Greater than the sum of its parts - one week project

Yesterday was supposed to be my first day back on college, however, learning has been flipped online due to the pandemic. As a creative student working online is incredibly difficult. At home I do not have the equipment to make work to any standard of what I could in college. However, it pushes me out of my comfort zone as I am forced to be resourceful within an environment which I normally use to relax.

This lockdown scares me, the pandemic scares me and the government scare me. It is horrifying that covid cases had to rise to almost 60,000 a day for them to realise they need to close everything down. It horrifies me that in the summer we were encouraged to leave the house, christmas wasn’t cancelled, people still gathered with their friends as if we aren’t in a global pandemic, it took five months for the government to make masks compulsory. That is scary. We are being led by people who only care about themselves and money. Gavin Williamson has never set foot in a school as a teacher or in a normal teaching environment, he will never understand the stress of what goes on within everyone’s lives due to education. The Conservative government will never understand the stress of a creative student, and they will never appreciate the power we have against them. A power for activism within our work, sharing our voice and exhaustion for the lack of support towards anyone in the creative industry. Without the creative industry Boris Johnson would be making his speeches naked because who made those clothes? We did. But I dont want to start another argument on why I dislike the current UK government because I would be here for a very long time.

Lockdown will be effecting us all, but if we continued to live our lives as ‘normal’ it would have effected us a lot more. Although lockdown will effect my ‘usual’ creative process it will challenge me as an artist to find ways to communicate meaning in ways I would have never normally used.

Leading onto the one week project which we have been set within using paper to create a structure or installation within the home. Within my work I chose to make a vase out of paper but using paper mache to create a wobbly vase structure.

To start off with I generated initial plans and ideas, at first I was stumped. So I chose took a shower to see if that would give me any inspiration. Which I then decided to see if I could make a shower head out of paper using stitching to keep it together along with flow out of the shower head to resemble water. However, when making the maquette this design was not practical or aesthetically pleasing. I did not enjoy the making process of the shower head which is normally a sign that it won’t go well. Which then took me onto my other idea of cutting up a tube of paper and the using these circles to create an optical illusion or discomfort due to the clustered holes. However, this was also unsuccessful and an unenjoyable process. I decided to throw myself in the deep end and try my gut trying an idea which I really wanted to try and had a full idea of how it will be made in my head.

To create my wobbly vase I made a tinfoil base and covered it in ripped up paper and stuck it with glue. Once that had dried I painted it blue. Then moving onto the spouts I created a variant of paper plants to put inside, each with a different shape and colour to compliment the weird shape of the vase. Once this has been done I added yellow dots to contrast the blue on the vase, creating a colourful yet pleasing vase. Very misshapen and unique created out of paper! The inside of the vase is stuffed with paper so the structure doesn’t fold in on itself.

Through this process of trial and error of my work I didn’t want any of the paper to go to waste, so I salvaged as much as possible creating a jewellery stand out of the waste paper. The base stand made out of cardboard and an old embroidery ring and the actual stand is made out of rolled up paper which was not used. The pink bits poking out were failed attempts for fake plants in my vase.

Overall, I found this project successful and completed my process efficiently. Even if it was a short project with no sketchbook I still found it challenged my creative process along with being resourceful with my materials.

Here is a link to my pinterest board which I created for initial inspiration: https://pin.it/1q75Wrr