Having worked for a fibreglass mouldings company during the summer has given me the knowledge for an idea to create large water droplet like forms using resin, but more specifically clear casting resin.
Thinking about elements to put in the ‘black room’ I thought about a suspended lattice of clear resin. Attempting to create a maquette using a hot glue gun on celephane, but didn’t really work because I couldn’t remove it from the celephane! However, got some very interesting photos.
There are various types of resin available such as polyurethane, epoxy and vinylester to mention a few. I have decided on a polyester version and will be trialling a silicone rubber compound to create the mould.
Let’s get Started
Through playing around with ink and water I’ve come across another way of looking at space and how we perceive it in much the same way as Anish Kapoor has worked with a void and Rachel Whiteread’s negative space sculptures, by seeing and understanding the space contained in a droplet of water.
The use of lighting effects has always interested me and I’m experimenting with ways of utilising it. I’m looking at how to use it in my ‘black room’ concept and playing around with techniques on the water droplets has given me some wonderful images, and more ideas of how to use lighting.
Have found this very bright, but dimmable and controllable range of LED strips.
Even managing to create what looks like a ‘black hole’!
More water droplets and now larger pools containing ink to investigate the different effects of how the space occupied determines the resultant image. Amazing and beautiful patterns and shapes in glorious colour have been left behind from the ink that was held in the space until the final evaporation of the water.
Something else has now occurred to me. Having taken photos of sections of these images with a macro lens, each photographic image has taken the original image out of context. Now the real size and scale of the original isn’t obvious. For instance, seeing a dramatically enlarged version in effect distorts the perception of the viewer, therefore the viewer now sees a completely different space occupied for the image compared to it’s original. These enlarged images show the complexity of detail contained in the original tiny space.
While experimenting with a hot glue gun trying to mimic lattice trails of resin I came away with these images.
Creating a scale maquette of a proposed 5x4m black room that has very little and extremely subdued lighting. Similar to Turrell’s St Elmo’s Breath concept, but here the lighting is more conventional in that it will illuminate artwork rather than be wholly the artwork itself. An idea for a second room would be the complete opposite in so far as it would be white walled and have very bright intense light to the point that corners and edges are not really distinguishable.
Having fun one day experimenting with drawing inks by painting water onto paper first then adding drops of ink to the wet patches in order to see how it would react, some beautiful patterns emerged. However, this got me thinking about space, but more specifically the space contained within the water on the paper and space within the paper itself. (The paper in question is Windsor & Newton Bristol Board Extra Smooth 250gsm with Windsor & Newton drawing inks.)
I then took it a stage further by applying droplets of water to the surface of the paper then adding small amounts of ink to the droplets. The initial effects made me think even more about the space in contained in the now droplet of water.
After the water had evaporated I was left with this image
So here I am contemplating two opposite ends of the scale. At one end I’m looking at how we perceive the space around us in our environment and at the other, perception of a space contained within a droplet of water.
