24/01/2017 - SCULPTURE SESSION 2

In readiness for this second session we were asked to prepare some new material ideas to work onto. I had decided to focus more closely on my fossil sculptures as it was these I thought were most visually effective.

However, first we did not begin work on this new creative thread, instead being inducted into open face aluminium casting with sand moulds. I found pushing my design into the sand to create the mould very challenging, being lightweight and short I wasn't able to get the required pressure by myself and had to stand on a stool for greater pushing power. The actual process of creating the mould I found very tactile, the oil soaked sand used creating a strange mouldable texture whilst still appearing like normal sand.





This worked effectively for the fossil design, however when attempting to use my bee from the earlier session, it was impossible to push the design in far enough for an effective mould, resulting not only in me breaking my original cast (which i was thankfully able to fix) but also in two attempts at casting the aluminium, both which had notable imperfections due to the thin, detailed nature of the open face mould.

 

This reinforced my confidence in my decision to develop my fossil sculptures further, and led me nicely onto starting my second design. For this I used another well known species for appearing in fossils, the Trilobite. This was an effective choice to apply to this method as it was highly detailed and used slightly different raised angles and sections to convey depth. It was a good step up in terms of captured detail from the slightly simpler shell. In this sculpture I felt like I managed to give my work a much more lifelike, authentic effect.

Next I worked on my most complicated design yet, a small fossilised fish complete with full skeleton. I felt that in this final free sculpt I was able to use the huge variety of tools on offer to height of their scope, favouring the particularly accurate metal wax sculpting tools.

I prepared both my new fossils for plaster whilst also preparing for the centrepiece of my wall mounted sculptures. I wanted my examples of natural petrification to be juxtaposed alongside a not-so-natural but much more familiar object, the iconic plastic cola bottle. In doing this I want to make passers by think that, over millennia the only remaining relics of time gone past have been uniquely preserved over thousands of years, yet every day we thoughtlessly consume and cast off millions of items which may remain in the ecosystem for even longer.

As I wanted the perfect likeness of a coke bottle in my sculpture, the technicians suggested I create a plaster wasting mould, which would allow me to use a real bottle in my mould instead of painstakingly crafting a visually identical one. I had never experienced this technique before so was interested to give it a go. First I crafted clay around the bottle to form the relief bed and the rest of the rock formation, then carved the shape of a petrified fern and sand dollar urchin around the edge, to give the sense that this piece of rubbish was materialised directly into the same piece of archaelogical rock as the preserved ancient life forms.


When this was complete it was the end of our session, so I covered my piece in water and a layer of cling film so that it would still be wet and mouldable when I returned to continue work the next day. I had found it much easier to sculpt in positive space, instead of carving, as this technique allowed me to think literally instead of inversely as I had been thus far.