Day 8 – Wednesday 29th May 2013
At the start of today I was feeling a bit tired and had started to flap like a mad woman. After a tutorial with a tutor yesterday brought in loads of objects to begin to dress my installation. I laid out the final bag of straw – moved the table into the far end section and added things like plates, cups, puzzles, books and clock into the everyday entertainment section, and also added a few blankets from home, a pillow and bear for the bedroom. I then had another chat with the same tutor about what I had displayed and we started to move things around like opening up the puzzle box and scattering the pieces on the table.
However, to me my piece did int look finished, it didn’t invite me in – which then made me flap even more.
After a quick lunch out with a friend and a pop to the post office round the corner from Uni I had my “final” touch to the piece – brown craft paper. After adding the paper with bull dog clips to carry on the metaphorical cage feeling of that I have just tide things together I feel the piece is slowly coming together.
Day 7 – Tuesday 28th May 2013
Today I spent building my cage with the help of Matt and we the structure is now finally standing up on its own … YAY!
The ideas of what objects shall I place inside the installation is currently running through my mind as I build and put up this piece. I am considering the use of my lovely little white coffee table as a place to put items such as a bowl or a puzzle onto so that the human who inhabits this place has somewhere to eat and play.
I have also been playing around m=with the straw I brought on Saturday … once I opened the bag and filled one section of the cage with straw the enclosure has started to take on a whole new identity.
If you look at the images in my previous post, the cage floors are empty and this to me created a cold hard surface and felt more like a prison cell than a zoo cage. Although the occupants to my Cage are humans and not fluffy animals I still felt that the cold concrete floor made the piece look harsh and cold. Although this aspect may have benefited the cage if I was making a statement about prisons seeing as I am not I feel that the straw made the feel more alive and welcoming.
Day 6 – Saturday 25th May 2013
Another Saturday another day in the studio with my boyfriend.
Today we worked on putting the walls and doors all together and seeing how it would look once they were finally screwed to the wall (will be doing this Tuesday hopefully).
Also today, I have been thinking about the title for my cage installation. I had been thinking earlier in the week that I would call it cage but after talking to a friend about the titles she suggested I wrote a list of words that I think of and then look in a thesaurus for ones that associate with another. Here are a few words of my 2 lists and my final word title:
Original List
Cage
Enclosure
Trap
etc.
Thesaurus List
Coop
Pen
Crate
Cell
Dungeon
Area
etc.
My final word from my long list is …. CONFINE!!!
I feel that CONFINE works well as a name for my piece as it reflects my overall experience of creating this piece … I have been confined to my area. I also feel that once the title is in your head and you are wandering around the cage I hope that the feeling of confinement will come across to my viewer and they will start to feel uncomfortable and cooped up.
Day 5 – Thursday 23rd May 2013
Today I finished painting all my walls white for the space (except for the sink). I also finished constructing my 6 Bamboo walls for my cage and have started to add paper to my designs to see what it will feel like – especially in the bedding area. The paper (from the 3 sheets of white I put up) does create a more substantial bar effect where with the natural light from all the wondows the bars are coming through stringer than I thought. Need to eperiment with brown craft paper and see what I feel then.
Overall i think it really starting to look good – if I do say so myself. The structure is really starting to take shape and I can’t wait until it’s all finished and I can stand back and appreciate my work.
Probably my final official post on this blog (I should imagine I will still add a couple more posts at some point during the next few weeks of the degree show put up). I feel that as the blog and my degree are coming to an end, I would put a kind of sum up of my experience at University, my final project and my overall experience of using my blog.
If I could go back in time and talk to the 19 year old me who wasn’t so sure on going to Uni and nearly didn’t go I’d tell her to go for it, explore EVERY avenue with the ideas that you come up with, experiment with all materials to hand and push push push yourself until you can’t push yourself anymore, and most importantly enjoy it for the limited time there is because my god does three years fly by in a blink of an eye.
Doing this degree has opened up my eyes to the wider world of art and I feel it has also opened up a lot of doors for me to go through (be these arty or not). I feel that I have overcome so many hurdles and barriers and feel that my zoo cage project relates to the journey I have travelled through my time at Uni to get to the point that I am currently at. I also feel that my cage can represent many things not just to me, but also everyone. To me, when I look and think about my cage I feel it has become a metaphor for my time at Uni. It feels to me as if I am building this cage that is going to hold in all the experiences, feelings, ideas etc that I have felt whilst being at Uni and especially this last year, and that once I have built it the end of my time as a student is really over. It feels like I am closing the cage door on everything and turning onto new paths.
Finally, my blog experience … As a few of you may know I wasn’t that excited about the prospect of blogging as I don’t really like to express my feelings about my art. I enjoy (as many of us do) creating work for viewers to appreciate and relate to in some way and don’t try to force my opinions upon them. So keeping an account of my artwork journey, online, where anyone can read was a little bit uncomfortable for me to do, I think that this can be seen in my earlier blog posts. However, as I became more confident in my ideas and what I was doing, making and thinking and the more I posted on here, I found that I enjoyed the process of blogging. So much so, I have started a new blog that I am going to use to communicate with the world about my work.
With only a few days left till I finish, it is a bit of a scary thought that it is all coming to an end. Education has made up a large part of my life so far and having dedicated five years of my education/life to art, the real work begins … the real world beckons.
Hope you continue to follow me on my art world journey and thank you for taking the time to read my blog.
