Rules:
- Draw looking up while sitting under a tree
- Draw the negative space of the sky on black paper with silver for 5 min
- Draw positive space of the trees and branches on butcher paper with black for 5 min
- Cut the drawings out
- Sew them together
After the first critique for this project, I began branching out and creating a little more tension using the sewing machine, by stopping and lifting the string up with out cutting it, and then starting again somewhere else on the piece. I also began making them slight more dimensional or pop-uppy, but I was still timid about straying too far from the flat pieces I had made before.
However, after the second critique, I was forced to think about the other ways I could manipulate the paper I was using to further enforce the idea of two forms or images being forcefully made into one. Naturally, I began contorting the paper more and more as I went, creating more dimensional pieces that extended out into space. I decided to cut the brown paper larger than the black, and attempt to squish it down to fit with the sewing machine after cutting the two up.
This is a before photo showing the difference in size:
And the results started to look a lot more interesting:
So, I kept experimenting with the dimensional pieces and continued with the two differently sized papers, using the sewing more as a form of drawing and also a source of tension, which went along with my concept pretty well.
I ended up mixing up the flatter ones with the dimensional ones when I hung them for final critique, and I liked them side by side in a grid format, adding to the idea of restraint of the rectangular limits of the paper. Some of them weren’t exactly rectangular, but they still fit into the grid in my mind because of how involved I was in the process and how familiar I was with the pieces’ original orientations.
Overall, I learned how frustration and boredom and lead to pushing the limits of the constraints of the body of work, and I really enjoyed seeing the pieces transform as I discovered new things about myself and the way I think about making work. I’d want to experiment even more with installing fragile yet dimensional pieces like these, maybe layering them or hanging them in open space. I’d also like to try and make bigger versions of these and see how the medium or technique might change according to scale.