ASU2. Bronze casts. Glass 1, bowl and base. Glass 2 x 2.

SNU. ASU2. It is hard to know if this is both SNU and ASU2 or just ASU2. I could scratch a line through the mould making and say that although it was learning and related to the SNU driving theme, the printmaking skills could form one body of work, and the mould making and casting another. I felt that i needed to work with both as i built up to the master project which i expected to be doing in May, June and July. The story themes had begun to intertwine at this point and the work i was making became less clearly one module or the other. This i think is the nature of life there are overlaps, meeting points, and comings together, for sure division and stretch are also a part of life but connections seem to naturally happen without ask or effort if nature is let be. 
I thought to make a mould of two parts of a glass, hoping to remake the stem which i have lost sometime along the way. There is something about making things good again that i like and i looked at repairs and mending when studying my BA in Textiles. And if we fall, we get up and start over again. This has something of a resurrection feel about it. And resurrection is part and parcel of coming back from grief i think, a hallelujah i'm alive feeling that is the spark of life reigniting, the desire re-emerging.  
I took these two parts of the glass, the bowl and the base, and made two two-part moulds of them. This involves making a square frame with boards and clamps and packing clay around one half of the object, mixing plaster, pouring it and then waiting till it goes off (sets) when the packed clay is removed and the half mould plaster covered with clay slip to stop it sticking to the other side of the plaster mould. Its also important to seal the base of the boards and any gaps with a squidge of clay because otherwise the plaster, being initially fluid, runs through anywhere that it can. This happened with my first mould. 
I was pleased with the outcomes of these moulds but when trying to set the slush wax casts on cups to be invested for bronze i realised that my plan to build a stem from a riser and then twine a thorn twig around was not going to work as the joins would be too flimsy and the thorns were not pliable enough to be used in the way i had hoped. 
So i took another glass in, a very beautiful glass, unbroken, thinking that if i started with unbroken the stem would be stronger. But sadly this glass broke in the mould-making, first the stem and then the bowl. I was sad about this, both the glasses were relics from my grandparents house, they'd sat in a cabinet in their dining room and came to me after they died. Because of this i took the pieces home and made boxes for them referencing the chests that held relics of saints and of christ in the middle ages. The boxes the glasses are in are simple boxes made from recycled card but i may explore box making further on in time. 
The second glass was made in three part mould which meant that the bowl held its precise shape inside and out. I have made two and three part mould before but i wanted to jog my memory again in prep for the masters project should my leaning to make something require these skills. Just before the deadline for investment i was able to prepare two slush wax whole glasses, two slush wax bowls, and one base and all these came out intact tho' i only had time to saw them free before taking them home before covid19 lockdown. I also made 5 spare slush wax bowls and two stems as i was sampling the thickness of wax that i wanted, the heat to pour the wax the how long to leave it in the wet plaster  mould before pouring it out. I would ideally have spent more time doing this, learning my material. 

SNU. ASU2. Masters Project MP. Cast origami lotus flowers in bronze and aluminium. Also wire horses not usable for 3d printing.  

SNU. Working with photographs was becoming a little intense. Feelings i had not anticipated had surfaced, and feelings i had thought i would be working with were turning out to be more raw and open than i'd expected. In truth i'd hoped the exercise would be a walk in the park, a sunny day in the garden, a trip along a country road, it began in that spirit but had taken me into dark places. 
I decided to side step into working with objects in the 3d workshops. I had four metal origami flowers that had been poured at the beginning of the term that were sample pieces, they were me trying recall how to make paper pieces for burn out, and how the different metals offered in the workshops worked  and handled, with a mind to needing this knowledge for my masters project in term three. The feathers i'd spent a morning putting on cups with sprue and risers had not been successful but these were good enough to use as learning props. 
I also wanted to find a way to make a copy of a tube of lino printing ink that had come out of my granny's art studio bag when she died. The graphics were cool so i didn't want to burn it out or ruin it with plaster or silicon so i asked Steve the technician if it could be printed on the 3d printer. I had asked the term before if  a couple of wire horses might be reproduced on this machine but they were too small and slight so i also had a yen to know what could and couldn't be 3d printed, again with a view to holding this knowledge for my masters project work should i need it. 
Steve took the paint tube, photographed it and put the photographs into the computer, confirmed that it was viable and so it was printed. Success. And following that success i took in a ceramic bull that had been part of my childhood, an ornament that belonged to the same period as the CMYK screen prints. All the time when working my mind is making these connections, seemingly unrelated things have lines drawn between them that outsiders can't see. The lines are live wires. They burn. The burn intensity depending on the level of attention given or the strength of the connection. The bull was photographed and processed by Steve as before. One of the interesting things about the 3d printer is that it doesn't just replicate, it is a modelling tool in itself and also things being replicated can be sized up and down. The plastic comes in various colours but the paint tube and bull by chance were printed in red. 

