These were my ideas for the bridge project, they mainly focus the fear of failure and how that can be turned into success and the celebrating the feeling of being content with yourself. I was making the gift for Lauren in my class. From talking to Lauren, I realized that she has a fear of failure, which is a fear that even I have, she also has a fear of not being good enough in the things that she does. My aim was to make a gift that keeps reminding her that she is on the right track and doing something good and she has many opportunities in the future, which is why it would be interesting to make the tree.
I wanted to make the tree out of wire using the twisting technique. I started off trying to make a prototype to make the tree. I wanted to use the twisting technique however, I realized that I would need a lot of wire which would end up being very expensive.Hence I tried using the technique of the friendship bracelet to make the trunk of the tree. The technique I used was the weaving technique, where I divided the wire into four sections. I was then weaving the four pieces over each other to create a square like shape.
Here are images of my prototype that I was working on:
I really liked the sturdiness of the tree which is created using the friendship bracelet technique. I then gathered more wires that using different colors such as copper, gold and silver. I cut up long pieces of wire and then folded it into two pieces, which I then twitsted, once I had a strong base I split the folded wires into four parts and then continued to make the friendship bracelet pattern on it. I was very much considering to add a lot more color into the base of the tree trunk.
I started making the base using different colors. Here are a few images:
I added string and wire to the tree, however the rope/thread made the tree look like a holy tree in the Indian culture and it really took away from showing the defined pattern of the friendship bracelet technique. I later decided to take them off and have the tree without the strings.
This is what the tree looked like after the strings were removed, I separated the wire to make the tree look a lot more bigger and have more volume to it. I was initially thinking of adding keys to the branches of the trees to show that that there is success everywhere no matter which way you go. However it was very hard to find a lot of keys and would become expensive very quickly. I then considered making flowers with tissue, especially red, because Lauren goes to Parsons and red is color of success. I then made a few flowers and put them onto the tree to show the growth and that she the flower has bloomed and she has become successful.
I also wanted to add different stages of progress and success to show that you will eventually bloom into a flower no matter where you go, hence I added mini buds using a hot glue gun, once the glue on the tip of the wire dried. I used red acrylic paint to paint some of the buds and left some to be clear to show the different progress stages.
This was what the final tree looked like. I put it onto a base where the tree was standing on its four roots however the base was not touching the board it was on, kind of as if it was elevated.
