Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral

Posted: January 31, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Cork, field, Second year, Subject | Leave a comment

IMG_20150131_163119518_HDRAfter being in Cork for a few days I have been walking a lot around town and looking a lot at the architecture but mostly at one Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral. This cathedral is only round the corner from where I live and I’ve found my self walking to it over and over again and taking lots of pictures of elements of the architecture and elements of the design of the building.

This building is one of the first main pieces of work by William Burges a Victorian architect. The buildings style is early French which William had a preference for, as well as Gothic Revival. IMG_20150131_163503223

On my wonders I have walked all the way around the Cathedral and from every angle it just gets IMG_20150131_163646269better for me. Small elements like the circle of smaller windows in the centre of the front of the Cathedral.

Design Consequeces ideas

Posted: January 30, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects, Subject | Leave a comment

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From my development of my seed project and making them now knitted teacups that are useless to then being re made to be useful.

IMG_20150603_141514426[1]My first idea was to cast a knitted tea cup in plaster to then be able to pour slip in it to make a clay knitted cup. I found that the wool just embeds its self into the plaster so when removing the teacup you have got to rip it out so that you can separate the fibres away from the plaster. In the cast I didn’t get the amount of detail as I wanted, you can see some of the stitches but not as detailed as I wanted.

IMG_20150603_141546864[1]From that test I wanted to see if I could do it a little differently using the smaller tests I did to test out the wool and see if I could get a little bit more detail into the cast. These did the same as the teacup and just had to rip the knitting out of the cast. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to work maybe I thought a little more pressure on the knitting would help push it in to the plaster to get better markings.

From the two failed attempts at casting it I talked to a couple of people on ceramics and they said about dipping the tea cup a few time in slip then putting it into a reduction firing to burn out the wool- although the wool would want to be 100% natural to burn out rather than just melt an go funny inside the ceramic. I didn’t get to test this out sadly but I don’t think I would of gotten the detail again like before from the slip anyway.

IMG_20150603_141711377[1]My final idea was to dip it in resin. I thought that dipping it in resin would make it hard but toxic and sort of useable- just wouldn’t advise drinking out of it. IMG_20150603_141640271_HDR[1]I then had a thought about a different way of putting the resin on to the tea cup and got a friend to spray resin on the tea cup they did 3 layers of resin and I like how it came out they are really hard and I don’t think they will break even if you dropped them from a great height. The only problem is that were there were loose fibres that the resin stuck to so I think that I could have done with giving the tea cups a shave to get rid of the little bits off the outside.

Design Consequences

Posted: January 29, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects, Subject | Leave a comment

After thinking about the time I have to get this project done and getting everything else finished I realised that doing ceramic tea cups might be pushing it for time. And since I’m not going to be in Cardiff for much longer before I go off to Cork for Field. I want to do something that I can still make a series of tea cups but it’s just changing it so I can make the tea cups quicker and then be able to expand on different ways of using the tea cups.

After a long time in thinking about different tea cups I thought about knitted tea cups. They won’t be able to hold tea.

If I am going to knit tea cups I need to think about the size of wool and the size of needles. If I used wool advised for 10 mm needles and I used size 7 mm the knitting will be tighter rather than if the correct size is used.

There is also the option of the type of wool I would use either synthetic or natural wool. Natural 100% wool can be put in the washing machine and then the fibres mesh together to create a new texture. The idea of it is that elements of the wool are hooks and loops. When they are rubbed together they hook to each other to create a more solid knitted piece. The synthetic wool will just stay the same as it was when it was first knitted. I prefer the more solid of the felted knitting but the synthetic wool stays the same and it would be nice to see the patterns you 10917447_10152773443353171_4390577543342699628_nget when you knit on my tea cups.

I got a few tea cups knitted to test out my knitting and the wool size and the needle size too. After knitting a couple of tea cups using different wool and needle size ranging from espresso cup to huge tea cup I want a range of tea cups for my final piece. almost a set of cups. espresso to tea to stupidly big that you cant drink out of.

500 Cups Book

Posted: January 23, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Second year, SEED Projects | Leave a comment

This a book of cups millions of cups saucers and art pieces that are supposedly cups. In this blog post I’m going to be looking at lots of the cups in this book for inspiration for my Design Consequences.

