could see how the piece fitted together, I then began drawing the pieces out on coral draw so I could then laser cut the pieces in MDF, the pole of the lamp would be an hollow acrylic tube this would allow the wire of the light to run through the tube and be hidden from view.  Once I began fitting the pieces together using wood glue, I hit a slight issue with the top of the lamp, the pieces wouldn’t fit together smoothly and so I re designed the top so that it was flat instead of raised, due to the glue taking too long to dry I wasn’t able to sand and paint my piece, the piece would be painted black and I would of used a clear varnish coat to add shine. For the Homeless man and dog, I wanted to cut the homeless person from mirrored acrylic, to show that a homeless person could be anyone, I had to order the mirrored acrylic from a website which delayed my making time slightly also, the sent me the wrong size and so the mirrored acrylic wasn’t big enough to use for the cut out of the homeless guy, and so instead I decided to use the mirrored acrylic for the dog and use black acrylic for the homeless person. I had some issues cutting the mirrored acrylic due to the laser reflecting off the mirror and so miss-cutting, the one sheet of acrylic ended up ruined so on the second piece instead of risking another miss-cut I decided to engrave the shape of the dog and the wording then cut the dog from hand using the band saw, which worked better. The homeless guy I decided to cut using black acrylic to create that silhouette idea, the wording I engraved using the laser cutter however due to me using the older machine the engraving came didn’t come out too well and the wording can only be seen at certain angles however I really like the way this turned out as people will have to really stop and look to see what’s written. With the wording it was originally meant to be newspaper headlines about the homeless, however in the end I took inspiration from my medal project and decided to go with another poem that I wrote whilst sitting in the train station, I believe that it worked really well and carried my point across.

The dog cut from mirrored acrylic, I had to hand cut the shape n the ban saw due to issues on the laser cutter.

The two final cut outs side by side, I think they work well together sadly in this angle you cannot see the writing.

The final product once all put together, due to the glue drying I wasn’t able to sand or paint the product yet.

My field work has had great influence within my subject projects, in field I have gained a lot of skills from the projects I made which further helped me in my studies and subject area, from field play and creativity I have learned how to help myself with my stress and improve my well-being which will improve the state of my work, this has really helped me during my subject area as it helped me understand that maintaining a good sense of wellbeing improves my state of work. Working within a group with people from other subject areas really helped me, as through them I am able to learn and look at things from a different point of view, and also approach projects and ideas in ways I may have not approached them before. For example when coming up with an idea I use to go straight into making with wood or other materials, this use to lead to material waste if projects went wrong, however through Faking it I learned how to take sketch ideas into card models, to see how they fitted and worked before taking them into other materials, I used this in my sedan project and it really helped me see how the piece would fit together and the size and proportion before my main making. I have also gained many skills such as model foam which I had very little experience in before going into Faking It, through the project I had gained skills in cutting and achieving different effects through paint on blue foam, learning that some paints melt the foam and give a great rocky effect which worked really well for the Mars planet set. I learned how to create effects using different materials I know this will be of great help to me when I come to painting my Sedna lamp, as I want to create a rusted metal effect on wood. Through my Play and Creativity project I gained further skills on the laser cutter, understanding more about the different settings used for different materials and thickness of materials, this was very useful within my subject area as I was using the laser cutter in many of my projects and had a better understanding of how it worked. This was really useful to me throughout my whole subject area as many of my projects included laser cutting work and with my better understanding I was able to do more complex designs and use more materials. Another transferable skill I learned is scale model making, when I usually do model making in my subject its usually to a smaller scale, however making full scale models allowed me to work out better how they worked and fitted together, this became useful in making my medals, as I cut full scale models into card first, to see how the design looked when fully fitted together, but also to see if the design flowed and had the effect I wanted. I say my personal strengths have grown throughout this experience, I have become more skilled on the laser cutter and so was able to design and make intricate designs for one of my medal pieces, which gave a great effect, which I was very pleased with, because I understood the software used better through trying it in my play and creativity project, I was able to take the basic knowledge I knew of the software and expand further to design and create the more intricate designs I used in my subject area. I have also gained further skills in model making although I wouldn’t say it’s one of my strongest points still, I learned a lot about materials such as blue foam and how to achieve certain effects through paints, or cutting. This will be a skill I’ll take across with me to my subject area, as usually when I make models I stick to card or paper, as I know how to work with them, however my models or usually delicate and flimsy, having slightly more knowledge about blue foam, will help me as it gives me more confidence with working with the material and so I can begin using it more for my own model making, which will give me stronger models.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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