My paper bowl in bronze

I made a couple of 3d figure drawings out of wax and string. I'm aiming to get them cast in aluminium next week but they may disappear so I thought I'd photograph them. I do have a passion for shadows and I think they both throw out nice lines so I'll use this as a drawing form again.

The paper bowl, which I mentioned a month or so back, is out of it's plaster mold. It isn't really a bowl any more, which wasn't a surprise as it had collapsed as the plaster was poured in, but the texture of the geranium paper is clearer, and that's before cleaning so it may be more remarkable once that's done. And I think this piece may be worth giving a patination if time allows. I'm going to really miss the uni workshops and fantastic technicians, particularly Jim in the 3d studio http://www.jamespaulcastle.com/ who is a generous and patient teacher, and David and Neil in the textiles studios.

 

The other things that I have set up for the most recent bronze pour at uni, were a series of samples of folded paper coated in wax. These are a follow-on from the paper bowls. They are made from run of the mill watercolour paper and some wax that I had kicking about at home as these materials are cheap and accessible. I thought it would be interesting to see in small pieces how the bronze poured into the folds. I don't mind if they go wrong. I am often most interested in how to engineer flaws into my work. And if, they magically cast exactly as they are, then "ta da"  I have learnt that that is possible too. On the advice of the Jim, who I mentioned in an earlier blog, I used kebab stick sprues to aid the flow of the bronze. 
As our easter holiday draws to a close, and the likely craziness of the final term gets closer, I am excited to see how these small pieces work out.

 

 

The bowl that I had cast earlier hadn't really worked out well. It is very solid. I had wanted it to be lighter, visually if not physically, like the paper bowl that it was initially formed from. I had another piece of the geranium paper in my sample stock so I decided to make another bowl to see if I could get the affect I was after. The paper bowl came out prettily, I wondered about putting a coating of shellac on it to help it hold it's shape. I decided not to, this was a mistake as it was too fragile to stand up against the plaster as it was poured into the mold. But one of the things I love is sampling, and although there is an "ouch moment" when a sample goes wrong, there is also an "aha, not like that moment" to counterbalance. And a feeling that I know a little bit more about the materials I'm using, what they can and cannot do, the boundaries against which I am pushing. The photographs are the remains of the paper bowl. I have no idea how it will come out of the pour, flat and a little sorry for itself I suspect. However I liked it's form in paper, the holes and shadows and how the light cuts through it and this has inspired me to do more paper work.

Following on from my attempts at bronze casting earlier in the year and in connection to the pleated and embroidered pieces of aluminium mesh that I put up for our mid year show at Stew, I decided to try other materials cast in metal. I smocked a small piece of scrim and took it in to show Jim, one of the lovely technicians in the 3d studio. He said it would be unlikely to come out but we could give it a go anyway, for curiousity's sake. 

Continuing with the bronze casting saga. On tuesday it was time to hacksaw the sprues (sp?) and pouring cup etc away. I now have a rather unattractive bowl and four copies of the rubber exhaust thing of dubious worth. I took the bowl and one of the exhaust things away, to show at my mid term review, and I may pick up the others, or I may leave them. They all need finishing and we now have only 10 weeks of studio time left before our last portfolio submission and final show assessment. Yeep.

I haven't had a chance until today to crack open my bronze casting experiments. I think the end products will not be much to write home about, but I'm beginning to learn the process. To that end, here is the next stage. The fired and filled mold, the objects all covered in plaster, and washed and wire brushed a little. 

I love the flashing. I had a feeling I would as my work is often about happy accidents. I'm not loving chipping it off with a hammer and chisel though, there is more to that than meets the eye.  

Oh, and today I watched my first bronze pour. Before christmas I spent a week in the 3d studio at uni making molds for bronze casting. I think the outcome is likely to be pretty rudimentary and crude but I am beginning to learn the process. The objects are a rubber thing I found on the street which people tell me is something to do with the exhaust off a car, and a bowl made from home-made geranium leaf paper. The wax and paper burns out when the mould is fired in the kiln, this leaves a space for the bronze to be poured into. The things that look like legs are called risers, they allow any trapped air to escape.