FLEX

Another Monday morning has arrived and another few maquettes have been produced in relation to the sculpture class. Although this class requires no conceptual development or attachment, I still find myself relating certain materials and ideas to the word at hand rather than experimenting freely with a wide variety of materials, so I decided to make a conscious effort to use materials that would be seen as being more frigid than flexible in todays class.

This was created by cutting varying lengths of strips of wood using the Bandsaw and gluing together in such a way that I recreated and developed from the pixelated style that I created for the letter 'X' in an earlier experiment. I done this by gluing the ends then edging out the tops of each strip to create this effect which i find works well and could be developed further into a final piece by using larger strips of wood alongside wood glue to create this at a larger scale. I particularly like the way it is consistantly interesting from all angles which is essential to any 3D work. From this, I decided to experiment one step further by using the vacuum extractor for one of the letters just to see the outcome and determine whether or not any potential could evolve from this technique.

Due to the height of the lettering, this technique was always going to be done at a chance as the plastic needs to be blown up before being vacuumed in order for the height to be extracted. Although this experiment didn't turn out particularly well, I like the graffiti style it has created as the plastic has been strained at each corner of the lettering nonetheless creating an interesting look.

In addition to this, i decided to experiment with Styrofoam and cut out block lettering with precision and accuracy using the bandsaw to achieve a very defined style, once again a material that i wouldnt instinctively associate with the word 'FLEX'.

Composition wise, I played around with varying styles but for this one shown above, i tried to recreate a regimented look as well as maintaing a disarranged manner by lowing certain letters. I think that by using such simple lettering like this composition would be essential to providing an intriguing 3D artwork. For the next composition i wanted to move away from a 'controlled' aesthetic in order to create a scattered arrangement.

I quite like the look of this maquette, but decided to adapt it further by cutting down the height of the 'L' and 'X' to create a deranged effect from the varying heights.

After i had cut down the size of both letters i reverted back to a rigid composition which highlights the variation of the size in lettering but for experimental purposes decided to look into the scattered effect again now that adaptions had been made in relation to the lettering.

I find that this works well, and think if there was a stack of random styrofoam shapes underneath this maquette it could have potential as a final composition as i feel anything other than sharp shapes would be too diverse for it to look visually pleasing.

More Experiments to come alongside final piece!