Things Thus Far

So, I'm currently striving to create my graduate collection. Here's how things are looking so far.
It's all work in progress but I thought I'd give a little snippet of how things are shaping up!
I have to say, this is the most excited I've ever been about my work and it is a VERY nice feeling.
So what am I doing?
My work is based on the way in which animals are farmed for their bodies. Obviously they are used for their meat, but I want to show the other products they are harmed to produce. For example, cows are inhumanly conditioned to produce vast and unnatural quantities of milk. And pigs are kept in sectioned cars with barely enough room to stand.
There will be an apparent humour to my pieces but an underlying conceptual concern for the welfare of these animals. Just as humans laugh at a pig for being a 'stupid' or unimportant creature my pieces are designed to look silly and foolish but actually have a lot more to them.
Anyway, see what you think so far. I shall be updating soon with further developments!

In a coconut shell...

Forgive me my blogging sins. I've not been on for a while now. It's due to technical issues, but now I'm here, that's what counts right?Anyway, here's some of what I've been doing while I've been away:
My final project for my first year was a 'live' one. We worked with briefs set by external companies/clients as opposed to ones set by our tutors. It submersed us into the world of professional practise for the first time. Our deadlines were short and we had a lot to do for each one. One of the companies was the jewellery brand Watch This Space. They're pretty established and know exactly what their clients want. The people that usually buy from them are what I'd describe as the middle aged woman who wears full purple with a contrasting velvet scarf (probably in lime green) and is adorned in vulgar, bulbous stones of little value. As you've probably guessed I don't really like the company's style but I had a grade to attain from this so I persevered. All of the work that we had to present for this project had to be generated on Corel Draw. It was pretty easy and I got quite good and quick at doing it, but I didn't enjoy having to be creative on a computer.

One of the other projects was to create a piece for the Birmingham Children's Hospital to celebrate their 15oth anniversary and to help them to raise money. I really enjoyed this project as it was to design something simple and commercial. All of the projects were treated as competitions. People from the hospital looked through everyone's designs and picked 5 people who's designs they wanted to see made. From those they'd pick one to put into production. I got through to the final five with this design:

It's made in solid sliver and would have retailed at about £30 a piece for the brooch (the one pictured) and £20 for the pendant. I didn't win. Apparently, according to my tutor, I came a disturbingly close 2nd. The judges had to really nit pick between mine and the winners and decided that mine could be viewed as sexist because it depicts a FEmale nurse!! HOW ANNOYING!!!! If I'd had a man they'd have said it was a paedophile. And anyway, I never said it was a woman, it's just a person in a nurse's uniform.

The other project was to design part of a costume for a theatre group called Kindle. They were producing a play called The Furies which is sort of a modern take on the Greek myth of Clytemnestra. We were to pick a character and design/make part of their costume. We were encouraged to capture part of the character in our design.

I chose Agamemnon as mine. He was associated with brutality and power but also had an aged and timeless effect about him, and there was a connection to birds too. Basically, this is what I made:

It's made from burnt/melted leatherette and synthetic feathers. I hand stitched pieces of the leatherette together to give a skull-like appearance on the white parts. The girl I made it for seemed to love it but, yet again, I did not win.

B-B-B-Bad to the Blogging B-B-B-Bone

I haven't blogged in AGES, I know. But, I have a valid reason. I've been working so hard! But at least that means I have lots to share now that I'm playing the role of the Prodigal Blogger.

So...brace yourselves!

Where did I leave you then? Ahh, I was struggling for a direction for my Batch Production project wasn't I. Well, I sorted myself out, somehow. I went for the pencil shavings, which lead me onto frills, frills and more frills. I took the pencil shaving drawings and simplified them, from these drawings I selected one, which I cut out and used as a 'component', a form that I would repeat multiple times to create a final piece of some sort. To start with I tried to mimic the form of a ruff or a frill. I was happy with the effect that this had with my paper models. To make these I curled the component into a cone shape and glued them together in rows.

My production methods for these models brought the realisation that this form perhaps wasn't the best for a Batch Production module seeing as, to reproduce this effect, each piece would have to be soldered into place. So I had to think of another way to build my component into a piece... Alongside the project we were also being taught some useful batch production methods. My favourite of these methods was 'Lost Wax Casting' which involves producing a wax master which then gets set into a mould of plaster, burnt out and then replaced with the molten metal of choice. What was extra lovely about this demo was that we actually got to make a piece ourselves that we could then get cast in the metal of our choice, and then buy. Here's what I did...

Please excuse the blob on the bottom of the ring shank, this photo was take prior to finishing because I was so excited to share it with the world! It was quite an expensive piece and cost me £22.50 in silver grain, but it IS pretty weighty. I love it though, and although I don't usually wear silver I've been wearing this. I think that I don't mind the colour because it's not a dainty, delicate piece. It's chunky and heavy, and I made it!

And now back to the main project...I was trying to think of other ways to build something bigger with my single component. We were encouraged to think of new, innovative connections, ones that involved our component joining to the next one without an extra component. This was hard, very hard. I felt my creativity was shutting down on me. If I'm honest, I sort of started to give up at this point in the project. A few other people around me seemed to, and I didn't find myself inspired by the work that the people who were getting on were doing. I don't mean that I didn't like their work, it just wasn't...me. The sort of ideas that were working involved a lot of geometric, sharp, smooth and pointy shapes. I do like simplistic designs, but I also like soft and gentle shapes. I tried to conform to the idea of slotting pieces together, but didn't like any of the results..

Sortly after doing these models my class had a critique. By this time I had made a metal version of this. For some reason I can't find any photos of it so I'll have to describe it as best I can! The flappy bits on the inside were cotton, and either side of the flappy bits was a piece of gilding metal. Instead of the cocktail sticks I had made metal rivets, which I used to hold each component together as well as joining the pieces onto the next one. My design proposal was to make a brooch that attatched from on side of a shirt/blouse collar to the other, or hooked onto buttons/botton holes so that a nice frill could be added to any outfit! However, when it came to the critique it was suggested that I think of alternative connections to rivets and that instead of moving away from the big frilly things I was looking at before that I embrace it more, and make my piece frillier and bigger.