Ten Forms
For this project the goal was to create at least 10 non-representational forms from the same material. The forms should relate to each other, without being the exact same.
I started my ideation process by drawing over 100 non-representational forms.
After I did that I started to look at what I wanted to create. When it comes to Non-representational art its easiest for me to start with emotions. So I began to look at how my current state of mind was, as well as my emotions. I made a list of these emotions and states of mind. potential things that I wanted to represent.
I was drawn to the idea of representing my depression and its two-sidedness. How it appears to those around me, vs how it feels on the inside. I began to look up keywords and scroll through the images to see what was recurring. I took those forms when beginning to design my non-representational forms.
I began to do more detailed sketches, with more focused ideas in mind. Though I was using this piece to process through my state of mind. I also began to apply to other things in my life. I wanted the outside of the piece to be this organic, pleasing form, perfect and approachable but in a lot of ways un-interesting and almost numb.
This started with ideas surrounding my depression. I feel like from the outside that how it tends to look, and I’ve spent a lot of my life masking the pain. There’s a constant conflict of wanting people to know about it, and forcing myself to talk about it because that’s healthy, and wanting to hide it. To only let people see the very outside of it, if they see it at all. That feels safer and is a lot of ways a coping mechanism.
For me the outside of my depression, in its shallowest form is this numbing cold organism. It’s alive or copies life, but it doesn’t have a brain, or intentionally does harm, it just exists. The inside is a bit more corrosive though. It’s actively growing, taking over, destroying. Like a virus or chemical reaction. Sharp, burning, painful. It’s still not malevolent, but it is doing harm. It feels like it’s growing from the inside outward, so no one really sees it.
I couldn’t get this conflict of wanting to be seen and at the same time not wanting to be seen out of my head. I began to see it in a lot of other parts of my life, like in my art. Because I’m an art student I’m constantly learning about the rules of art. There are rules for the artist, and rules for the viewer. These rules can be broken, and many successful pieces do break these rules, but you really have to understand them to do so successfully.
One of these rules is that 3D art shouldn’t have a front and a back, but be dynamic from all sides. Another is that your piece has to grab the viewer’s attention. Usually, because you’ve only got about 30 seconds if that to pull them in. You as an artist want the viewers to look at your art. You depend on it. Trying to entice them in to be apart of the conversation, to get them thinking.
There are rules for the viewer too, and these restrictions have fascinated me just as much. The biggest often being that viewers are only allowed so close to a piece. If you get too close, you’ll set off an alarm. Another being, when a piece is on the wall, or close to it, you don’t look at the backside or behind it. Now art students, and artists, tend to break these rules. We’re taught to be a bit more investigative and intrusive. Museums are actually the only place I’ve ever really gotten in trouble, or trailed by security.
I wanted to play around with these ideas and just explore them. Make a piece that has a front and back, or inside and outside. Play around with this relationship between the artist, piece, and viewer. Most of all represent this conflict of not wanting to be seen and wanting to be seen at the same time.
What does that look like in the context of art? What if the piece didn’t cater to the viewer so much? What if it was this less interesting form on the outside, and more interesting form on the inside and the viewer actively had to go out of their comfort zone to see that? Who will see it? Will most viewers just walk by never knowing? Will there be those who get closer and take a look? If they did would they stop and ask why? Why would the artist hide this? Could I get them to be an active part of this internal conflict? Could I show them my struggle? Is it even worth doing?
I played these questions and ideas over in my mind as I designed my form. Paying attention to not only the form itself but how I was going to represent it. Hanging the pieces uncomfortably close to the wall. Making so you couldn’t see the inside at all. How the outside of the form contrasted from the inside. How did changing these things change my message?
Inside Outside
I finalized my forms and then began to turn to maquettes and material studies. My maquettes were made from tin foil and tape.
I began to research what best to make the forms from. My main three potential materials were clay, paper mache, or plaster. Because I wanted to hang the work, and also had a limited amount of time, it became clear very quickly that clay was not going to work. It was too fragile making it hard to work with, and its drying time would not have allowed me to work quickly. So I decided to do material studies with paper Mache and plaster. My worry with plaster was that it was going to be too heavy and thick. The issue with Paper Mache though was it was difficult to get the smooth white color and texture that I wanted.
After the material studies though, it became clear that plaster was the way to go. I ended up using my maquettes to test materials on, and it turned out that tin foil and tape made a good mold. So I made several more shapes similar to my maquettes to use for molds This allowed me to keep the paster thin and light, while still being strong. The fact that it dried quickly also allowed me to work quicker than paper mache or clay would have allowed.
Another thing I needed to experiment with was how I wanted to build the forms. Did I want small molds of circular shapes, and then build a larger form out of them? This would be more dynamic, but I was unsure how well I would be able to attach them. Did I want to make the entire form out of the mold and then cast that in plaster? It would be less interesting, but probably much stronger.
After testing both, I found making small molds, and putting them together created a much more interesting form and was actually quite durable. So I made a bunch of small molds, covered them in plaster until they were the right thickness, and then remove the mold and repeat.
Once the outside of the forms were built I turned to the inside of the forms. I experimented with how best to make the spikes, the downside to the spikes is they were very time-consuming. I would have to make the base, cover it in paster, then attach and hold each spike to the inside and wait a minute while the plaster hardened.
Since the spike took so long, I had less time to figure out how I wanted to set up my work exactly, I was rushed during the setup phase. The other issue was I cannot reach the ceiling from the ladder we have, as I am too short, so I had to use old wires people had already had up, giving me fewer options of how I wanted my art to hang. I used one of the drills we have to drill holes into the top of each form and then fed the wire through it to hang. It worked well.
Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about the piece. My main goal was to explore these emotions and ideas I’ve been trying to process. I’m always so focused on the assignment, and the finished piece, but I rarely feel any passion for the things I create. I usually just end up feeling numb towards them, and I have no gauge of how successful they are as an art piece.
Because of that, I tried to focus on just creating itself and trying to find answers to my questions, to let the perfectionist in me go. But I think I lost confidence about halfway through. I began to worry about how the piece would be received. The things I had been taught to care about kept intervening and I lost all passion for the piece. I didn’t want to work on it anymore. I didn’t want to experiment with it because I began to care if the piece was successful or a failure as a piece itself.
Because of this, I became inconsistent, and I let others influence me more than I should of. I let my pieces be hung further away from the wall than I wanted. I smashed a few and put them on the ground. Which was an idea I was exploring from the very start when I was playing around more with the corruption of depression, but I feel like because I became so numb, I didn’t explore it enough to really figure out if it was the right move.
I let my classmates get too involved. When hanging the pieces and setting up the smashed ones I didnt want the wire to be with them, as I was worried people would think it was an accident. But they were so persistent about it, when I said it was fine they pulled the wire down themselves and I didn’t have the energy to fight them on it.
I’m really frustrated about the whole experience. I think I just wanted to try something different, to focus on another aspect of making art. Because I feel so little passion for the things I’ve been creating or like they are good enough. But I wasn’t able to commit and I don’t feel like I got anything out of it because of that. I didn’t work through these feelings, or channel them into my art and I didn’t make anything worthwhile, or that I wanted to create.
