SNU. Back to the nitty gritty and practical. Because my photographs were provoking deep and difficult emotions and i was struggling to keep my mind steady i decided to take a side step to making moulds out of objects. Remembering how to make plaster moulds was part of the brief i had set myself anyway and i wanted to find a way to make a mould of a paint tube so that i could compare the end product with the 3d printed painted tube and i'd hoped to make a slush wax paint tube that could be a bronze in the end. I also wanted to find out what kind of object worked in a silicone mould and then how the materials that could be cast in the moulds acted within the moulds. Similarly with plaster moulds. Also i was aware that i needed to press on with work for my ASU2 module but that my path to the work i wanted to make for that required me to build up a body of knowledge in preparation. That body formed part of my SNU practice. 
So to start i took in pebbles, shells, a square stone (that i had/have several ideas for), a paint tube (not my granny's cool LINO ink one), a single doll's shoe (red, with cinderella written small on the the heel-sole as part of the design), and a red aeroplane from a stencil kit that i had as a child. The links to my childhood are obvious with the latter two objects but they also link to flight, and foot prints, and walking in somebody else's shoes ergo empathy, sympathy and compassion, and fairy tales, and journeys, and work i have made previously. 
Work i have made previously also got picked as a thread that connected my SNU to ASU2. My creative process is a kind of mapping of ideas, a piece of work that comes out of the map acts as way marker and may be returned to as whim or pull moves me. My creative story threads are rarely completed they just get to a place where a stop can be taken. 
It was part of my wanting to know what the 3d print could and couldn't do that led me to take in two models i'd made at different, much earlier points in my life, to see if they could be printed. One i had made at school, at about age 13, it is two figures kneeling one with an arm around the other. It was just before i gave up art at school. There are points in our lives when we make decisions that lead our lives one way or another and there is no way of knowing how things would have gone if a different decision had been made. I gave this model to my granny for christmas that year, i was proud of it, its a grown child's art i could be embarrassed about now but it said something i needed to say. My grandparents had it in their sitting room for years and it gave me a boost to see it when we visited  Later after both my grandparents had died and their house was cleared i went up into their loft space for one last time. There on a window sill in the otherwise empty room was my model. I picked it up and took it home. It would have been rubble when the new owners knocked the house down to make space for their new home. The other model was a madonna, a mother and child, made in my early twenties when i was a young single mum. It is part of a set of three models, Gabriel, Joseph, and Mary with baby Jesus. It got knocked off the piano and broke in half at some point but you know what you value by whether you keep and or fix it when it gets broken. Again the broken things links ASU2 and SNU but at this point the theme is just emerging so it may become clearer later in the write up. 
The two 3d models came out well from the printer but because i love to see the process i had asked if the scaffolding and base could be left rather than removed. This was because print size means more or less scaffolding and the shape of a thing dictates the need for scaffolding. I found this fascinating because the scaffolding changed the objects. Also because the models were made from figures the scaffolding seemed to relate to social fabric, support systems, the way the earth holds us, how much we ask of the earth. It is also part of a build up of the invisible framework of knowledge that is what my SNU project has been about building. With the printmaking what makes a good image using ready made images to help my eyes learn to discern, why 3d how do i build a thing that rests steady on a surface, height is a factor, also the reach from the centre as much as the reach from our own centre, physical, emotional or mental, changes our balance and may create a need to reach out for help or support. 
At this point i went back to the counsellor i knew from my BA because sometimes leaning in towards safety can save a lot of trouble. I knew i was struggling but also that with the right support i would be able to define what part of my struggle belonged to me and what did not, to see my errors but also to let others carry their errors. This is more related to my ASU2 theme but all work is part of the movement that forms the sequence. Perhaps i am thinking too much for a short MA module but for me the emotional back story is an important part of the making process.
Starting the SNU module i was working with two threads,  perhaps i could say they were coming in at 90 degrees, right angles; North travelling South to the centre, printmaking, image-making, work in 2d, and East travelling West again coming to centre, my life story with Jon as a part of it guiding the thread but not dictating its line. The ASU2 and the SNU mould making and 3d work could perhaps be South going North and The Stations of the Cross, or any story that isn't mine, West to East. I don't really know if i am making myself clear with this flat compass graphic but my point is that all the work is tied together, coming to me or out of me but not as a linear torch beam but more as a round or sphere. 
If this is a research write up maybe that is probably too baggy an idea to put forward. But how does a person whose work is driven both by feeling and making write a research report without putting the felt process in as well as the manufacture ? Later my tutor pointed me towards phenomenology and i looked up a little about this but got stopped in my tracks by the virus which broke my ability to focus on anything mentally demanding for weeks. It is something to come back to as my ability to concentrate returns. 
The next posts will be pictures of the silicon moulds and the objects and the 3d printed objects.