Currently working on a head made from slices of Styrofoam board. the board cut into squares and stacked into a cube and then cut and sanded. The idea then is that i can see the layers, that mix of human form with something less... organic maybe?

The outcome is turning out to be much more primitive. Almost an Easter Island head figure.
My dad spoke to me about how i had come to look at the human figure in this light. We have joked for years now about a sculpture in Liverpool which looks like a head prayed to by a religious group. 'All hail the head' was the tag line we'd say driving past the thing.

The work 'Dream' by Jaume Plensa is enormous. Seriously the thing is 66 feet tall and build on the grounds of an old mine. It's a head, covered in a material called Dolomite. This makes the 500 tonne statue sparkling white. 



Interestingly enough, because of its size and weight, it had to be built in slats from the ground up.

  
Yuichi Ikehata...

Literally just found this artist whilst looking at the Body worlds Exhibition.  That was mentioned to me after the exam. Using real bodies, stripped of skin and covered in silicone and moved into some, sometimes compromising positions. TBF its not like they mind.



However this other artist, Yuichi Ikehata, its different, i dont know if its digital or not, or a combination.

Im thinking of how i can combine metal with plaster now to create sculpture. I did sketches a while back about it. Using nails to create 3D images of children, refugees, now this might be taken to a whole new level.

But first up. I gotta break the molds.

Christine Borland?
Giant heads cast in fiberglass i believe.


The things look more like they are part of a history museum, like some ancient but advanced civilization used to pray to them to make the sun rise. She came about about a week into this term when the idea of making such a thing from plaster was much more of a realistic thought. But hey these are lessons to be learnt right?

Again whilst im here (I have done the research on days aside today so please let it be known that i am researching and just because all of these posts will have the same day stamp, the research is not the result of me sat here googling shit ti fill in the gaps. I will be honest the making of the molds has taken a lot longer than planned to have it simply break on me... that really pissed me off, i have been keeping up to date with things.

Irony that i spend most of my time in the work shop this term...

However, Antony Gormley. He was a different tune. Again his name had co,me up in previous weeks but the relevance had only become more meaningful in light of my recent... accident.



I'm thinking about all those broken pieces of metal and perhaps a figure with plaster pieces could work too?

  I did look at wax as well to fill in the plaster molds. to see if they could be broken free into slate that would look like the patterns of neural networks in the brain.

 It was interesting an aesthetic. Damn stuff fused to the plaster though even with Vaseline attached to it.

  maybe it was a frailty thing? it could only be scrapped up.
Ollie had a good theory on it that because the wax was such a high percentage of liquid ,especially as i was poured in a melted state, the plaster absorbed a lot of that liquid, essentially gluing the two materials together.

Cornelia Parker also appeared in my notes during last week so i better fill you in here so that i don't forget to put her in. Come to think of it, I began looking at her work for the reason of form being translated into something else. Initially this was to be the look into why i was slicing and dicing the human form. Now However, we have something else. My redundant molds are as her work was. Objects that once were, made for purpose, broken down and made anew.




its beautiful work.



And i can see her angle on it. Perhaps then it is something i should investigate further. More than that, can these broken pieces go on to make something else... something human and also, not human at all?

People i spoke to talked of Mark Quinn A LOT. He is just one of those figures in sculpture and his work is extraordinary. I just don't know right at this moment, how relevant it is.

 Naum Gabo. Is an interesting idea, his flat plains to create 3D sculpture in the human form creates something that is organic yet some how detached from living tissue. the shapes are reminiscent... for me, of cityscapes and technology. A Deus Ex concoction  which i like.

However i have some bad news. The plaster molds have broken. This SUCKS because i spent hours on the stuff and now it is essentially useless as it is. I may have to break it up and find another use for it. Its a great shame because i loved the concept behind it. Frankly the experiment worked far better in Styrofoam than it did in plaster.

 The idea was to fill this with plaster, produce a mold, remove the Styrofoam slats and then fill the holes with new materials. But it didn't work out that way.

 

This is something i had hoped to recreate using Plaster. Its a first, I've never used the material before and because of that i poured the plaster to thin and with too much water. it was like chalk.


But lesson learnt i suppose, try try again and all that.