So I placed my hairy chair in the corner of my space near the door. In one way I quite liked it in the corner as it might invite the viewer to take a seat more freely, however at the same time it did look a bit plonked there and really a bit too close to the door. Therefore more re-arranging of my space happened.
I then tried placing my cabinet where the chair was and visa verse. This looked far better having the cabinet there as I’m hoping the viewer will notice it as they come out of Matt’s space and will be curious as to what is inside. Whereas a chair wouldn’t look as appealing as that is more abject when close. The chair at the moment still doesn’t look right with the composition of the mannequins and where the projection will hopefully be. Once the furniture is moved out hopefully things will begin to fall more into place and I will find a suitable spot for the chair. I don’t want it to look out of place, or get in the way, but at the same time I want it to be inviting to sit on. This is something I am going to have to experiment with in the upcoming days.
Now that I’m in my space I’ve been able to start touching things up to look better for the actual show. One of the tasks I needed to do was sort my mannequins out. The brand new one I had is fine, except the handle thing which I screwed in when I got it. At the time I put it in just to fix the whole thing together, but as I now have the other mannequin without a head or a handle thing they look odd. Therefore off the mannequin cover came and so did the handle.
This now meant that the neck was flat and matched like the other mannequin. Now just the task of fitting this material to the mannequin to make it match more. It would have made my life so much easier if I had just bought two ready made mannequins, however, I will just have to improvise with what I have and make it fit in the best I can in my space.
I also restitched some of the dress where stitches had come loose when I was removing my make-up and stitched it a bit tighter to the mannequin for better shape rather than it just hang limply.
I had decided weeks ago that I would write the date of each of my 30 boards at the top of each one. This was a bad mistake. I wrote the dates fairly small on the top centre of each board and hung them up. It was only once they were up on the wall and I stepped back and looked at them that I realised it looked awful!
I should have lined up the date with an exact point of where to write as firstly they were all not straight and secondly they just didn’t look right being handwritten on. The boards are so neat and precise and these dates just looked chucked on and out of place. Therefore out the pot of paint came again! It took me about four coats of paint just to cover this writing up but it just had to go.
I still believe the dates are important and I need to differentiate each date, just in a more professional way. I suppose in a way although I have one title for the entire 30 boards, the date of each board is a title of its own. For this reason I have decided to have the 30 dates of my boards printed on the sticker material we are having. This way it will make it look a lot neater, precise and professional hopefully.
I have painted many white coats of emulsion onto my cabinet, however no matter how many coats I give it a yellowy tinge still shows through. I couldn’t understand why it was still going yellow when it had at least 4 coats on. I spoke to my dad and he suggested it might be because the cabinet was previously varnished which I sanded down, causing this yellowy tinge. He suggested the way to rid of this tinge was to apply a coat of gloss which would prevent any stains showing through, then re-paint with emulsion if I wanted a matt finish.
Therefore I took a trip into town to buy a small tin of white gloss paint. Once back I applied one gloss coat all over. I was really impressed at just how quickly the gloss covered all of the yellow tinges. I really like this gloss effect on the cabinet so I am tempted to leave it gloss finish rather than apply matt overtop. In a way the matt paint would allow it to blend in with the white of my space, but then again so would the gloss? When you buy a cabinet they do often have a glossy effect as well as matt, so either way could work I feel. Perhaps with the mirror in the cabinet it would help to create balance with the outside too if it were glossy.
When in the studio tomorrow I am going to neaten it up, give the back a coat of paint, depending on where I place the cabinet I don’t want any bare wood showing, polish the shelves and get rid of any sticker marks so I am ready to arrange my contact cases in!
So I am finally in my degree show space! After a couple of coats of paint it was looking a lot better.
I found it a lot easier to think where I am going to place my work now I’m there. Although I sketched out some rough plans it is not until you get in the space you realise how much room you actually have and start to question the plans and if they’re going to work. I originally planned to have my boards 5 along and 6 up. Although once in my space with the dimensions of the wall I realised it makes a lot more sense to have my boards 6 along and 5 up. The way I had originally planned would look too crammed on my wall which I didn’t want.
Had the help of Matt to help me put up these boards. We borrowed the laser level to help make sure these boards were put up level and straight. We lined up the laser against objects in the studio which we knew were straight to check it was level. We then began mounting them on the wall with Velcro tape. we measured 12.5cm between each board both horizontally and vertically to keep the same distance throughout. We then used the laser level after one board from the next row was measured. However we found a problem. The level wasn’t actually level … Not sure how this happened as we tested it but this meant my boards were now slightly out! Luckily it wasn’t a lot but enough that they needed to be moved, as I wanted them to all be of equal distance.
Whilst moving one of the boards we found out that the velcro is a lot stronger than thought for. On the plus side there won’t be any falling down anytime soon, on the downside one of the velcro pieces pulled all the paint around the piece off meaning I was left with a small hole. Luckily it could be fixed with some filler. I will need to dab a couple of coats on top when next in the studio to then re stick my board back! I’m hoping once they’re all up they will look effective.
