University of Brighton

I was introduced to zinc by my uni technician at a moment when I was feeling a bit bored about it all. Zinc, it is easy to cut and to manipulate. Although I’m using here very simple shapes so I wasn’t risking much. I think if you want to do more complex things, then everything needs to be planned out better, the need for patterns is almost necessary, and perhaps doing a maquette before. But like with any other material, really. Making a maquette is something that I don’t think I have ever done, and is always there, in that to-do-list at the back of my mind, maybe that’s the next step! but do I have time for maquettes? By the way I love the word maquette too.

Anyway… zinc is okay, but feels cold and don’t like that rusty element of metal, but this is easily solved by painting it. I think I like clean things, surfaces, maybe my sense of domesticity comes across here.

I wish I tried out more materials in my second year, but with settling down in another group, getting used to the word sculpture and dealing with my chest infections and illnesses, it was time again, to pack up and call it a another educational year. It is never too late.

I took the idea of the cardboard “hammer face” that I made at the beginning of the course, to make it again with my new discovered material, zinc. I have an envy to mix materials and for the work to become rich in texture. I don’t want to leave fabrics/sewing behind as it is an important part of my practice, so I thought to sew the pvc with a blancket stitch to the zinc to see how both materials work together. The whole zinc feel didn’t please me at all. It looked like the tin man in Wizard of Oz, or a robot, too cold, not passionate enough, too dead. But, modroc was still there, so I decided to give it another chance and of course the cardboard, one of my beloved material these days.

Okay, is this a self-portrait? Where is this going? It is definately someone. I want to represent a figure. Not sure if male or female, but by the pink pvc, it might be a woman.

I feel like I have almost catch up in here!

It is being useful to see the work that I have done so far collected in this blog, it is helping me to see the next step or what feeling I want to go for in my work now. I wish, though, I had written about all this work at the time, as it is being difficult to go back and reflect on this.

In February, I was playing with plastic, sewing it together and stuffing it with different materials. The cone in the pictures is meant to be more like a rectangular pointed shape, but I could sew it to the pattern and it ended up like a cone… :/ I need more practice sewing patterns, but I feel determined to get it right, so it is a matter of more practice and time.

People were attracted to this object, the cone, specially because you could see what’s going on inside. I have done a lot of stuffing in my work during the last 5 years. I like the energy that you put into it, it is like you give life to something when you stuff it, you complete it, you inflate it, plums out and it has another presence, a bit like a balloon really. But actually, there might be a lot to learn from the act of dis-inflate… this could be use when I make work about domestic violence, women feel like that in themselves, like the soul is gone or dis-inflated. umm If I could get balloons with the shape of women? is this possible? RESEARCH!

The idea of what means stuffing is presented here in these works. Should I be more thoughtful about what do I stuff with?. Using plastic really challenges me, as I need to think about the right stuffing for the right object.

From the cone, I started sewing the plastic with the fabric and following patterns that I found in the Internet. My first try, a lamb, that looks like a dog. The pattern was too small, and the plastic ended up breaking when I turn the inside out, so I couldn’t stuffed it properly.

Then, I made the chicken that is in previous post, easier to make. I ended up stuffing it with cord, because of lack of time but I was thinking to use more like bits from inside the body, quite bloody. In fact, this was just a suggestion and I couldn’t think of something else to do it with.

I’m thinking to use plastic again for my degree show. I feel a lot like sewing, I’m okay with sewing machines, and I think it will be a faster way to achieve more. I also want to get better at sewing so I think this is big chance to improve the skill.

The question is to make small or large? …

More drawings from the sketchbook… playing with composition, colour and texture. Also they all look very figurative or as if they want to represent the body.

The wood carrier at uni looks a bit like a bull’s horns or someone with open arms. Not sure if I will do something else with this. I feel that being more observant in my environment is helping me to broad my visual languague further.

The second one, looks a bit like a man having a wee, I really like this one, I use the peelings from an orange to add other texture Also using fabric, in this case felt, to make collage is something I would like to keep doing in the nearer future. I love the word collage by the way.

These are drawings that I made after looking at “Toys of the Avant-Garde” book.

In the first one, I draw a group of wooden shapes and rearrange them my own way in this drawing. In the second one I use the colours and circles and other shapes to draw this kind of bull/duck. In the rest of the drawings there are elements of the previous one. Here I wanted to see how far I could develop the first drawing.

I feel that my work refers a lot to Spanish culture, folklore, humour…, the colours, some of the work titles are common jokes or expressions used in Spanish languague too. Sometimes I feel that I can’t explain the work for that reason or I feel that people might not understand it because of that.

More drawings made from “Toys of the Avant-Garde” book