I've just completed a sculpture for a class in my visual arts diploma, so here is the journey I took to get it done. I wanted to document the process here, not only so that I can reminisce on it in the future, but also for interested people who might want to try something like this on their own.
I had a choice of topics and chose sustainability, and my research focussed on the barriers of living sustainably. I kept wondering: why do poor and marginalised people suffer most when it comes to climate change, when privileged people and corporations are responsible for the majority of the world's pollution? Of course, I am asking myself a rhetorical question, and that's when I realise how angry I am feeling. Climate change and the unfairness of how it affects people just fills me with impotent rage.
There are a plethora of stories by and from people who have witnessed climate change, been affected by it. Many of them are compiled by Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in her book Climate Justice. Robinson spoke to people all over the world, including Constance Okollet, a farmer and community organiser in Uganda, and a "climate change witness".
Since 2000, Okollet's tiny village has been devastated by droughts, flash flooding, and erratic seasons. This is a community living at a grass roots level, and they are suffering the worst effects of climate change, as we know it currently. Okollet said, "It was not until I went to a meeting about climate change that I heard it was not God, but the rich people in the West who are doing this to us. We are asking that they stop or reduce [their emissions]." If I tell you that their crops and livestock were swept away in flooding, in a wet season that was the worst in 22 African countries, that was then followed by 6 months of draught, would you be surprised? Because it sounds so familiar, doesn't it?
I found a poem called PYRO, by Australian poet Evelyn Araluen, a descendent of the Bundjalung people, in her book Drop Bear. The first time I read this line in the poem, I felt it in my heart: "AGAIN AGAIN WE ARE TOLD TO BE GRATEFUL FOR THIS GIFT AS IF THE MACHINE HAS FIREPROOFED ANYTHING BUT ITSELF". This woman's fury felt familiar, and it probably feels familiar to you as well, especially if you have a sense of empathy.
Anyway, I did a lot of research, and found stories from people in the Pacific, Australia, Africa, and the USA, but that should give you enough context.
I came up with this mind-map:
And from this, you can see the many directions of my brain moving about. I'm looking at the weather aspects of climate change, going down the rabbithole of relocating communities and the ramifications of that decision, looking at sustainability as a trend and greenwashing, and working in harmony with nature.
This is the moodboard I created:
Based on these, I came up with a few different ideas and drew up some sketches, but this is the one I ultimately settled on:
I'm going to build a frame, tie a handwoven rope between each short side, hang a large terracotta bead on that rope, grow moss on that bead, and incorporate different materials (organic on the left, inorganic on the right) onto each side of the rope.
I want the tension between the two sides to be clear, and I want the right, inorganic, technology and wealth-filled side to look like it's encroaching onto the left, organic side. It will look like an overgrown abacus, but I also want it to be beautiful.
Step 1: The gathering
The sculpture would be about the organic and inorganic, the high-tech and the low-tech, so I needed objects that fell into these categories to add to my rope.
I had the idea that I could use old jewellery for the inorganic side, and I had a lot of this from over the years, both mine and my mum's. This was a hefty little bagful:
I also had a lot of old cables, from various computers that didn't work anymore, to cables that just didn't work anymore. There was also an old spare remote for an air conditioning unit that wasn't used anymore.
I ended up stripping many of these cables bare (you can see the surprising amount of copper in the plastic bag), as well as the remote:
Step 2: The rope
I wanted to make the rope myself, out of old clothes. I looked around and found this video to teach myself: Make Natural Cordage in Minutes.
I had some old clothes that were being donated, so I chose some pieces with the right kind of colours and interesting patterns, and they were then donated to the cause. I cut them up in strips, about 4cm thick (more or less, I wasn't very precise). This was my first attempt:
The result was a nice, strong rope. It was perfect. And I decided to try that luck by adding the other kinds of fabric. You have to weave in new pieces before old ones end, so you don't run out. I was a little bit worried that the rope wouldn't be very strong after I'd woven in so many different pieces at different times, but, in the end, it's a nice rope, and it even has some stretchiness, thanks to the some of the more elastic fabrics.
I'm at home in this image, so naturally, I'm wearing pajamas. In fact, I'm wearing them as I type this. You can see that I have bandaids on my fingers, and they are preventative. The first time I made the rope (earlier image), it left me with nasty blisters on my fingers. You can tell how much easier it is to weave the rope while wearing the bandaids, because it's so much longer, so much faster.
Step 3: The bead
(Both of these images are sourced from Canva.)
I used Buff Raku Trachyte (BRT) clay, which is a brown, coarser clay, good for sculpting, and used coil construction to build the bead. That's because, in a practical sense, I wanted a bumpy surface, thinking that would be a suitable surface on which to grow moss. I also wanted the bead to look old and natural, once it was covered in moss.
This was then painted in white slip:
And eventually fired to earthenware temperatures (1150°C):
Because the bead is involved, I'm going to include the moss saga here.
