When I first began planning my fink piece I already had a vague idea of what I wanted to do. Throughout the design process I changed and perfected my idea, leaving me with a final design I was very happy with. The medium I wanted to use was pretty much decided from the start, I wanted to use wire, the only thing that changed was the type of wire I wanted to use. After doing some material testing, I realised that, unlike straight wire, chicken wire is much more time effective. Also, it is just as aesthetically pleasing as straight wire, in fact it is more uniformed, so depending on your eye it may seem more attractive.
I drew inspiration from several different wire artists. I liked Anthony Gormley's use of different types of wire. Also he made sculptures out of many different mediums. He plays a lot on the importance of positioning, as the poses of the sculpture can add extra drama.
I was very inspired by Banksy's pieces of the girls being flow away by balloons. This is what inspired me to use a balloon in my piece. The balloon is quite a major aspect of my piece. I chose the colour so it contrasts the silver of the sculpture. I think the colour scheme, although simple, works very well. I think it is the simplicity that makes it so pleasing. Thew colours do not clash, they just make one stand out against the other. I chose red as I think it is a very vibrant and eye-grabbing colour. Which is exactly what I wanted.
One of my initial designs was a textiles piece. This is where I took the idea of the textiles heart. It was a very successful medium to use. As the heart had to be light, so it could be hung of a piece of wire, therefore fabrics were the ideal material to make the heart out of.
A large amount of inspiration for this piece came from the work of Elizabeth Berrien. Her work flows so beautifully, I loved the elongated elegant lines. I also liked the fact that some of her sculptures are shown outside. That is how I got the idea of my piece looking almost like a permanent outdoor fixture.
Although it was not what I originally wanted, I quite like the copper pole within my sculpture. I think it makes the sculpture look like a permanent fixture. I like the idea that you could stand my sculpture in a garden or street corner and the copper would tarnish, plants would climb up the wire and the wood would rot, yet the girl, who is the emphasis of the piece would never age.
I am very pleased with how the piece looks. I think the whole idea of having two hearts, one inside the sculpture and one outside the sculpture, works really well. My plan was to make a visual metaphor. I wanted to put across the idea of the openness of childhood and how a child wears their heart on their sleeve, and as you grow up you lose that innocent honesty and everything becomes hidden and secretive. This also relates to the use of wire. Because the sculpture is transparent you could see that, as children have that innocent honesty, they are easy to read, and nothing is hidden.
These are my initial ideas, I painted them using watercolour paints.
My first initial design (grey head and torso), was inspired a lot by wire artists I studied such as Anthony Gormley and Elizebeth Berrien. I likes the silvers of the wires, so I used this in the colours for this piece. Also I planned to make this piece out of wire, I don't think this would have been very effective. The idea doesn't seem very viable. My third design is much more realistic, even though it is made out of the same medium. Because in the third design the structure involves much less detail, it is much more achievable.
My second design (blue textiles piece), was based a lot on the idea of stitches holding a body together. I drew inspiration from the idea of people who had been through surgery and who had most literally been stitched back together. I chose blue as the colour to make this textiles piece because it related to the idea of dead bodies, which had been cut open for autopsy and stitched back together ready to be buried. I decided not to carry on with this piece as I didn't think it was quite challenging enough. Also, I wanted to go a little beyond my comfort zone for my final piece, and I found that the idea of sewing did not seem at all daunting.
My third design (girl in red dress with balloon) was inspired greatly by the work of Banksy. I loved his work showing little girls with balloons, I thought it really captured innocence and youth perfectly. This is why I wanted to use his work as a major point of inspiration for this piece. I like the colour scheme of this design. I like the reds standing out against the greys. I think it makes the piece stand out more even though the colour scheme is so limited. As I planned to make this piece out of wire, obviously I was inspired by the medium of Anthony Gormley and Elizebeth Berrien's work. I liked the way they both use the wire in different ways and was intrigued into how I could use wire to create my own piece.
My fourth design (white figure in red dress) is quite a lot like my third. I was inspired by the same artists for this design. I think my third design may be more effective than this one. It is more detailed and individual. Also I think it is more thought out. This design isn't quite as good as I was hoping it would be. I think the idea could work. But not without a lot of work.
These are more initial designs. I did these using a variety of different mediums.
The first design (newspaper design) was inspired quite literally by the materials lying in front of me. I took the idea of a figure wearing a dress and came up with the concept of making a sculpture out of newspaper. This was developed from my initial designs 3 and 4. I think this design is quite interesting. I love how newspaper looks, and I would have loved to see it in a three dimensional form. One thing that stopped me from pursuing this design was the fact that my initial idea 3 was already a favourite of mine, and chicken wire seemed like a much faster medium for creating a full sized sculpture when compared to newspaper, and I had to keep in mind that I had a deadline for my piece which meant I had to make executive decisions on mediums to use.
My second design (Pen figure) was largely inspired by the work of banksy. I like his fuss free way of approaching art. His work is straight forward and to the point. I tried to emulate this in this design. I used a fine liner to draw this. I liked the way this design looked on paper, but I found it hard to envisage as a final piece, I wasn't sure whether it would look lazy. I would make it large scale, but the design didn't seem quite challenging enough when compared to a design such as my newspaper sculpt design.
My third design (figure pastel piece) was a bit of an odd one. It was inspired by previous designs, mostly my red dress designs. I thought this might look interesting as a large pastel piece. I liked the idea of having lots of lines connecting up a large heart shape to a heart in the girl in the drawings chest. This was party inspired by some of the sketches drawn by Frida Kahlo. She used lots of lines connecting body parts to one another creating visual metaphors and making deeper meaning in her paintings. I did not feel inclined to pursue this piece as I don't think it communicated my idea of a heart being attached to a heart as well as other mediums could. I liked the idea of pursuing the same idea, but in a different medium, wire seeming like the most appropriate.
After reviewing all my designs, and doing lots of material testing I decided on my final design. Aspects of my final design were drawn from many of my initial designs. I took the idea of the heart being attached to a larger heart from my pastel design. I also decided to make the heart out of fabrics, which was inspired by my blue textiles design. The dress was inspired by all my designs incorporating dresses. The colour scheme was inspired by my 3rd and 4th initial design. The medium was chosen through many different types of material testing, but it was originally inspired by my 3rd design.
Jane Summer:
