In our sculpture workshop there were quite a few typical examples of sculpture such as Marc Quinn's blood head and Rachel Whiteread's inverted casts of different objects. There was one project which really aligned with the examples of street sculpture I had already studied, which was actually placed on the front of the St. Georges building of NUA.
We were at first encouraged to play around with the clay and get a feel for it. I quickly realised that my initial designs for rhino skeleton reliefs wouldn't work in this instance, as it was the removed areas of material which would eventually form the positive sculpture, and to carve such a complex form into the clay, blind with no clue of the final outcome would be nigh on impossible. To make this idea workable I would first need to create the sculpture from clay then use latex or silicon to create a flexible mould of the positive shape which could be flexed away from the detailed for which didn't fit with our plan for the workshop.
So I decided to go with another theme which is both important to me and appeared in my research as a concurrent topic, commentating on the widespread die back of our primary pollinators, the bees. I tried to give my piece a frame by using the curved tool to gouge out a circle border, however this was hard to get perfectly symmetrical with only the inverse view of my final sculpture to judge for proportion. By carving down into the bed of the sculpture I hollowed out the shape of the bee, and as it was onto a flat surface I was able to achieve quite a high level of detail in the individual legs and patterned wings.
I mixed plaster and poured it into this mould first, and whilst it was setting, decided to test out a simplified design under the same fossilised aesthetic as I had planned for the rhino. I loved fossils and dinosaurs as a child and had quite a lot of knowlege on different varieties already, so chose the iconic shape of the ammonite, which also shared the logarithmic spiral shape of the golden ratio I had previously studied. As this shape was simpler and more geometric than my skeleton design, I found it easier to tackle, and felt more confident about this second piece as I filled it with plaster.
When the bee was ready to reveal, I was actually very pleased with the way the details came across. The asymmetrical appearance to the edge of the cast actually made it appear not dissimilar to a larger than life wax seal. I think a perfect edge would have given the cast a more refined finish, but instead it lends the piece a sort of rustic, organic charm.
As the ammonite was then freed, it was this I was most aesthetically drawn to of the two pieces, the way the clay stained the plaster made the surface appear very earthen, and really gave authenticity to the archaeological effect.
I then used the vaccuum former to create formed high impact polystyrene (HIPS) in the shape of my scultures. Although I had used this piece of machinery in I really like this method and was impressed with the level of detail which this was able to pick up. The even gloss finish of the polymer also gave the forms a professional look, however I often find vaccumm forming creates quite a flimsy, brittle product which, as it is so light and hollow, it is then hard to display effectively.
I also preserved the clay versions of my initial moulds from which I took casts, as I felt these had an interesting aesthetic quality in themselves. We were given the task to make further plans about what we wanted to create in the next session in a week's time. I had already decided it was the fossil design I wanted to explore further, as it was this I felt which really utilised the unique features of relief sculpture.
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