I have always enjoyed printmaking. I experimented a lot with it last year with collecting due to the idea of making a collection of prints exploring collecting, as they are an effective way to show repetitiveness.
I decided that I would create some prints of the drawings I have been doing of my view points of the everyday. I etched one of my drawings and first tested it on paper.
I feel this gave a nice effect with the black ink contrasting against the white. It worked on dry paper but worked a lot better when the paper was made damp with water, allowing the paper to draw out the ink from the plate easier. I do really like how these have turned out and plan on experimenting further.
As I have been collecting my contact lenses and letting them dry out, I thought about what would happen if I kept them in water like the solution they are in before they are worn, to keep their flexible, soft, round shape.
I filled a bottle with water and placed a few pairs in there after I had worn them before they dried up. I think I would have to collect a lot to be able to use this display effectively as unless the bottle is shook up or you look really closely at the bottom it is hard to see there is even anything in there. Maybe I need to collect more and then see what happens.
For this piece I glued a small selection of my train tickets together to make boxes. I have been finding my collections are most effective when transformed into something or added together in some way as I feel it makes them more interesting. This piece was more of a spur of the moment thing in the studio, I sat looking at them and though, I want to make them into something! And this is the outcome. Not exactly my best piece but an experiment all the same. I think maybe I need to forget about them now with my work. They are not really that personal to me in comparison with my hair and contact lenses, nor are they abject, which is the route I appear to be heading down.
I decided to incorporate hair with my make-up wipes to see how these two collections work merged together. I found with the wipes and receipts it worked really well on the umbrella so decided to try it with hair.
Again like with the net curtain, I tried to sew with my hair as my intial plan was to sew through the wipe with my hair but again I found difficulty in tieing the hair. It was also hard to see so I tried doubling up the hair but this was so fiddley it just frustrated me.
Therefore I used the same method as I did with the curtain and used white cotton to hold it in place.
I like how simple it is but also quite effective I feel by merging two parts of my collections together as one it links them together and creates quite an abject piece by the way in which the wipes interact with the hair and the a lot of the hair appears to be escaping from the boundaries of the thread.
Regarding my hair I have been collecting, I was thinking about what I can actually do with it all. Thinking about my work and what is actually working for me, I am finding that when I create a piece using my collections they become more appealing I feel due to the collection representing me. With my collections being used to make a piece makes more use of the collection transforming them into something else more exciting. This remind me of Subodh Gupta transforming old pots and pans into mass sculptures.
I have been gathering quite a vast amount of hair with the amount I seem to lose. I therefore decided that I would actually use my hair in my work. Thinking about different ways to approach this idea I thought of the idea of using it to sew with due to its thin consistency.
In my house back home, we had some spare net curtain so linking to the idea of my work portraying me I felt this would be quite appropriate.
As my initial idea was to use my hair to sew with, this is what I began to do with this net curtain. However due to the really fine thickness of the pieces of hair it became more of a challenge to use it in this way than I first had thought.
To overcome this I thought it might be more successful if the hair was gathered together more so you could actually see the texture of the hair. I planned on using hair to sew the hair to the net, however I wasn’t sure how strong the hair would be at attaching due to the fine consistency.
I then decided to use white thread to sew the hair on to match the colour of the curtain. I decided to sew around some of the patterns on the curtain to enhance these patterns, allowing the hair to stand out. I wasn’t sure how well this was going to work with white cotton threaded through the hair. However due to the texture of the curtain it actually blended in really well. It is not that obvious until the viewer gets close which I really like. Drawing the viewer in until they notice the abject materiality of it. I like the way in which this collection of hair has been turned into something and sewed through the curtain to leave a trace of me. I also like how some pieces of the hair are contained neatly through the thread, while some pieces of hair appear to be escaping from the boundaries of the thread which gives it more of an abject feeling. That a piece could escape and land itself upon the viewer…
