Space and Materiality Wire Process

The first image shown is of a collaborative project done in Space and Materiality where 2 other students and I had the prompt to make something out of yarn, tape, and the space around us. As a group, we troubleshooted many ways of putting the yarn up, worked off of one another’s ideas to build a temporary piece in the hallways. One of us would say an idea and we would all either agree, or expand upon it. The sense of teamwork and overall effort from everyone in the group was nice and helped the making process flow smoothly. We then documented the piece so we could begin on the second part of the process.

Part two of the process began with a series of 5 line drawings, also shown below. Drawing has never come easy to me so these were a bit difficult for me to understand how to do them, but I practiced a few and I soon became confident in my ability to draw them. Once I thought back to geometry and considered that, with how they were just basic geometric shapes, it helped me out a lot.   These were done with a lead pencil in my sketchbook, and I shaded some in to help myself better understand the forms.

And the next part of the assignment was to get wire and then make a sculpture of the form that we drew. I decided to do a pyramid-like shape, that is also pictured below.  I went to Blick and purchased wire, which turned out to be the incorrect kind of wire. The type I had bought came in a coil and wasn’t able to be formed into straight lines easily. I figured out the measurements for the sculpture and tried to make the base piece with the flimsy wire, it didn’t come out good at all due to the way the wire refused to go into a straight line. After seeing the ways to attach and connect the wires, I decided my best way to go about making it was just to return to Blick and purchase a different wire that was hollow. I then measured my wire and used a jeweler’s saw to cut out the pieces that I needed. I put a thinner wire through the hollow wire to make 3 separate pieces and I used pliers and coiled the wire up and around the corners of the piece to assemble it all. Once I had all my materials the formation of them came very easily to me. I think this might be due to my prior use of pliers with jewelry making, that came to my advantage when I lost some time to work in class when I had the wrong materials. I sat and thought to myself “that was a bit too easy for me, what else can I possibly do?” So, I made another one with the rest of the time in class. To continue on with the project I’d like to make 1 or 2 more of the shapes to connect them all at the end into a larger piece, and possibly challenge myself in giving the drill a try, to make some connections in the middle of them. I have some cool ideas for other materials to add to the wire in the next section of the project too. This third part of my process helped me realize how crucial the correct materials are and how well I can respond to working under pressure to make a good work day out of time that I lost.

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