‘Pacifier’

Media – Clay and acrylic paint

Dimensions- 9” X 8” X 12”

The Process:

Ideation sketches:

These are some of the sketches from the initial brainstorming sessions for this piece.:

These sketches represent the different ideas I had during the first week of class, some being based around – almonds, jigsaw puzzles, and lazy eyes. The sketches do a great job representing the chaos in my mind during this part of the process. 

I narrowed down to the straw biting idea since I thought, even though it was the hardest to execute, it would be the easiest to talk about.

I actually had a conversation with a friend, trying to introspect the straw biting a little more. It didn’t lead to a lot but forced me to go out and get straws from the closest McDonalds. I chose the classic red-yellow McDonalds straw since those are what I chewed as a kid – straws in India weren’t a household item. 

I picked up 4 straws and chewed on them.

I spent different amounts of time chewing each straw. Can you tell which straw I spent the most time chewing?

  

The idea of taking the chewed part and blowing it out of proportion seemed very interesting and the only way I could achieve a structure like that was with the use of – CLAY!

I started off with a tiny prototype made of clay. 

 

This was followed by finding a wooden base for my sculpture.

I used pinching as my main method to mold clay. I would roll out chunks of air-drying clay using a rolling pin and then stack them in a cylindrical shape going upwards. 

I had not done a lot of clay work of this scale before this project and so I did make a bunch of mistakes at the beginning. When I first started sculpting, I made the hollow cylindrical shape too high – the clay collapsed in on itself. I learnt my lesson and had to do half the sculpture, let it dry- and then do the other half. 

Once the main structure was achieved, I stuck some more clay on the outside to make more defined dents and grooves I the straw.

video link- IMG-0662

I was happy with my sculpture. I used red and yellow acrylic paint to paint the classic lines of the straw.

video link- IMG-0681

The Final Work:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are images – taken by me. 4 images help show a 360 degree view of the project.

 

 

 

Reflections:

Certain observations that I made during my work’s critique in class made me rethink the work and look at it differently:

  1. I had already spoken to a few people about my work, but most of the people realised that it was a straw blown out of proportion only after I mentioned it in my presentation. A lot of audible “OH!”s were heard. I don’t know how I feel about that. Even though it doesn’t impact people’s opinions on the work, I wonder if the mysterious first impression adds or takes away from the work.
  2. Due to lack of resources, I wasn’t able to explore the other ways I could use clay. I could have used the pottery wheel and even tried using some form of varnish to change the texture of the sculpture.
  3. I think overall, I feel a lot more comfortable working with clay and I’m getting better at working on larger scale projects.

 

 

Images used for Inspiration:

“Ugolino and his sons” by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1870

Marble, 77 3/4 × 59 × 43 1/2 in., 4955 lb.

 

“Love In Progress – Lucid Dream II series” by Johnson Tsang

Porcelain sculpture

 

“Nail Biting” by Hiya