For the Final task, we are to create an artwork based on all we had learned. We were given the topic teenagers. So, our ideas would be based around anything that had to do with teenagers. Firstly, we discussed about our ideas. My first idea was about teenagers that flys out to space with a skateboard and without a spacesuit. This idea originally means that teenagers like to explore, younger people are fascinated by space and freedom.
However, the idea was abit hard to imagine for others. So, we changed the idea around the opposite into something like confinement, bullying and unable to escape such a life. The first art was to make a teenage entity trying to come out of a plastic wall. Much like the statues inside walls.
Kitchen wrappers
Wrapping the model
Plastic model of the model leg
My first experiment, I used kitchen wrappers and parts of the models for wrapping. The wrapping around the model continues until it is completely wrapped( unable to see model color. Using the heat blower and setting it to about 180 - 250 degrees. I blew around the wrapped model so it would melt and harden, molding its form. However, there are some complications with the melting process.First The plastic used are not exactly hard enough no matter how many times it was blown. Second, with the blower running quite hot the plastics would create holes and reducing the coverage of the wrapper. This process continued until I have a set of 2 legs ,1 hand, 1 partial shoulder and a partial face. It turned out not as impressive as we though so we came up with another idea.
Vaccuum former
(The white line is the maximum limit)
Modeled hand that got stuck
PVC sheet with the model
reducing size the modeled hand
One of the final hand piece
My second experiment is creating walls of the model using plastics as well. This time I require a lecturer to help operate the vacuum former, which is required for my experiment. However there are some complications, the vacuum former did not have a large space to fit the model. So, we improvise to only use the hands. But, it would require a lot of copies of hands to meet our requirements. The complications did not end there, some of the formed model are stuck inside the PVC sheet due to some parts of it got locked. For example like the metal end and some parts of the fingers. We had to cut out holes on the PVC to free the modeled hand for modeling. It was a hard and long process and the vacuum made it worst as it heats up and dispels some polluted air.
After hours of forming, I then had to cut the PVC plastics in a more smaller piece so it did not take too much space. The PVC sheet is not easy to cut due to it being quite durable and less bendable.
Description
Wall of Hands
Finally, I merged them together and typed out the description for it. It is about the struggles by bullying and you can read it at the picture above.
Reflection
The process and experimenting was long and hard but a good learning experience. I learned a lot during the process of making the artwork. Such as, complications and thinking solutions on how to deal with them. Finding a better idea as well as improving it and solutions if it did not work out.