IMG_20150122_161833169The first mug I noticed in this book is this one by Kevin L. Turner Solenopsis Cup. It’s a hand-built slip cast Porcelain; reduction fired. Cone 10; glazed ad sanded surface. The photo is by the artist.

This cup reminds me of my original idea of the cup with holes in making it hard to drink the tea because it would all end up on the floor.

IMG_20150122_164439679These cups are very simple small and pretty by Brenda Quinn Six Cups. These are Thrown and carved Porcelain; Gas fired in Oxidation, Cone 9: slip trailed. The photo by artist.

I like these little mugs they are a nice size but when I first saw them stacked I wanted them to have holes in the bottom so that its one huge cup all the way through. That could be an interesting thing to try make it look like there are stacked mugs on the outside when in reality it’s just one mug

IMG_20150122_165218594This next cup is by Valerie Duncan Fugitive Dot Cup. This mug is Press-moulded and slab built white stoneware; electric fired, cone 6. Photo by Artist.

This mug I think is very fancy, I think that from the little feet on the cup along with the shape on the top it’s not just flat round its wave like which is nice ad adds a little more flowing to the mug.

IMG_20150122_170304789These cups by Karen Swyler Mint Pair. These are thrown and altered porcelain; electric fired, cone 10. Photo by Artist.

I think this is really nice with the saucer having the space for both the cups. This could be an interesting thing to do similar to the take away pots you get drinks in from McDonalds when you get a couple of drinks in a drive though.

The next cup was a cup in a mouse trap but I forgot to take a picture of it and I can’t find it on the internet.The mouse trap cup is by Joan Pevarnik Caught. This one is thrown stonewear; salt fired cone 10; Mixed media. Photo by Martha Lochert

I like this because its mixed media, and because it’s interesting to see the clay in the mouse trap. It’s a really interesting piece of art but it would be very difficult to drink from.

IMG_20150123_112925214These cups are by George Handy Stack of Cups. These pieces are Slip cast Porcelain; electric fired, cone 7, stains over clear glaze. Photo by Tim Barnwell

“Each piece is spontaneously painted, my process is very free, much like fusion jazz.”

I like the way these have all be displayed thinking in the way of presenting my cups at the end of the year this could be a nice way the show the processes in layers o me doing them. I’m planning on doing knitted tea cups at the moment and it would be interesting to show the layers of the different processes that I‘m going to do to the pieces.

IMG_20150123_113544868This cup and box is made by Kathleen Guss and Stephan Robinson Scotch cup and box. The cup is thrown and hand built stoneware; wood/soda fired in reduction, cone 10. Photo by Stephan Robinson.

I like the idea of having a box for the cup could be a nice addition to my project although with the time I have I’m not sure if it would be possible I could do I proposal that if they were sold as a limited offer they could have hand crafted boxes from wood that could be for the cups when first received then can be used as jewellery of knickknack boxes.

IMG_20150123_114559934These pint cups are by Christian D Barr Beer Steins. These are Wheel thrown stoneware; wood/soda fired cone 7, reed slip decoration Helmar slip. Photo by artist.

This aging is an interesting way to present the techniques again but this time they could all just be stacked on top of each other to see the starting from the top with the original knitted cup then moving own to the final pieces. I’m not too sure how well my little mugs would stack on top of each other I expect they will not stack this well or neatly, they might just look like I haven’t bothered and just stacked them .

IMG_20150123_115325045This little tea cup was made by Randy Hinson Teacup. This is wheel thrown stoneware; salt fired cone 10. Photo by Lynn Ruck.

I like this little tea cup and I like the way the handle is a little different from all the other ones I’ve looked at. I could look at how I’m doing my handles and see if they will work with the handle being secured to the mug close together at the bottom.

IMG_20150123_120104852This origami ceramic paper is by Melissa Mencini Paper Cup. This is slab built porcelain; gas fired, cone 10; liner underglaze application. Photo by artist.

I like this piece because I didn’t expect to see a cup like this in the book. It really interesting piece of art and when I first saw it I thought they had something in the book that wasn’t ceramic. Thinking about my knitted pieces I think that doing different shapes rather than just mug I could do origami with a big piece of knitting and see how it ends up see if that could be used.

IMG_20150123_121217920These cups were made by Cathi Jefferson Latte Cups. These were wheel thrown and altered stoneware; salt and soda fired. Photo by Hans Sipma.

