FIN 130 Unit 2

Paper Bag Assignment

Week of Oct.18

• I find this practice very similar to practicing drawing drapery in a way – the shapes and ‘vectors’ may be more triangular as a result on these paper bags, but you still get a sense of the man-made, of something that isn’t entirely organic – and maybe even looks wearable sometimes in the way that we know this is a functional, potentially, once-upon-a-time ‘every-day’ item.
• I thought about how hands might twist, or even after finding an odd shape on the second one, how human hands fold, repeatedly, at the top of such objects.

Process

• Found that slightly more water in the ratio allowed me to work a bit longer. It took me probably 6 or 7 mixed batches to get all of the wire completely covered (at which point I was almost out of plaster.)
• Working with the material was fairly relaxing, but of course there was time constraint to think about of the plaster drying. I tried to get in as many of the small grooves as possible, I’m glad I kept the gesture relatively where it was at because it created most of the challenge of applying the bandages.

• The process of layering the plaster over top of the bag was slow, I made several batches of the plaster because it dried very quickly.
• The final, top layer of plaster bandages laid on had a fairly watery consistency to it, and I was running low to no plaster by that point, so I used what was available.
• It took about a week or longer to dry from doing this, unfortunately. I likely should’ve brought it in anyway, but I kept it close to my heater once I realized it was drying at a snail’s pace.
• There were many small crevices in this design to get into and initially, I definitely didn’t want the wiring to be visible from these areas or from looking into the bag. Otherwise, the plaster didn’t give me too difficult of a time in terms of the bandages laying where I wanted them to go, sometimes they had a little bit of issue sticking to those more cramped, folded areas but I just made sure to add more bandages as needed.

• For my final sanding stage (which I’d known I wanted to do for most of this time, we discussed adding different materials to the project but I wanted to achieve something different and stick with what I had in mind vaguely, especially since I’d picked up the materials for sanding.
• Got prepared to make another mess, and as I was working on it I started to look at the sculpture more as an abstract sculpture, and about the materials we were working with. In lieu of using bandages, I began to look at the piece as a reflection of my progress into the start of the year up until this point – that my life has been a constant cycle of dismantling and reassembling, rebuilding and healing. I felt as though the bandages, which were showing through some of the sanding, added some nice symbolism to this thought and so I decided to use it as a feature instead of unintentional ‘mark-making’ on the piece that would’ve involved trying to hide things or over-sand certain areas.
• While sanding, I eventually learned to find a balance between showing areas of bandage, flattening those that didn’t, softening (and roughing up) some of the more fine, peaked edges.
• Allowing not only the bandage to show, but using the sanding triangle to expose certain areas of bandage, and fine sanding other areas to create the smooth surface more akin to the fully sanded bags.
• While working all the way around the 3-dimensional object, simply viewing, reassessing, and balancing the amount of rough and smooth areas, and which details I wanted to be expressed, which organic lines from the plaster were unavoidably going to show in the final result, and how to get some of the bandage to remain exposed – also added texture created from grating against areas of bandage.
• I peeled some of the bandage back and glued it to stay somewhat attached, as to not be exposing too much wire or appearing unintentional.
• The lighting I was working with at this point lended well to viewing the different angles of light and shadow and how those impacted the view of the object, the strong lighting was very helpful and something I’d recommend to anyone working with an object like this (especially, it was helpful in its final stages and in trying to apply or subtract detail.)