In the last month, I have been preparing my final piece for 'the art of recycling' gallery at the end of this week, and have now (finally!) got it finished. Here is an account of what I have been doing.
My idea first came from another person in my class; for his half term homework, he had made a bin out of rolls of magazine. This idea had actually come from an artist called Mark Montano. Here is an image of the original piece.

For my piece, I thought I would edit this, and use rolls of an old book, instead of the magazine. I used the book because I thought it would look a bit more effective- I could have a more colourful flower within it, creating quite a nice contrast of colour and creamy-brown. All of my rolls were also the same size,with no variation (to save a bit of time.) . Finally, in the original, Montano had used one large, continuing spiral role for the base; instead, I used a circle of cardboard, covered in book scraps. Because the bass was thinner, I also had to make a shelf for it- to help it stand up a little better. 

To get ideas, I made some (pretty large!) detailed Spider diagrams, on an A3 Sheet of paper; one for initial ideas, one for planning the actual piece, and one for things that I could improve on. Here is an image of the planning. Sorry about the slightly poor quality.

Then, I made a maquette (model) of my final idea. Here is a photograph. I made it a little bit smaller than the final one. I also made just one; the plan was to make three, but unfortunately, I did not have enough time, so I only completed two =(

The next step was making the final piece. I did this buy rolling up lots of 1cm wide strips of an old book, around a nail varnish lid, and stuck them all together using a glue gun. Then, to make the shelf, I stuffed an old cardboard box with newspaper. I also covered it with book pages. Finally, to make the flower, I stuck three straws together and covered it with green sweet wrappers. For the flower head, I rolled up a book page and covered with sweet wrappers, and petals, I cut out cardboard shapes, and again covered with sweet wrappers. 

When I was making my final piece, I did make some amendments. For example, I found an old brown t-shirt, and stuck in into the pot, rolled up, to look like soil. I also aimed to make it a little neater- whether that worked, I'm not sure! 

I'm quite happy with my final piece. However, I would have liked to make three pots, (one medium as well as the small and large) but unfortunately, I had no time. Next time, I would also make it neater on the whole- maybe being careful with the glue (e.g long strings of it), and make the back look better. 

 

The gallery opens on Friday 10th December to the general public; please try and come if possible! More details are on the Maiden Erlegh School website- follow the Peacock Gallery link. 

Flower making

With Mr Peacock, we also made 'flowers' out of newspaper, magazine and thin strips of cardboard, all recycled. This is how we did it.

1. Place five or six sheets of newspaper onto a table in a rectangular shape. Then roll them all up into a long tube, starting at the bottom corner. 
2. Next, stand the tube up, resting on a chair legs. Attach using some thin thread, and chop off the ends to make them even. 
3. Take a page of a magazine and cut into it horizontally, at different thickness's and lengths for effect. 
4. Next, glue at the top of the page using a Pritt stick. Then stick it around the tube at any point.  
5. Repeat this process several times, at different places on the tube, until you feel satisfied! 
6. Then use a pencil to roll up the strips of cardboard, and fit into the top of the tube. Repeat this four or five times. Create a small 'collar' using a very thin strip of cardboard to fit around the too of the tube. Secure with masking tape.

Unfortunately, I could not find any example pictures of this work. 

Bottle slumping mould: Clay demonstration

In our lesson on Friday 8th October, Mr Peacock showed us how to make Bottle slumping moulds, out of air dry clay. This is how we did it.