These little cups and pretty but my real thought is if I make saucers for my cups or if I leave them on their own without saucers. The saucers will almost make them look like they are made for a tea set rather than just cups.

This book has been really helpful looking at los of different cups and giving me ideas for my project. Hopefully it will help for my presentation of my cups at the end of the term for my assessment.

Medal Mould

Posted: January 19, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Medal Project, Second year, Subject | Leave a comment

Once I got my final design made and in a good shape for me to be happy with for a final medal I made a silicone mould. The mould came out really badly. It had lots of air bubbles in it all and it couldn’t be improved on at all because of I ran out of time in Cardiff to be able to create a new one in the time I had.

IMG_20150531_183152837[1]To test the mould out I did a really simple casting with some chocolate at home just to see if I could get away with using the mould if I just used the dremel to help sort out a few of the bits on the medal if I cast it in metal or something. After casting it in the chocolate I could see all the imperfections and there would be so many things I would need to use the dremel on to try to sort it out. I also found it really hard to actually fill the persons head so my chocolate cast ended up with no head. My problem is with this mould it has so many problems with it I would be making so many hours of cleaning up the problems that it would be too much.

I will hopefully get to make a new mould in Cork to be able to do my medal because y the time I get back to Cardiff ill only have a few weeks to get it finished.

Medal ideas from Begining to End

Posted: January 7, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Medal Project, Second year, Subject | Leave a comment

I wanted to look at the full development of the medals and see where I started and how they developed to my final medal.

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When I first made this medal I was more testing my model making skills and see how easy it would be to make a war medal. This medal started off ok when I first made it the only problem I had with it was that each section of the medal fixing was a separate piece, it looked all fastened together fine but once I picked it up and it had dried it just fell apart. From this medal I needed to think about the faces of the medal and what was going to go on to them, and I needed to think about the decorative top part of the medal and what would be going on to there.

IMG_20141022_135731660My next medal test was based on a quote I was emailed about cheap flights. “Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” I thought that using a quote could be an interesting way to think about what to base the medal on.IMG_20141022_140102154 This was my first idea based off the quote and I really liked the simplicity and the 3d element of the walls on it. My favourite part of it though was the person reading the quote on the medal would be moving it around looking at all 3 sides of the medal making me want the viewer to interact with the medal rather then it being put in a glass cabinet not being able to see the full quote. From here I needed to look at different quotes and see how they could translate into different medals.

IMG_20141029_120408785From there I moved on to another quote from a song I was listening to a lot at the time of designing. “I’ll carry this flag to the grave if I must, because it’s a flag that I love and trust.” Rise Against- Hero of War. I really liked this song at the time and decided that it would be interesting to make a war medal based off of a quote about war. From this I thought of a bullet and how that could work for a medal, so I stared making the medal and it looked very weird and not really working for me but I persevered and wrote the quote on it and found that the medal just didn’t work for me so I thought I would go back to my original quote and see how I could develop that for my medal.

IMG_20141022_135720797This bit of development didn’t really work because of how big it ended up, but I wanted to play around with how the quote could go on to the medal. This design was started to involve the idea of using the ribbon to have part of the quote that I could have then used the digital stitch that we learnt a few weeks before. I also wanted the medal to actually be worn so if the text had been on the back of the medal the medal would need to be moved to be able to read what it said on the back. I also wanted to help tie in walking because if you are leaving a trail you would sometimes leave footsteps especially if it is an outdoor walk so started to think about foot prints and how they would tie into the medal. This one also broke at the top so I need to think of a better way to fasten them together to get the elements to stay together and to be strong enough to hold up under its own weight on a ribbon. From here I need to think of ways to make it sturdier and about how the medal can develop to being one sided maybe.

The medal then changed dramatically to being interchangeable. This idea was to have the medal fixings to be interchangeable and have the person who wanted to wear the medal that they could change the top dependent on how they felt at the time. This I found to be an interesting idea but then things were raised like I would need the ribbon to be changeable too so that the wearer could be bale to change the top and still be able to wear it. This turned out to be a slight problem then I had expected so I needed to develop it more again to see where the medal could go from there.

I then went down a funny road of designs that I really wasn’t sure about thinking about war and the poppy being a big element in my next set of designs. I started thinking about poppies and their significance to the war. This was more just an ideas then an outcome, my plan was that would carve into a piece of plaster to see how that could work with the medal but it never got very far because I changed my ideas again.

