Charlotte Walker Art Foundation Degree

This first horseshoe crab was made with only plaster so there are no objects or other things showing through the surface - I think it looks quite eerie in full white but I wonder how it would look if painted or worked into.   My process for the next 3 crabs was to place the wires and other materials into the mould while trying to push them into small crevices and cover a large area of the surface, then pouring the plaster over the top. The one with the screws was successful as I had anticipated from the wax samples, because they stayed in place when the plaster was poured over. To expose them slightly further I sanded the surface, and I think this helped to differentiate it from the plain plaster crab that I made first. Since the exhibition is meant to be viewed from above as people walk around the boxes, I wanted to make sure the screws were visible enough so that people could see it without having to get too close. The next one involved the colourful wires which I laid in the mould i

Today I found some different cables to cut up for my plaster crabs and I really enjoyed discovering what different colours the wires were when I opened them up for the first time, it reminds me again of cracking open a rock and finding fossils or geodes.  This black cable had a flower-like cross section, similarly to the brown cable I cut up previously, however this one was much tougher which is why I used less of it.    I was really happy to find that this next one had a whole rainbow of coloured wires inside. This blue cable had intertwined wires that look a bit like DNA, but with one solid colour and one white with stripes - they also reminded me of rock candy from the seaside. These cables had been painted white in a previous students project. I separated different materials into cups to try and keep organised, this one is full of screws that I have removed while taking things apart. Here are lots of miscellaneous pieces that have come out of the various things I have deconstructed

Today I went to the ceramics workshop to find that my horseshoe crab mould had set, so I removed the clay model and cleaned it out ready for pouring the plaster. The tail of the clay version snapped when de-moulding so I put a piece of wire through the tail when making the plaster one to try and stop this from happening again. As I waited for the plaster to set, I did some experiments using batique wax and pouring it on top of different objects in an ice cube tray. I wanted to try this because I hope to make plaster crabs that have things showing through, and using the wax would let me know which materials stay on the surface and which float around and become fully submerged. The wax eventually set and I held it up against the light to find that the objects look like strange little embryos incubating, like baby sharks in their egg cases. (Image from Pinterest) I de-moulded the cubes and was happy with the results - the objects in the misty wax look ghostly and seem to be frozen in time

This morning I made a gel-flex mould of my clay horseshoe crab, which I will be casting with plaster or concrete. I'd like to have modern looking things embedded into the surface like wire, so when I come back on Monday I'd like to make some samples to see if this would work. The idea is to place the objects in the bottom of the mould before pouring the plaster on top, and I could use an ice cube tray to test this out. If the objects don't show through I could try sanding it down until they start to emerge, like a mini archaeological excavation, and hopefully it will have a fossil-like effect..    I left the mould to set and went back to taking things apart, starting with a broken keyboard. I took the back off and there was a sheet that had dots connected by lines which looked like a futuristic constellation or a map of a complicated train route. Underneath the keys were little rubber things which all fell out and were really dirty from years of dust falling through the gap