Installation imaginings continued

What if my Paper Cathedral inhabited Marx and Engels Platz in Berlin?

Let's try and make it look a little more blended into the scene. A touch of grayscale and photocopy filter should be a good start...

Hmmm... how to make my sculpture stand out more for purposes of clarity... I look at a few other architectural competition board styles for hints. The following are taken from The Architectural Drawing Course by Thames and Hudson. I really like the block colours of the collage effect here, the surreal positioning of the moon in broad daylight. Also the blacked out figures above work really effectively. Maybe I can introduce unexpected elements into my scene and make the space even more 'imagined'.

For a start here's some colours to try and make the piece stand out...

Imagined Spaces

My mind is full of created paper shapes. Shapes I want to draw, shapes I want to experience. The process of forming them sculpturally with my own hands has drawn me closer to them. I feel they have huge potential. Damien Hirst said it was the limitless possibilities of art that messed with his head, who'd have thought a simple sheet of paper could do this to you too!




I feel you could work multiple lifetimes and not extract the best and the most from a simple blank sheet.

My thoughts turn to scale and I begin to imagine spaces that scaled-up versions of my shapes could inhabit.

They become vast landscapes: glaciers, mountains. I want to try and convey the monolithic qualities they possess. What about a paper cathedral? A non-denominational space for the viewer to paint with their own vision.

This is a public space I find exceptionally inspiring and I wonder how much it is informing my current fascination. It's a site specific installation by Rachel Whiteread, The Holocaust Memorial in Vienna. Its straight lines and uncompromising mass are so stilling. Where there is weight and balance and stasis there is also sterility and a sense of something inescapable, like a concrete prison cell with bars that cannot be broken. The greyness of the whole scene strikes me strongly, as if colour daren't intrude. The structure is the negative space within a library rendered positive, so you think of books but find out that somehow you can never read the stories contained within them. Such concrete negative space operates upon me as if the air has been sucked out of the room.

I begin to think about how to render my paper structures in virtual spaces...

Going Architectural

So what happens when I take my simple shapes and try and recreate them in another medium? This one was made out of wax, I used a shallow cardboard tray lined with plastic, when the wax was almost hard I scrunched it in the same way I would my paper. The wax has a beautiful translucent quality, a fragility that is remiscent of greaseproof paper. Limitations of this medium lie in the brittleness of the material and the its inability to be rolled as thin as paper or to form sharp edges. Still, an interesting experiment.

Next up I try air drying modelling clay. Cheap as chips and rolls like pastry! These trials are more successful and really a lot more robust.

My technique gets better the more I roll, I get used to amounts, pressure required and the best way to handle it without breakage and technique for folding the most realistic scrunched balls.

Next time I will document the making stages...

24 Hour Drawings

For the past few weeks I've been fascinated by how to capture this exercise in simplicity as a drawing exercise. Here's a few of my results.

My first uses Indian Ink, white acrylic ink, graphite and gouache. A light tonal study.

Sometimes paper assumes such architectural strength! As my tone increases so does the emotional stress of the drawing.

Finally I take a blank white sheet of paper into darkness. Next time I'd like to turn off the lights...

24 Hour Paper

What if I could capture my progress through the day with a simple sheet of paper?

Paper Addict

Ever since I started working on a basic design project for college I've become obsessed with paper. It can be so blank and empty, yet full of so much potential at the same time. Paper is one of our earliest mechanisms for capturing the written word, a perenial receptacle for all our subconscious doodlings. Where would we be without the problem-solving organisational asset of the list hurriedly jotted down on scrap paper? What child hasn't thrown a paper aeroplane and dreamt of flying through an imagined world? Love notes, post-Its, Invitations, Birth Certificates, these fragile leaves accompany our whole lives, anchors in the constantly evolving process of living. In Japan Origami, the art of creating folded paper shapes, is an ancient art form, a meditative process loaded with spiritual meaning, for me it is more than a mechanism for capturing my worded thoughts, it's the basic tool with which I seek to express my creative drive.

In cutting, scrunching, shaping, drawing, sculpting paper forms I am tapping directly into my unconcious, creating an immediate and fulfilling if not sometimes exhausting dialogue with myself.