POETIC SCIENCE
“Physicists and poets may differ in discipline, but both seek to
communicate the beauty of the world around us.” Stephen Hawking
Introduction and Workshops:
I found the brief of this module quite inspiring and I had many ideas and many mediums I wanted to experiment with. Stained glass, embossing and engraving is something I'd love to experiment with while I have the facilities available, and the laser-cutting workshop we did only fuelled this.
I've also been itching to work more with clay and delve into sculpting. My initial thought was to delve into a world of monsters and dragons and fictional creatures. I thought my final outcome would be a creature of my own, sculpted from clay. To prepare for this I did some film studies on How To Drain Your Dragon although sketching and brainstorming creatures quickly felt a bit stagnant.
I found the model-making workshop really influential and completely fell in love with one of the videos played as an example of a past student's work. I was captivated by the music video for Bubble. I would love to create something so special. During the workshop, I thought I would approach creating an environment for a future creature to rest in and possibly animate in After Effects.
I really enjoyed making a cave and all the details within it, especially using modeling clay to carve a statue into the entrance. I thought I'd decorate the cave walls in cave-man style paintings. This spurred a new fixation.
Describe your image
PICTOGRAPHS
A pictograph, also referred to as a pictrogram or simply picto, conveys important meaning or information through a graphic symbol. They were the earliest form of known writing and have been discovered from before 3000BC!
I find the prehistoric pictrographs really intruiging. Cave Art and the deciptions of the animals, handprints and stories are so fascinating. I would love for my final outcome to be influenced by this.
I found a New Scientist article that fit into my Stone Age obsession perfectly! It debates on if the Neandtrathals were artists of any kind and how some archelothgists have resistance to the motion that the paintings were anything but symbolision of a religious function.
JAMES GURNEY
James Gurney, born in California is a wonderfully talented illustrator featured in over a dozen National Geographic magazines and his books are truly a stable in the art community. I own a copy of his book titled Imaginative Realism. I found his paintings and use of colour really beautiful. Although more traditional than I would prefer, his methods and recognition is inspiring.
WORKSHOPS AND EXPERIMENTING
I began experimenting a lot with mythical creature concepts but found I was more drawn to clay.
In the slide shows the work I produced in the model-making workshop, the laser-cutting workshop and work I made in the ceramics building.
I've never worked with a ceramic piece to the point of glazing it before so I was really pleased with how it came out, and now have a better understanding of the timeline.
Final Outcome
The wall mount is made from terracotta clay. I wanted to keep the colours minimal, to draw more attention to the red drawings. A bold red for the detailing worked really well as the Stone Age paintings were commonly done with red ochre.
Evaluation:
Initially, I was very intrigued by the brief for the Poetic Science project. I find the relationship between Art and Science one that’s not often discussed and I’m keen to see how different everyone’s exploration is. At first, I was very eager to explore a route of mythical creatures and monsters. I even thought as much that perhaps my final outcome would be a sculpture of my own, original monster.
The model-making workshop was a key influential lecture to my project. It pushed me to explore more mediums, clay especially. The workshop as a whole was a really valuable learning experience and I completely fell in love with the work of a previous students. ‘Bubble – King Creosote, Jon Hopkins’ was so beautifully animated. I would love to create something so special.
I found some aspects of this project demotivating and often found myself redirected. Coming up with an original, thought out monster of my wasn’t inspiring me as much as I thought. Also, I was very fond of the cave I made during the model making workshop, however, disliked how I painted it and found the ‘final’ result a bit disappointing. Time management was also very difficult as I wasn’t aware how much admin work needed to be completed for my study abroad opportunity and felt as exciting as the opportunity is, my support with that was unfortunately minimal.
To conclude, although it wasn’t the smoothest module for me, I’m very proud of the final outcome and would even think to make a plaster of it, so I could remake multiple pieces with a much stronger foundation.