Tried out paper mâché after Ian's lecture.
No spoilers but I was thinking a lot about how emotionally important the wooden bowl is to me or the protagonist in the movie The Seventh Seal. This is where I started to pick up fundamental items from the movie and tries to play with it. Also words like fragility and uselessness are running pass 24/7 in my head after gathering interesting objects at the beginning of this project, so paper mâché seems like a better material to explore comparing to the small bag of buff clay I had.
I have cooked up a big batch of flour glue like a normal person do naively thinking it will stay forever like normal glue, I ended up creating a sourdough starter like stinky monster that I had to throw away after 2 weeks of creation, my room smelled like fart for like a week and living alone with farts that isn't even mine is just pure suffering. Would've made a bread out of it if I didn’t dipped dirty brushes and newspapers papers in it too many times, so long my 2 week old baby, I will not miss your stinky butt.
First attempt was a complete disaster. I was thinking of making a bowl out of chess pieces(another important element of the movie) cut-outs with tracing paper and normal printing white paper, hoping to create some beautiful overlap and delicate translucency. However, I forgot to wrap the bowl before sticking, deadly stupid mistake of course and the bowl has refused to come off the bowl like a 3 year old refuses to leave the snack section at Lidl, except it's not the kid that's screaming and crying this time, it's me. Also it seems too figurative to me for directly putting bowls and chess together without context, so I've decided to simply focus on the bowl and fragility.
Second attempt was just a simple semi transparent bowl with wrapping paper. Did cling film the bowl this time but made the mistake of working on the outside of the bowl, which the piece shrinked after drying and got stuck, how can I make a mistake like this I'm a ceramicist what the frick. Ended up dismembering and reattaching the bowl and dried under pressure to maintain the shape of a bowl. Pretty satisfied with the result besides the obvious cross but it's just my own doing can't really blame anyone else.
Final attempt was a success. cling-filmed and applied inside of the bowl with wrapping paper and came out so delicate. there are indeed uneven bumps and stripes outside caused by the cling film but it's not too distracting. At this point it has driven far from the conceptual aspect and solely focused on nailing the technique, which is also going to be helpful. I really enjoy the contrast of thin light bowl with it's heavy emotional value, am I visually downgrading the value or transforming it to my personal response to the scene or notion? This is still up for debate.
Left the pieces to dry out by the window and realized my plant Olivia made a really beautiful shadow projection on it. Feels like this will be an interesting thing to play with.
The paper mache exploration stopped on 7.5.2020. Overall I really enjoy this method and would like to try this again by dipping paper into slips instead of glue. Made a few video recordings of the process too, does that count as film making?
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