Hereford College of Arts

Really excited to be collaborating with a Contemporary Applied Artist from HCA – Matthew Day.

On my mapping the college a few weeks ago – while I was observing on the stairs we got talking about his and my work and so a few days ago I gave him a few of my cups to do something with and this is the result.

Images here are of my replica cups made with receipts. Some wouldn’t come off their mould (a large yoghurt pot) and so are torn – I had wanted to make bucket sized cups and so this was somewhere in between. More layers needed, perhaps, to allow the moulded receipts to come off in one go.

These receipt- cups are currently being reserved to go up in an exhibition in Hereford in November.

The added bonus of having my work up in the Fine Art corridor is that other students see my work and comment on it. While I am now considering other material to mould cups I have found it useful to discuss my next steps and finding other students and tutors really helpful in helping me to clarify my next step. Often when someone has a suggestion I immediately know whether it’s right or not for my work and the more research and banter I have going on around me the better.

Right. I have been considering carefully why I have been moulding these cups out of newspaper – rather than, say ( as course leader Alli Neal asked) out of the disposable cups i ‘m moulding on?

Well – I went back and tried working with the used cups – and it did nothing. They were just cups. Almost trash.

Something about moulding cups from a vulnerable material such as paper is appealing. In using newspaper I was using current affairs – partly wanting to signify current (passing)concerns, but mostly have the fragility of a thin layer of paper, instead of the sturdiness of the actual disposable paper or plastic cup.

This has set me considering other materials I might use. Came across a bag of my April to now receipts and thought, well, what about these?

Now I have a pile of receipt-moulded cups and they are a bit revealing..of where I shop and what I buy if people want to be really nosey (and the often do!) those are now drying.

I was kindly leant a glue gun by fellow student, Jackie, and I have done what I was dying to do yesterday (today) and got the newspaper cups beginning to flow out of a small ornate gold frame. Disappointed with the result though. I think, maybe, the frame makes it too contrived, but also there needs to be a large volume of cups cascading out.

I have also been thinking about my practice overall and what I want to do with this module that lasts until the end of January. Mostly I want to ‘follow my nose’ and I’m finding that my ‘listening’ is increasingly about responding to my surroundings and life. It’s a bit vague, but it does make sense (to me), even if it doesn’t come out neatly in words.

We’ve now all presented our responses to mapping the college.

When I talked about mine – my moulded cups were fairly orderly arranged in lines on the wall of the studio.

(A lot else has gone on in the past 10 days) but once I’d shown my work and been fascinated by others responses – incredibly diverse – I began to consider being more playful with my cups. First of all I thought they might like to travel around college. And they did – there are a pair of them in the fine art / textiles own spiral staircase. But then I felt they needed to be flowing somewhere.

So this I did.

Paper cups made with the most basic papier mache, made with flour and water glue, moulded on rescued cups from around college. Currently making them repetitively and quite industriously as my response to the new campus. The social aspect of all degree course subjects now under one roof – the host spaces of the cafe, smoking area and stairs (we have 6 staircases) as places to meet and the potential to meet and exchange ideas is something that I find (etc) worth mapping.