I began thinking about how the way my sculpture is placed will completely alter the experience of viewing it, and how I could use this to my advantage to create a more interesting, dynamic piece that will encourage the audience to move around it.
I started thinking about the pieces of work I have created and photographed so far. They are heavy on one side rather than balanced. Example:
A majority of the nature is strictly on the left side, leaving the right half untouched and innocent. I could quite literally shatter this image and turn it away from the audience, so that they do not see it unless they move around it.
From this angle, all you can see is the beauty of nature emerging from her head.
I placed her on this piece of wood for experimental purposes, but realised that it looks a lot like her head is on a chopping block.
This is a strong metaphor, especially since I view this woman as a personification of Mother Nature. It fits the idea that we as humans are abusive to nature.
I thought that to play on this idea, I could slam an axe into her throat on the right side.
front view
right side view
left side view (the axe is completely hidden from this side and it is nothing but beautiful flowers)
This would add a shock factor to the piece, and a surprising flare of brutality. Surprising to the point that it even surprises me that I am considering it, but I am already completely enthralled with the idea!
My mannequin has a strangely long neck. I can only assume that this is due to women's odd beauty standards, but I think it will work to my advantage. The mannequin is tall, lean, and flowers and leaves are emerging from her head. Because of this, she could almost resemble a tree, which makes the idea of "cutting her down" with an axe even more interesting.
VERY Long Neck, a very large canvas for destroying
I acquired an axe first - I thought it would have been too small for what I needed it for, but it turned out to be perfectly proportionate.
I first intended to swing the blade of the axe directly into the mannequin's neck, in order to capture genuine motion and passion.
I discovered rather quickly that this would not work. I placed the mannequin in a vice to keep her still, but on the lead up to the swing, I was informed by a fellow classmate (with much more experience than myself) that the blade was far too dull, and the mannequin was far too tough to achieve a clean slice.
Also, it was incredibly dangerous to be swinging an axe around indoors, around ceramics and other people. So, I aborted the idea for health and safety reasons.
Instead, I mock-swung the axe towards the mannequin without actually striking, and made a dent in the paint where the blade WOULD have hit.
This way, the motion of the axe is genuine, and all I have to do is create a clean line for the axe to slot into (theoretically/in an ideal world).
Then, I put her in a vice and SAFELY used a saw to create the slit.
I kept sawing until I broke the "skin", and then began to forcefully push the axe into the slit to get an idea of how big it needed to be.
I'm going to need to spraypaint her again to neaten up the places that the paint have broken, but that is not an issue.
The blade fits nicely into the neck, but the handle is far too long and noticeable. Also, the sharp edge of the axe is a health and safety issue.
To combat this, I came up with the idea of creating a plaster axe to take its place.
To do this, I made a vinyl mould of the axe using a vacuum powered machine. The thick white vinyl is first heated, and then the air is removed from the chamber to cause the plastic to fix snugly around the axe.
A perfect mould was created.
The only issue was, that the top of the axe had a dip in it that made it incredibly difficult to remove the axe in one piece. The vinyl mould cracked when I removed it. But this was not a problem, as I simply filled in the crack with a grape's worth of clay.
Then, I mixed up some plaster and poured it into the mould.
I understand why it did, and it was a little bit inevitable, because there is a dip in the top of the axe that made the original axe difficult to remove from the mould, let alone a delicate plaster replica.
The pieces fit back together nicely, so if I wanted to, I could easily put them back together.
But, as I experimented:
I decided it was a good thing that the plaster axe broke, in the end. The axe handle would have been too much of a statement if attached, and would have been difficult to conceal behind the flowers on the left hand side.
I was going for subtly, so in fact, it has worked in my favour that the handle broke.
Especially because the break was organic and seems natural. If I had to cut the plaster manually the outcome would have been very different, but I feel that this way, it appears that the axe handle has broken off with the impact of a harsh swing as it hit the mannequin's neck.
I used a sharpened stanley knife to carve away at the gash in the neck I had created.
Tiny bit by tiny bit, until it was wide enough to jam the plaster axe head in enough that it would stay by itself.
Then I added copious amounts of hot glue to really make sure that it would not budge.
This worked perfectly. The axe was NOT moving anymore, but now I had a very ugly yellow dripping stain under it.
But this was alright, because I knew I could spraypaint it again later.
Now that the axe was secured, I added some flowers to experiment with the composition.
Left hand view. ^ The axe is perfectly concealed by the nature from this angle, which is exactly what I was going for.
Right side view. ^ But from this side, you can see the axe, and it creates a stark, confusing contrast.
I didn't like the way that I arranged the flowers, this time.I much preferred the way I preferred them in this image.
v
(this image is from before the axe/extra holes were added)
I will be using this as inspiration for when I attach the flowers permanently.
Meanwhile, I removed the flowers and spraypainted the whole thing.
This removed any scuffs, scratches or marks made by the process of adding the axe. It also masked the yellow of the hot glue, and I made sure to spray any remaining "flesh tone" plastic, to give it that completely "ceramic" white and shiny appearance.