The next design I did was changing the medal around, making the ribbon and the fixing being the metal or whatever I decide to do my final medal in. this ideas I got really excited about and thought it through a lot being that the top would be the metal then the bottom would be digital stitch. I wasn’t sure how the quote would come into it at all because I still wanted to work with my quote from the original idea I had. This then scared me and I was a little worried about trying to get it to work and if it would work in the end or not. Either way it got developed again.

I then had a bad few days of worrying about my medal and if I was going to be ready for BAMS or if I would be ready to go off to Cork for Erasmus. I panicked and went back to my original medal I had made and said I wanted to do this for my final medal for our formative assessment and then after talking about that it then became clear that text wasn’t used on many of the medals from the BAMS website except for the odd word here and there. I started developing again and making the medals and feeling a little more relaxed and I actually stopped panicking about trying to make the BAMS deadline and just worked on it for the Christmas break.

IMG_20141127_155632066The next medal I made was this one, from developing my original medal I still wanted the viewer to hold it and to turn it to see where the mad was going or where he had been, leaving his trail of footprints. This was one of the main developmental parts of the medal project I think involving a person on the medal the path and the footprints. The only feedback I had from this medal was ‘it looks like a penis’ I hadn’t realised that until I was told that I looked like one. I knew from that comment I needed to work on my sculpting skills and to think about maybe putting arms on them.

IMG_20141127_155542892The next medal I made was almost the same as the last except the person had arms and they were holding the ribbon holder. I think the development of the medal was a good step still I need to work on my sculpting skills, since this one was crudely made because I knew I was going to develop it further. This one I liked making but I didn’t like the foot prints because they went in a loop back to the person which makes no sense in the case of the quote. I need to start thinking about how I’m going to make the path if I want pebbles or if I want to do it with bricks or tiles.

IMG_20141127_155605618This one was a small test on how the pebble effect would work with the foot prints, I also wanted to have a play around with the shape of a medal; does it need to be round? From me thinking does a medal need to be round, I started playing around with what other shaped I could do mostly playing around with just having the path.

IMG_20150119_162558976With this thought I started with this windy road, this one was a fun one to make especially since I had been working on my modelling skills earlier on in the day playing around with the little people I would be putting on my medal. This medal I idea really inspired me more to play around a little more and stop thinking so hard about the designs before I make things. I liked the idea of the footprints being on the other side of the path but you still get to see some of the path when the medal is standing, adding more texture to the medal. From this I wanted to develop more shaped that I could use and see if I could plan out for my final design.

IMG_20150119_162634611This one didn’t come out as well as I had hoped the medal around bits started breaking because I had to work for such a long time on putting the pebbles on the one side then to do the foot prints it took a lot longer than I had expected. I like the outcome and how it looks and how it is going against the hole should a medal be round at the same time as it being round. I found that because it was so thin and that it took a long time to get the bits and pieces onto it, it cracked a lot. From here I want to develop the medal again into something more medal like, after these couple of tests I really liked them but didn’t think that they worked as well as I had hoped.

IMG_20150119_162507446This is my final medal made in terracotta. I wanted to bring the war medal part back to the design so I went back and created the top part being the same piece as the main medal that made it a lot stronger. I then added on the pebbles and the foot prints and found that this was the medal I thought that represented the quote the best. Still involving the person on the medal but the foot prints go around the medal but don’t lead back to the person, the foot prints are showing where they have walked rather than where they will be walking like I’ve done on past tests.

What I need to do next- make a mould for the medal and start casting it in lots of different things.

Medal Change idea

Posted: January 6, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Medal Project, Second year, Subject | Leave a comment

My medal have changed a lot since the beginning of the project and since the formative assessment.

I also re looked at the BAMS medal slideshow and realise that none of the medals they had on the slide show had much written on them other than the odd word of peace or something like that which means my medal wouldn’t fit in with theirs. So I decided that I want my medal presented with the quote alongside the final medal.

I still wanted to include the war medal fixing so more development is needed to decide on what it could look like still following the quote I have given myself. I want something that can be part of the medal rather than something separate.

After the assessment I realised there were lots of elements that I hadn’t thought about like the size. All of my models I made I think are too big so I want to think of a good size for my hand. I’ve got a small hand so I thought it would be a good size anchor for my medal.