The Moss Saga
I wanted to grow moss on the terracotta bead. The purpose of this is that, in this context, the bead is the world as we know it, and I wanted to show that nature will survive eventually, with or without us. Nature is inevitable.
I'm going to detail the process here, and I'm going to preface this by advising you, the reader, that it didn't work.
So, I bought some moss from Mappins on Montague Rd, West End, for $10 a tub, or $20 because I got two. Following directions that I found online (and I'm sure that the instructions are fine and it was either me or the weather, one of us caused the failure), I also bought some buttermilk.
I chopped up the moss quite small, and this photo was taken before I put the moss into the dehydrator for an hour:
After it came out of the dehydrator, the moss was much more pale, and I mixed it into the buttermilk and painted it onto the bead. Then I put the moss covered bead into a plastic bag, sealed it, and left it for a couple of days in the shade, outside. I didn't take pictures at any of these points, because I'm foolish.
But you know what I did take a picture of? When I opened up the bag a couple of days later, and it wasn't moss that had grown on the bead. It was, unfortunately, mould. Yikes, I know. I'm sorry I had to say it.
So, I took a picture, and it's going to appear below this line, so scroll quickly past it if you don't want to see it.
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Upon discovery, I immediately cleaned off the moss, buttermilk, and mould. Then I poured boiling water all over it, then I scrubbed it with detergent, and then I soaked it in a sanitising solution. So, I very much hope it's clean now.
We'll come back to the bead. It's not the end of the bead's story, but we'll get back to it later. No moss.
Step 4: The frame
I bought two timber frame boxes from Kmart and immediately set about cutting off the parts I wouldn't need and attaching them, so I had the right size frame.
You can see that I have used some off-cuts and used PVA glue to attach them to the inside of the frame. These are being held on with bulldog clips, or supported with one of the heavier books in the house.
Yet, still not heavy enough. I wanted to make sure the frame would dry straight:
And then I put more supports on the frame, attached them with PVA, and secured them with pegs and bulldog clips:
These are especially to help support the rope, when I attach it to the frame. At this point, I just let it dry, occasionally flipping the frame until I was ready for the next part of the process.
I watched this artist and woodworker on Instagram, @leahhoughtalingwoodworking, who has a great reel about making a stain that "ebonizes" the wood, making it darker. I wanted to try this, because the timber on the frame was way too light as it was. I wanted the sculpture to look aged or weathered.
I got a container and popped a metal scourer inside, then covered the scourer with vinegar, then I added a couple of iron nails in the mix, for good measure. This is what it looked like after a few days:
And it keeps getting progressively darker. After another day or so, I painted it onto the frame:
The left image is as I was painting on the first layer. The second image is a comparison between some stained timber after three coats and unstained timber. You can see the difference between the two.
I then wiped a coat of linseed oil over the timber, just to protect the entire thing.
Step 5: Final construction
Once the oil was all soaked in, I started construction on the sculpture itself. I wound the rope around the edge of the frame, threaded on the bead, wound the other end around the frame, and then wove the rope around itself, increasing the strength and tension of the rope, so it would hold the bead up successfully.
You can see how dark and aged the timber appears now. So far, everything apart from the moss has worked according to plan.
Final construction started at home (this is my kitchen) coincidentally, but now it was fairly easy to transport to TAFE, thankfully. It's all in one piece at this point, at least.
Once at TAFE, I started the second and third phases of construction. I wove the organic and inorganic materials around and into the rope. I wet some strips of cardboard and wove that around the organic side, as well as shells. On the inorganic side, there is firstly copper wiring, then the silver cables and the jewellery, and the circuit board.
Finally, we have come back to the bead. I took leaves from my devil's ivy plants and used PVA glue to glue them all around the bead, in a scale fashion:
The idea behind the leaves covering the bead is not as uplifting as nature ultimately prevailing against disruption against her, but rather that the glue will cover the leaves and the leaves will die, but they will stay there and decay, staying there. And I think that's a bit more poetic and maybe more apt.
Once I dried the leaves with a gentle hairdryer, the sculpture was closer to its final form:
Now, the sculpture is displayed at TAFE at a studio exhibition in Building E:
I am happy with the final result. The leaves on the bead in particular, which started as a back-up plan when my original idea didn't work, are very beautiful, and it was important to me that the piece was beautiful. The patina on the dying leaves, caused by the PVA glue, gives the impression of something natural being corrupted.
There is a different kind of tension present in the whole artwork, that I didn't expect. I expected (or, to be honest, hoped) that the tension would be present between the two sides, like they would be battling for supremacy. Instead, I'm confronted with the result that the tension is caused by the bead hanging, and it gets lower and slightly more precarious with every object hanging on the rope. I think that says something different about the inevitability of nature: that we inevitably change nature. I'm not sure how that makes me feel.
I also finished on time and on budget. Woohoo.