Decoration and Pattern

My degree show will be feature in the dark space under complete darkness to show the fairy-lights and under UV making the dots and nails glow out of the darkness.

I chose to include Kurt (Hawk) to be the first thing anyone sees and hope that all of those little dots will light by either using pins and hammer or a stable gun to place this piece on the wall.

Also to have Day of the Dead on the left side of the wall facing and bouncing lights off Death with Wings which will be placed on the right and their lights almost hitting one another and reaching towards the center of the room.

Placed in the center will be a black box on top will be the Helicopter and I have chose not to have the Ellie (Elephant) within the show instead to have these two small pieces Pink Flower and Colour within a Flower which will be side by side. The box will be painted black as if these pieces are floating in the darkness with the UV placed on the ceiling just above the box.

This really didn’t go as well as I was hoping though the meaning and it really shows the point behind the image of a soldiers kit and the many holes that I drilled into the wood displaying the scars and wounds that many men face when coming back from war inflect in their everyday lives and that’s really what I wanted to portray to the viewer.

Creating the holes with the drill was quite difficult but also really fun I had to remind myself not to drill to close together for fear of snapping the wood but this was my first time experimenting in drilling through wood, I believe the holes was just to big and nest time I could improve this by maybe drilling with a smaller screw.

I don’t really like the background but I like that it shows kind of a random pattern and in way it shows a war field and matches with the story and image itself but the image is not clearly visible and therefore makes the image a little messy and somewhat ugly but I loved exploring something which I have never done before and hope to explore more in the future.

I really love this piece because unlike the Day of the Dead piece I made the holes more bigger and that it a lot easier when it came to attach the lights and taking clear photos. I love that the simple skull and detail wings give off a meaning that there is death around us but the wings say that there is something good almost taking the ugly and transforming it with something beautiful and full of wonder.

With the lights instead of putting different colour lights in this piece I chose to stick to white fairy-lights making the piece still have that light element but it doesn’t overpower the dots and the image itself I believe this works really well and you still get that movement effect like in Day of the Dead and in way they both link within on another both expressing death but showing the beauty behind the story and I wanted the viewer to really see and look at the pattern that dots is making the emotion behind each one.

After seeing how well the elephant string went I decided that I wanted to put a black, solid background with a couple of colourful swirls imprinted in it to make the background pop and bold, I then chose to divide the nails themselves into sections some will be normal well others will be painted yellow for the wings and bottom half to resemble a road to add colour to the nail but to also make the piece glow under UV making it something new and giving it a funky edge that only the background, wings and road light up and white for the main appendants of the helicopter to really bring and divide the outline from the normal nails to  also show expects of the image itself, I chose for this piece, helicopter (Appachchi). I also did something different to that of my elephant, string piece, I didn’t add string to this work because I thought it would be too much and it works better without the string because you must really look at this piece to truly see the copter which is what I wanted to achieve a sense of losing oneself and in a way it states something that I didn’t know at the time when I was making it because it is a war aircraft maybe it gives off a of   political story to that of war, soldiers and being not safe and the nails just adds to the effect of this on-going lost and hurt and swirls could be leading and pathing the way to escape.

Using plywood for these pieces was logic and easier for the small nails to be hammered in but also when it comes to putting the image together it showed through and even made little indents on the back of the wood which was cool, creating its own image and added another element to the pieces of work. I chose to paint some nails because it changed the form of the nail into something new and also kept with the theme of decoration and pattern by adding that small colour and enhancing the artworks as a whole.

The coloured background really made the piece vibrant and decorative similar to that of Chris Ofili, the colours weren’t overpowering and blended well together but it made it difficult to see the image in which the holes had made and the holes weren’t quite visible as I thought they would be so I decided to add the LED lights to the piece, at first I was worried that it may be too much with the fluorescent paint in the background but it worked really well couponing both the dark and light contrast giving my work more meaning and expressing not only a story but showing true emotion as well. Whilst making this piece I found that it was more effective and more beautiful to have the LED lights come through the holes then them being stuck to the back of the canvas, this produce some problems because having them on the back of the canvas you could see the pencil drawing and I didn’t want to see that coming through when the piece was lit so I would rub out the pencil and re-punch the holes which took effort and time.

After much thought I chose to put them through the holes which made it light up more and the image stand out against the plain paper and I didn’t have to rub out the pencil which was a time saver. I hope to produce a much larger piece using the fluorescent, colourful background to really bring the piece forward instead of having the plain, white paper and add another element by putting in simple white Christmas lights to give effect of texture and fun to the work as well as not over crowd and confuse the viewer by making it flow as a whole piece.