First Cut

Today I visited the first cut exhibition in Manchester, it was pretty impressive! I got to see some work from artists such as Su Blackwell, Andrea Masteovito and some others that I have recently researched during my foundation degree.

This installation above is 'Wonder Forest', those plant sculptures were taller than me! made out of seaweed raw hemp paper pigment and various recycled objects by Manabu Hangal, you were aloud to walk around them, kind of made me feel like I was in 'Honey I Shrunk The Kids!'.

These were made by Clare Brewster; birds cut out of maps from various parts of the world, I thought it was a great idea that she used maps, kind of relates to birds migration patterns and all the different places they must fly. 

 Su Blackwell is an artist I have recently been studying and had a great impact on my 3D foundation work, so I was really excited to see her work close up, and was amazed by the amount of detail that she captures in her tiny, intricate installations. The one above is made out of the book; 'Wuthering Heights', and the image on the left is a plant growing out of the book.


There were quite a few references towards nature and plants, this is actually a flower magazine cut up and positioned to look like a real bouquet of flowers, I liked the layering in this piece, even though the paper is 2D it adds a sense of dimension to it.

These are close ups from one of my favorite pieces I saw. It's by Andrea Masteovito, The actual piece was much larger and covered a whole wall in the gallery; too big to photograph fully without losing detail, but here you can get an idea of just how detailed it was. I think it works really well, it's pretty creepy actually. 

 I've seen some great work today and really enjoyed the gallery, It was amazing to see what people could create just out of paper and It's sparked some great ideas for my upcoming illustration projects, watch this space!

Idea Development for Typography Project

Typography project, currently developing ideas from the seasons.

Spode Experience!

Today I went to Spode. It's an old workshop and ceramics factory, now used for art installations open to any artists. About 150 students in total were there with several work stations for us to learn how about pottery and how it's made.

W were shown lots of different techniques including how to make clay flowers, the same way they have always been made in the factory by lady's who used to work there.

It was a great day and we all got to learn loads about the local pottery industry and had an insight to what it was like, as well as getting to make some things of our own.

3D Project, Making stories.

I collected some old books, relativity decent story books from a charity shop. paperbacks to cut up and a hard back for the sculpture to stand on.

 cut the pages into strips of the same size and mixed some pva glue with water.







Creating a tree out of copper wire by twisting the wire and bending the branches into different positions.

then coated each strip of paper in glue and twisted them around the wire.

using a glue gun to keep the tree's in place on the paper.

Tree's are in place, Now for the foliage!!

 using a craft knife to cut out little leaves from the book pages.

 Threading them all together (about 200 leaves per piece of thread)

 Wrapped the threaded leaves around the branches

 used more glue to coat over the leaves, keeping them in place.












  using a craft knife again, this time to cut out the characters. sticking two pieces of paper together to make them more sturdy.

taped wire to the back of each character and made a hole in the book to hold them up.