test casts

While moulds for found litter drying out I have been exploring plastic food packaging in more detail. I started with probiotic yogurt drink bottles. They are fantastically wasteful - a new tiny bottle for each day... imagine the mountain of plastic waste of a family of four drinking one of these things a day would create...

The tiny bottles are a great size and shape to play around with and I have been casting glass, wax, plaster and ceramic versions of them. Being small I can experiment away without wasting too many resources.

plaster

white glazed earthenware

glass

It has been a great way to investigate form and materials so far and I am thinking of continuing with gold leaf, crystal encrusted and aluminium cast versions - adding value to the disposable and creating permanence are two of the key elements of the project

litter

First part of project involves exploring the city and collecting plastic packaging litter, mapping and archiving as I go...

... surprising lack of good litter in centre, I had to walk to the edges of town to find the best rubbish. Three long walks all started out sparse but hit bingo at the city fringes; Black Rock, Patcham Playing fields and Portslade Beach/Shoreham Harbour.

I am creating slip-cast ceramic versions of my finds - modified in some way to maybe create a new use or perhaps to prevent all use.

While walking I took photos to help visually map my routes...

... images which might influence final decoration of the ceramics or may find their way into a book/images that are displayed with the ceramics. I am trying hard to not be too prescriptive at this point and allow the project to develop organically.

FMP

New year and start of final major project which will take us through till June and the end of the course

beach finds, Black Rock

where next?

College time has run out for the bulb project for now but there are some ideas I will play around with in the future - especially a way of turning the bone china bulbs into small lamps.

neon tubing - could led trips and ceramic tubes create a similar effect?

... and playing around with lighting and looking at the amount of lit signage in Brighton has got me thinking about making bone china ceramic neon text... is it possible?

bulb projections

lit bulbs

Slip cast bulbs illuminated with small LED's, photographed on darkroom floor. Text covered porcelain surprisingly coloured compared to the pure, icy white of the bone china. Reached a bit of a pause with the project and now thinking how to continue, possibly exploring the lighting and projection route.

porcelain firing fri nov 25th

...continuing the bulb theme for college project, experimental casting in porcelain with sgrafitto text. I had hoped for more deformation - guess cast too thick. It does show up light nicely with a little LED placed inside.

... and exploring lighting further with slip-cast jars lit with tea-lights ...

Testing out sprigging, stamping and sgrafitto. None entirely successful but I like the sgrafitto look best so far. The sprig does not work here but still has potential and silhouettes well - its a bit cartoonish for this project. The stamping is a bit subtle but works ok when there is quite a lot of text. Gets lost on single names.