Origami

Having finished college, I am planning on setting myself some projects over summer, before I go off to uni. I have no idea as yet what these might be but I will begin planning shortly. In the meantime I have reverted back to the therapeutic folding of origami as a means of relaxation. There is something so satisfying about folding a flat piece of paper to create a 3D sculpture. So I dug out one of my many origami books and found some paper I would probably never use otherwise and began folding. These three pieces are modular (they use more than one piece of paper) and are very difficult to piece together. This is what makes them so fascinating to me. The process of assembling them makes me feel like I understand the geometric form better. I have often wanted to try adapting these in some way.

Origami Paper Art

Mantua, Padua and Verona

As a part of our trip to Venice we went to visit Mantua, Padua and Verona. In Padua there is this fascinating little chapel called the Scrovegni Chapel which contains works by the artist Giotto. I highly recommend going to see this even if you’re not a fan of churches, because pictures don’t do it justice. The colour in the room is so bright considering it’s over 700 years old. Lapis and Gold make a beautiful contrast. I could go into all the history but that’s not what astonished me. I like to look at the details.

Mantua was the next stop and the Ducal Palace, Mantua and the “bridal chapel” Camera degli Sposi by Andrea Mantegna. There was some history behind this room and it defiantly felt quite odd, because most of the rest of the palace had no decoration left, but this room was preserved. The detail is beautiful even though some parts have fallen away. In the top corner of one of the frescos was what seemed to be a shadow of something that was added later on, in a paint that didn’t last as long as the original. There is something so beautiful about decay.

Finally we visited Verona, most commonly known as the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The two main places we went were Verona’s Arena and “Juliet’s Balcony”. The Arena was particularly pretty as we got there at sunset. It was built by the romans in the first century and is still used for concerts. Originally I’d thought that “Juliet’s Balcony” would be really bland and boring but it was amazing. The sheer amount of graffiti blew me away. Millions of signatures and notes stuck to the walls in everyday imaginable. Well worth the visit.

Man vs Nature

This is my final piece I created for college. It took a long time to organise and collect materials for this piece as there are many components. Although in the images I edited it out, the board underneath is in two halves. It has indents for each pot. (The boards were cut by http://www.ev-rev.com) In each of the 48 pots are natural materials; 12 with charcoal, 12 with dead sticks and leaves, 12 with dandelion heads and 12 with shredded leaves. Each pot has a hand made hook which holds the wall in place, creating a dodecagram (12 pointed star). On the outer pots there are finger knitted wire loops containing the pots.

My idea was to represent the ‘balance’ between man and nature. The pots being man-made and non-biodegradable and the materials inside being natural and able to decay. The pots represent the constriction of nature and the long lasting materials we produce. On top of all of this is the geometric design, which came from my research into our need for precise shapes and forms. Everything we create seems to be symmetrical or geometric in some form, as this is where we see beauty. The geometric form in my piece is imprecise, just showing that nothing is perfect. The dodecagram has 12 points and is often associated with the star signs, the months in a year and can be broken down into the four elements.

‘Man/Nature’ – 2016

Drink Stirrer Art

I found these drink stirrers in a small craft and antiques shop and immediately knew I wanted to do something with them. The techniques I used here are the same as some of my other balanced pieces. Yet again there was NO GLUE involved in the making of these pieces. I loved working with these as they have an interesting shape to them, which is perfect for balancing. I found the shapes and pattern that they made reminded me of sea creatures of some sort.

‘Drink Again’ – 2016

Large Scale Balancing

The matchstick experiments led to me trying the same techniques using large scale materials, such as hazel sticks. Again these were done using balance and nothing else. The shapes they made were more organic and less precise but still had the same effect.

Matchstick Balancing

Matchsticks have been used in ‘craft’ for a long time, but usually alongside glue. Here I took the idea of building towers and geometric shapes with matchsticks to the next level and used nothing but balance to hold them up. These pieces took me a long time to create and are entirely experimental.