Michelle Griffiths

This weeks Gravity lecture was from Michelle Griffiths. Michelle creates three dimensional formed fabrics. When first seeing her work I was really interested in how she even makes this possible. She began using a technique similar to schibori where we would wrap and stitch the fabric around screws and by steaming the fixed thing for it to keep the form. She also experimented with the addition of oil paints to the fabrics which made the most amazing and vibrant pattination. With her visit to the origin of schibori textiles she was able to see and learn more about the process which allowed her work to expand more in the manipulation of fabrics. Her formed pieces remind me of the sea plant life and urchins  Even though made with man made objects, her finished pieces look very much like natural forms.

3D Maps

While looking at most areas of how i can use and represent maps I thought I should also branch out into 3D work.

I started by using clay to carve into with a pattern like roads from a map. I built up walls around it and filled it with plaster. When the plaster had set I scrapped off the clay from the plaster to find this. This technique of carving into the clay makes it look rather rough and jaggedy, that I wasn't quite fond of.

I tried something similar with this one but instead of carving into it that made rough edges I rolled a paper template into the clay, creating smoother lines.

Then moved on to looking at metal work, using a template and a coping saw with a rather thin blade, I was able to cut out this metal section of a map out of aluminium. After cutting it out I needed to sand it for smooth edges.

I then used my metal map section to imprint into clay. I then added coloured resin into the sunken roads but unfortunatly using different colours at the same time the different colours began to blend. Once that had set I then added another layer of clear resin on top.

I've used resin again to trap two layers of cut out maps inside. This worked pretty well and if I had any more resin I would have added more layers of cut out map. This links back to me layering cut out maps for shadows. Also it reminds me of how some cities are built on top of older cities, I think I recall being told that the city Edinburgh had it's city built on top giving different layers of builds that I found quite interesting when I visited.