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. 

The other thing I was working on for the bishops's prize didn't quite work out, tho' I have a few ideas for taking it along a way. For the time being my waxed paper holes that I cast in aluminium are a pile of silvery slices and a ragged core. I have plans but I want to give them space to evolve so they are on the back burner for now.

 

I was happy with my folded paper aluminium samples that I've blogged about earlier. I wanted to take the folding on a step, to create a more resolved form. Also to see how the folded paper took the metal if it was doubled over. My ideas tend to feed into each other so the 1000 boats idea naturally led to me making origami boats. They are really more aluminium sampling but the final pieces are sweet, and complete little objects in themselves. I cut them off the pouring cups and removed the sprews though I thought they had something good about them when they were unfinished and upright too.

  

My paper bowl in bronze

The experiments with folded wax paper made me smile a lot. Lovely slippery corners and holes.