Paper Clips

My studio space looks like a butcher shop.

Preparations are being made for my second crit for the semester.  I am having a hard time figuring out what to show.  I have a lot of new exciting experiments going on and have been having trouble integrating them with my theme from my first crit involving references to place of an object.  The challenge I have been attacking lately involves resolving the content issue surrounding my objects.  I’m going with glass this time.

Glass is a frustrating substance.  At first I was making glass shopping carts.  They are identical to the steel variety.  Then I noticed that glass is far more elastic than I ever expected.  I began seeing how long I could coil and knot up a single string of glass.  My last post includes a video of the first attempt.  The object lasted until some time in the middle of the night when it died under the stress and tension of its own weight.  At least there is a video of it in action.

These creations are called “Paper Clips”.  They are very kinetic, but only to a point that ends in their death. A few things come to mind when I make these.  There is no way that I can ship them to a gallery space without developing some sort of shipment based casting system.  They are very fragile.  What is the point in making them if I can’t do anything with them in the long run?  I started thinking about their existence as temporary objects.  They exist on the edge of collapse and are designed to the limits that I currently understand of glass.  They initially seemed like a spin off of my semester’s work but I think I have figured out a way to get them involved with my progression.  Again more on that next week when I talk about my crit.  These may require to be built on site.

The major challenge that I face for next crit is installing in the small space on the second floor.  Things become far more evident in small spaces and I fear that the reveal of the shadow during last critique will be far less subtle.  I have been pondering some ways in which I can still create something similar, refined, and new at the same time.  I may be exploring color and I am pretty sure that the paper clips are going to be involved.  Along with color, I may be playing with matte and gloss finishes.