Projection...

Oh forgot to say in my last post, as of now I am only studying jewellery design so no more ceramics for me.

As a way of gaining ideas and how my ideas I already had would work on the body, I did a projection workshop using found objects and test pieces I had already made to come up with forms in relation to chainmail and armour.

Model: Ffranses Medland

2nd year...

So I have been very busy with my 2nd year hence the reason why I have not been blogging. After missing 3 weeks at the beginning of the semester for health reasons I had a lot of catching up to do.

The brief for the first semester of the 2nd year was an 'Interpretive Project'. We had to find a piece of art in any medium that we liked enough and then take this piece and interpret it in our own practice.

I chose "Standing Figure No. 1' for my piece. The display of raw human emotion in this piece captivated me as well as the colour and shape contrasts.

From this piece I went on to look at ways of protecting the body from harm and came up with armour and chainmail. I drew onto designing through making and experimented with forms and ways of making armour and chainmail. Does it necessarily have to be traditional? Can you make it contemporary? Either by manipulating the chain or adding colour? These are the questions I intended to answer!

It's been a while....

Oopsy daisy! I didn't quite realise how long it had been since I posted anything last! Well I have been very busy, visiting numerous galleries and historical sites etc for my 'interpretive project' over the summer! Also tonight I have discovered an amazing technique for book binding! Have just finished my first one at 11:30pm and damn it, I know don't want to go to bed as I want to stay up and make more books which I may just do anyway....photos soon :) 

I finally found my photos that I lost...on my own laptop! So here is my brooch from 1st semester! Enjoy!

Assessment....

I am pleased to announce that after the assessment of all my first semester work in January and my 2nd and 3rd semester work in May-June that I have passed my practical side of the course! A 2-2 in my casting project and a 2-1 in my Creative Project :) which I'm pleased about!

Essay....

I decided to write my 2nd essay of the year on something I was passionate about but also something I was intrigued to learn about (as I found the first essay not quite titillating enough for me) and so I decided to look into hair jewellery, its context and what it says about us as human beings. Also I looked into whether it could be considered sublime or not! I took inspiration, as expected, fromt he origins of hair jewellery in Victorian times:

also from the work of Francis Willemstijn:

'Haar'

Mona Hatoum:

and Melanie Bilenker:

Hopefully, my arguments that I put forward and my reasoning for them as well as my research into theoretical  back up will be sufficient. More news on this soon as I receive the grade on 18th June 2012.

On to final project...

The final project of the year finally came around where we had free reign to design in either ceramics or jewellery or both. I decided on jewellery as I have more ideas and my thought process is deeper with jewellery design. However, I decided to incorporate ceramics into my design because of reasons related to the theme. My theme was landscape and memory and childhood memories are a big part of me, whether I think about them or they're at the back of my memory and pushed aside. I was brought up in a small rural community in the village of Ystradgynlais called Cwmgiedd. It's a close knit community and everybody knows each other there. Its very rural and natural landscapes are everywhere to be found.

This village has given me some of the happiest memories of my life and I wanted to find a way to immortalize that so I created a head-piece and a neck-piece incorporating elements that represented (for me) my childhood and what Cwmgiedd was to me.

The sketchbook is always a starting point as well as designing through making and I lost count of the amount of times I drew then re-drew designs in my book until I finally found a way of working that I was happy with and that suited me and my personality. (It's taken me a year to realise and find this)

sketchbook pages

designing through making

I finally came up with 2 compositions I was happy with and that looked right together where all the elements just fitted like a puzzle. Here is the final result.

Head-piece

Neck-piece

The final pieces incorporated metal leaves, feathers, chain and porcelain discs that had childhood memories written on them.