Equipment

• Clay mat
• Rolling pin
• Knife (that you don't mind getting dirty!)
• Fork (again that you don't mind getting dirty!)
• Beaker full of water

Materials

• Air dry clay (make sure that it is in a plastic sort of state)

Method

1. On the mat, flatten out the lump of clay with the palm of your hand. As you are doing this, repeatedly turn it over until until it is approximately even in thickness. 
2. If you need to, use a rolling pin to make it completely smooth. You want a fairly long; with the width around half of the length; slab of around 1 cm thick. 
3. Trim the edges with the knife to make a fairly even and neat edge. 
4. Place the bottle that you will be using for the Bottle slump onto the table, and with the left over clay, mould into two 'squishes' to hold the bottle still whilst you are moulding. Place one 'squish' on one side of the bottle and the other on the opposite side. 
5. Carefully place the clay slab over the bottle, and mould over it.Experiment with different shapes of the base- for example, you could make it wavy to end up with a wavy glass bottle! 
6. Using the fork, cross hatch in 4 different places on the back of the clay mould (they should in the formation of corners of a square).
7. With some more clay, make four balls and place them onto the cross hatched areas. To make the balls stay, brush them with the water, making clay 'slip' (which is the form of clay glue!)
8. Leave the mould for approximately a week, allowing it to go bone dry. 
9. Place it into a kiln with the bottle, following the instructions on my 'Bottle slumps' post.
10. Reuse as many times as you like!

Here are some photos of some moulds that people have made.

Relief Form

In this piece of work, completed over 1 lesson (plus homework and catch up lesson), we had to create our own version of 'Relief Form' artwork. To start with, we were provided with a strip of a magazine and a (lot!) of paper-clips. We then had to roll up and wrap around different pages of the magazine and paper-clip them together. Finally, we had to gradually remove the paper-clips and swap to Pritt stick. This was quite a simple idea- it wasn't a particularly difficult piece of work; it just took a lot of thinking to get the different shapes created. Here are some photos of my work (However not yet completely stuck with Pritt stick)

Front view

Top view

Side view

There are some book artists who also use this style of art in their work repertoire, including Cara Barer. She also uses book and magazine strips to make different shapes. Of her work, one of the things that I think of first is 'Relaxation'. I think this because of the 'swirliness' and 'flowingness' of the work.Here are some examples.
I think her art is a lot better than mine; they are quite similar in the way that she has also used a book in a circle, like me. However, I like the way that hers don't seem to be very supported- mine really are very supported. I also like the background of them- I adds a lot of contrast to the colours.

I like this one because it is so simple,
yet is very interesting. 

I like this one because of the colour-
it has clearly been made out of a
phone book. 

3D Projecting form

This weeks (and last weeks) work was 'sculpting' objects, 'coming out of' books. This is how I did mine.

1. I got given an old book by my teacher Miss Gardiner, and looked through it to decide what I was going  to do with mine. I got given Five fall into adventure by Enid Blyton, and so I thought that it might be a good idea to literally have five (people), falling into a hole.

2. To start it off, I began rolling little tubes of newspaper and little balls and stuck them together. This worked, but it didn't look very effective. So, I made a litteral stick man template out of card, and then drew round it 15 times, on a sheet of thick, corrrugated cradboard, and also 10 times onto a piece of newspaper.

3. I then cut them all out, and then began sticking them all together (with PVA glue) , going Card, newspaper, card, etc. In each person, there is a total of 3 cardboard shapes and 2 newspaper shapes.

4. Next, I did papier mache with small, ripped pieces of previous pages in the book, all over the men.

5. After this, I stuck five sets of five pages together with Pritt stick, and on each one, drew a circle, getting smaller as I went down the book. I then cut each one out using a craft knife, and around each hole, again I used small strips of the pages to make the sides stronger. I ended up with 5 holes, to look like one hole, just with different layers to it.  

6. Finally, I stuck the people down with small strips of masking tape, and covered the masking tape over, in the same way as I had done prevoiusly with paper and PVA glue.

I'm quite pleased with my final outcome. I think that the hole worked well, and the people look fairly effective at different distances away from the hole. However, If I did a similar one again, I would work on the accuracy of the five standing up. You can still see the glue holding them on, and in the end, on several, there must be about five layers of glue! I would also be more careful with the delicate pages- unfortunately, I managed to tear a couple of the corners.

Here are some photos of my finished piece (sorry- there are quite a few!!)
PLEASE NOTE: MY DAD TOOK THESE PHOTOGRAPHS!

