material investigation – Anndelize: Visual Artist

Homemade Paper Maché Clay

Furthering my investigations into paper as a material I sourced a wonderful paper maché clay recipe from Ultimate Paper Maché, a great site for paper maché know-how. I did adapt the recipe somewhat to Australian products but other than that I followed their recipe to a fault.

The result was an amazing air-dried clay. Once dry it can be sanded to an almost porcelain-perfect finish. It holds even the finest of detail well and is very refined and strong.

Here then are a few images showing my investigations with this homemade clay recipe.

Homemade paper maché clay that holds great detail. — Homemade paper maché clay. Pliable and holds great detail.

A miniature bowl that I made from the clay, photographed with a pen for scale.

After some sanding the surface was smooth. It almost has a marbled look after I added a glaze to it.

A mini 'marbled' bowl. Too cute. — A mini ‘marbled’ bowl, top view. Too cute.

This clay has so much potential, I will definitely be using it again.

Feather

stripped — Stripping the feather to expose the quill

bent quill — The quill, bent and snapped

Soda Can

Bottle Top

edges flattened — Flattened and ‘turned over’ edges

Clothes Peg

take apart — Deconstructing the clothes peg.

carve — Using a sharp knife I whittled the wood.

Copper Wire

bent — Bending copper wire by hand is easy as it is soft.

snapped — After too much fiddling the wire snaps

knotted — Knotting copper wire, more satisfying than it looks.

woven — The thinner wire is easily ‘crocheted’ into a frame.

soldered — The best part was soldering the wire together. Very satisfying.

Nylon Stocking

ripped — Ripped and laddered. This was fun to do.

I cut strips of nylon which I then used as yarn to weave a spider’s web.

Candle Wax

Melted, then remoulded into a shape. In this example I embedded cotton string into the wax.

shaved — Shavings. This was satisfying to do.

carved — Carved. Wax is very responsive to carving.

Bubble Wrap

Furthering my investigations of materials as I explore the concept of immigration I next turned to bubble wrap. I chose this material to indicate the packing up of one life to begin another in a new country.

inked-melted2 — Inked red and melted under a flame

inked-melted — Inked red, melted under the over grill.

bubble-wrap-ink-red — Red ink, looks like blood. Like the blood, sweat and tears that goes with immigrating.

bubble-wrap — The green and red strips merged together with extreme melting under an open flame.

Foreign Currency

Exploring the theme of immigration I started looking at how I could investigate foreign currency as a sculpturing material. For this experiment I used South African currency, i.e. Rands. What follows are a few of the results of this investigation.