Charlotte Walker Art Foundation Degree

  When discussing my project, we thought about ways to combine the fabric sculptures with my clay work for a much larger piece. We had the idea of a really big fabric beetle, cut open with things spilling out using objects pressed into clay. I thought this was a really interesting idea because it implies issues of hoarding, comfort objects, plastic pollution and consumerism in modern society. It would be a reminder of the famous photographs depicting dead sea animals full of plastic in their digestive systems, and shows a clashing binary of humans vs nature  I think this would create a really serious message hidden beneath the initially fun impression of the colourful array of items and toy-like objects. It encapsulates the idea that my comfort zone of nature is being threatened by all the unsustainable little things like plastic objects that I also take comfort in - there are conflicting moral values that make me question my own ways of living and consuming.   I sketched out a couple

After leaving it overnight, the clay still hadn't dried because the shape is so large, so I’m going to leave it in college over half term and see how it looks the next week. I was still able to glue the legs on and I like how they turned out, the plaits are quite manipulable so I can pose it in different ways. The underneath is completely flat so I have put it on a little platform so that it doesn’t become stuck to the table, and I can also rotate it easily if I want to work on it. The mandibles are showing signs of drying as they look paler, so I think the whole thing will look quite different when it is dry because the clay will be a lighter shade and the pink might stand out more as a result. The object weighs about a kilogram and I really like how this feels to hold because it's as heavy as I would expect an animal of that size to actually be. To make a change from 3D work, I did some little illustrations of the pink objects, first sketching with pencil and adding watercolo

Today I de-moulded my concrete objects and I think the flower worked best. This might be because I put a thicker layer of the concrete and water coat in the flower mould, whereas on the snail there are lots of areas where the sand shows through and only the top of the shell is very smooth because the initial coat must have run down to the bottom of the mould.    I made some more plaster versions and compared to the concrete, they look much brighter in colour and have a less bumpy texture, so I prefer those ones, but if i wanted to make a piece to go outside I would use concrete because it would last longer against the weather. While these set, I tried more vacuum forming, first using the clay stars. This was unsuccessful in two ways: one, the lever was not pushed right down so the objects were not high enough for the plastic to fully reach them; two, the clay did not tolerate the heat and pressure and actually shattered! I still got the rough star shapes but I don't think they will

The Russel Falls, Tasmania. James Haughton Forrest, 1924   This landscape was done using oil on canvas  in 1924, by James Haughton Forrest at the age of 99. Unlike older classical landscapes, this painting is about nature rather than societal status. The only evidence of human life is what appears to be a cabin in the distance that looks small and insignificant, especially against the crashing waterfall and whitewater rapids which are an immense force in nature - more than enough to sweep the building away. Even with this sublime element, the overall feel of the scene is tranquil and idyllic with the naturalistic imagery of lush forests, a mystical hazy sky and a rainbow at the bottom of the three tiered waterfall. The snow capped mountain in the background uses very soft brush strokes with purple hues. The depth of field that this creates may owe itself to the invention of photography which we explored a couple of weeks ago, and I think it is extremely effective and beautiful. There s

     River Landscape with Horsemen and Peasants, Aelbert Cuyp (1658-1660) Aelbert Cuyp painted this landscape in 1658-60 using oil on canvas. The golden light, still water and woodlands make up a scene of tranquil harmony, but when we look closer we see the detail of a young boy pointing to a hunter poised with his gun in the bottom left corner, suggesting an impending disturbance of the quiet, everyday moment. Several of the animals and people are facing away from us towards the path leading to the hazy town that lies beneath the mountainous landscape, giving the painting a sense of direction that guides our eyes through the composition reflecting the journey of the horsemen. The cattle and peasants show that the painting is about society, with a realist take on life in the lower classes. However, the horseman has an elevated status compared to the other people as he rides through the scene on a white horse, a symbol of power. The gun also has this powerful symbolism and creates tensi

I used the same process as last time, of fraying the ends of the strings, supergluing them on and hanging the creatures up with wire. As they sway and spin, the light catches the shiny surfaces and I really enjoy watching them. I hung them up among the previous ones I did so there are some plain and some embellished. I think they both look good, but visually I prefer the sparkly ones because they allude to the shiny shell of the beetle, they have texture and I think they're simply pretty to look at. Capturing my work through photographs can feel quite limiting, so I put together this short video to give a clearer impression of my work. ~~~ After leaving college, I went to Hopkinson's which sells antique, second hand and miscellaneous items. I chose a variety of small pink things, including some cheaply made plastic toys and beads, and some jewellery. I will also search at home for more things to add to the collection, and then use them to embed in a larger clay beetle. Since I

I really liked how my fabric beetle looked with beads sewn on, and my suspended clay figures worked well too - so I decided to combine these ideas by pressing beads into another set of clay beetles. My clay had started drying out so I had to work quite quickly, but some of them still look cracked because of this. It also meant that the beads can fall out quite easily, but I have reattached them with superglue. In some of them, I used beads and sequins of different shapes and sizes but keeping to shades one colour, while in others I put a variety of different colours. I really like how the monotone ones look because each bead has a different effect even though they are roughly the same colour - some are transparent, some iridescent, some metallic etc.. It also reminded me of work by Liz West who filled a trolley with various blue items. If I made the beetle on a larger scale I could put a greater variety of objects into it, like brooches, small toys, and any other little things I can fi

So far I have only used plain cloth to make soft sculptures, so I decided to sample different fabrics that have patterns and colours. Because my last attempt at making a small stuffed bug was unsuccessful due to not being able to turn it inside out, my solution was to make two dimensional ones instead and then apply them onto something else. I took an old pair of jeans and stitched the shapes on in a similar way to the patches on my previous sculpture, and arranged them so that they seem to be crawling up the leg in a trail - like in the vacuum form I did where they are all following each other. For me this represents a love for nature and becoming taken over by the living world.        From the seven cut outs, I chose my four favourites which happen to be the pink and blue ones as those colours gave me the most comfort compared to the others. Once they were stitched on, I saw that the moon and stars fabric was too dark against my black jeans so the shape is hard to see but I think the

I finished stitching the beetle together and stuffed it using scraps of fabric. Compared to normal stuffing, using fabric gives the creature more weight so it becomes quite floppy which I really like.                                   After using wire to suspend my clay figures, I was inspired to use it to make a beetle, and I found it quite difficult because the wire wasn't really strong enough to make a defined framework to wrap more wire around, so the shape looks botched. On the other hand, it reminds me of drawing using scribbles which I always enjoy doing, and when held up to the light, the silhouette looks like a flat line drawing. Another good thing is that it's very bendy so it can be posed and hold onto things, like in this picture I attached it to the side of my locker, giving the impression that it is climbing around, so it's quite animated in that sense. This ornamental piece that I have at home relates really closely to my work since I have used wire, beads an

   To guarantee a successful vacuum form, I chose my plaster flower and clay beetle because they are flat objects that don't have any undercuts so the plastic won't go beneath, trapping them in. I'm happy with how they came out, especially the beetle because of the sense of animation that the legs have, I imagine that he has just fallen into some wet concrete and left this shape, a captured moment. The flower on the other hand feels more static and inanimate. If I were to reproduce more of the objects I would use a different moulding compound like gel-flex because it replicates more of the surface detail and is more flexible, making it easier to remove the objects - in this case the beetle came out easily but one of the petals broke off the flower.  I also vacuum formed my keyring which is a personal comfort object, and I think it came out really nicely because you can see the texture of the string and other details like the eyes. I think it fits nicely with my project beca