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a particular artist that this kind of work relates to. I did find 'Words Create Worlds'- however I could not find who the work is made by. Here are some examples. I like the way that they have only used book pages- no other materials used (I used Cardboard inside the people to make them stronger) I also like the way that they have positioned the book- the colour of the book cover looks very effective. Unfortunately, I only had a paper back book- I could not position it in this way.

 

Bottle slumping

For this homework, Mr Peacock asked us to do some research on 'Bottle slumping'. To start with, here is an example.

Bottle slumps are bottles that have been heated in a kiln to make new objects such as tea light holders (as pictured), cheese trays, and cutting boards etc. You can use any different bottle (including those with painted labels) to do so. However, here are some instructions on how to do it.

1) Remove the label from the bottle- it is best if the glue has also gone if possible.

2) Wash and DRY your bottle completely effectively- moisture can make the bottle explode!

3) Devitrification spay CAN be applied to the bottle to prevent a hazy or scummy appearance on the bottle after its been fired.

4) If you would like to hang your bottle or you are making wind chimes; take a piece of 20 gage copper wire shaped in a U and insert it in the bottle top before slumping.5) Use a mold that has been pre treated with glass separator and again dried completely. Separator should be reapplied between firings as needed. Check the vent holes to be sure that they are not plugged with the separator.

6) 600 DPH (degrees per hr), to 1100 DF, soak (hold temp) for 10 minutes. 

Heat 300 DPH to 1300 hold for 30 minutes this will help eliminate the air bubble that would get trapped at a faster slumping schedule.

Heat AFAP (as fast as possible), to 1425 DF, (depending on the size and thickness of your bottle) soak for 5-15 minutes or until the bottle is slumped to perfection.
(watch it closely during this time it can move rather fast!)
 Cool AFAP by flash venting the kiln; continue to open and close the lid for a few seconds to allow the heat to escape\until the temperature falls to 1000 DF.

Soak for 10 minutes at 1000 DF.

Annealing Stage; slow cool 180 DPH to 800 DF.

Next turn off the kiln and let it cool naturally to room temperature; don't peek!

After you remove your project from the kiln; be sure to vacuum any spall from the copper wire to avoid contaminating your next project.

You may want to adjust the temperature and/or soak time according to the size and thickness of your bottle.

Don’t become discouraged trial and error is the best teacher and sometimes the result of what will be some of your favorite pieces.

Here are some more examples of work.

2D flip art

In this piece of work, the task was to make a page in a 2D flip book. This is how I did it, with pictures of some of the steps.

1. We got given an old, unused book by our teacher, Miss Gardiner. 

2. We then looked through it, and drew a mindmap, with some of our ideas for designs. 

3. From this, we picked out one or two ideas, and drew out a design featuring them. I chose the tree and log idea because I thought it would look the best and be the easiest (!) Unfortunately, I got this wrong and it turned out to be quite difficult. 

4. We then glued 4 or 5 pages together in the centre of our book- we did this twice so that we had some nice, thick paper card to work on.

5. Then came the main part!! We had to transfer our design onto our pages, and then cut around them. We then scored the ends so that they would stand up. However... Mine didn't work amazingly- I managed to cut through a few of the papers of the tree so that it was very weak, and I made my foreground logs a lot taller than the background trees, so you couldn't see them very well! Anyway, here are some photos of my final piece.

To be honest, I was a little upset with my work; all of the composition didn't work (the logs were taller than the trees(!)). I wasn't so keen on the book colour- I would have preferred a plain book. 

One artist that does very similar pieces of art work to this is Su Blackwell. She also cuts out shapes related to the book and flips them up. However, her work is definitely a lot more complex than mine!! Here is some of her work. Her work is also a lot more concise- the trees are more effective, and they stand so much more neatly! The overall ideas are definitely a lot more interesting than mine- I found the Alice: a mad tea party quite interesting. 

Alice: a mad tea party



Book beauty