Artist Statement

For my final plaster creation, Universal Touch, it turned out to be a hand clutching one’s shoulder, with a warm red gradient spreading our underneath the hand. In the beginning, I absolutely had no idea what was going to be my main concept, but as I explored different thoughts I realized I wanted to incorporate the idea of the sense of touch. I feel that it is such an important form of communication in our world today. Gestures and forms of touch are known universally and allow us to express our feelings and passions without words, which I think is very incredible about the human race. It affects everything we do and is a crucial part of our everyday lives. With this in mind, I imagined a way to visually portray what I wanted to express, and immediately thought about a hand on the shoulder, well known to everyone that it is a comforting gesture.

However, with all that in mind, the process was not easy to go through with. When molding the alginate onto the person’s shoulder, it kept dripping everywhere and it would never stabilize properly or withstand the right shape. It took about several attempts until I realized that the most efficient way was to thicken the alginate with less water, which stuck to the shoulder and hand much quicker.

Using the casting tape was fine, I had previously handled it before during other projects, so there were no issues with covering the mold. With the plaster mold, it worked very sufficiently and dried quicker when it was mixed thickly, and that really helped with covering the small cracks and large curves of the shoulder and hand.

I later bought red watercolour and painted a small glowing gradient underneath the hand and spreading out onto the shoulders, for me this represented the power of touch and the impact of it on another person.

Overall it was a time consuming and strenuous process, getting a feel for all the molds and learning how much or how little could make a big difference in how the piece turned out. Understanding the elements and physics of each material took time and several attempts, however, eventually, you get the feel of each mold, how it works, the elasticity and with effort achieve the structure you envisioned with practice and most importantly patience.