This Post is like that bloopers section you sometimes get at the end of comedy movies. There were a couple of pieces made during the Estella Workshop phase that kinda crashed and burned.
I tell myself “this is a time to experiment. If I’m not hitting the occasional bum note, I’m playing it too safe.” Easy to type. Harder to embody.
When you pour loads of time and energy into something and it breaks at the last minute or doesn’t become the cool thing you imagined, it’s frustrating. The lesson, is how you pick yourself up and move on from that. It certainly gets easier with experience, there is so much to be learnt from such moments.
Lessson 1: Being tired and rushed when polishing late at night, is not recipe’s for success. Say hello to my broken wrist piece.
Lesson 2: Was more complex. It’s the equivalent of my eyes being bigger than my stomach. I took on more than I could chew for the amount of time I had.
Ultimately, it sparked a lot of ideas so I don’t regret the path but I would’ve preferred to hand-in a more cohesive work…which is a bit ridiculous, we only had one week for this one!
So, what was I thinking?
- I wanted to continue working with metal.
- Forging: I made a spoon, once, in first year. It was fun…and it presented a chance to expand my hammer collection. New toys!
- Leather: It was pay day, I saw it – pretty blue ohh ahh💕 Sorry to all the woke vegetarians, vegans and good citizens of the world – I know, part of me feels dirty, then the other part just loves the feel and flow and smell of leather. Having spent a couple of days pushing this material in 2021, I knew I liked working with it, but I now realise that time and tools were against me on this project. I have since sourced a leather workshop to do when on holiday in December.
The brief was to make a necklace associated with the word ‘Progression’. Firstly I was thinking about the progression of material states e.g molten to solid metal, or, ice to liquid. Then I thought about colour progression. Intense tones fading to nothing……what is the opposite of fading? – Becoming. Soooo, that led back to Graduation, as I had been up on stage with all the regalia the previous week. From there, the word Progression transposed into the word Become and that really struck a chord. There were a bunch more dot, dot. dot moments….which eventually led to ceremonial sashes.
This was the first work where I experimented with movement, I’m keen to look more closely at this next year. I was also questioning how neck pieces function, how they utilise the landscape of the body on which they reside. How they can frame and demarcate its surface. I further employed the paper cutting techniques in earlier 2D to 3D rings. Perhaps that is a lot to think about in one piece. Perhaps that’s why it feels a bit jumbled, messy, busy and costume to me. Hey ho, you can’t win ’em all.
For me, the best thing I am left with after this particular project, is the word ‘Become’. As a Making reference, the possibilities are endless.
