Idea No 3 - Light and shadow art

Inspired and drawn by light and shadow, I am curious to see what I can produce. I started with polystyrene surface thinking I can stick skewers in it to hold a decent piece of art. The material I am trying is Acrylic panels and sunlight that comes through the window.

I started by gathering pieces of acrylic leftovers from the 3D studio. Obviously these will not be the shapes I will chose should I chose to go further with the idea but for now it will work, assuming I will be able to produce something with it.

2 hours into the project, I realised my initial idea of using tape to hold the acrylic shapes to the skewers was a very bad idea. It just didn’t hold and everything kept moving around so I moved on to using glue gun. Again, the idea at this point is just to investigate the material and how to use it, seeing I never tried anything like this before.

Things to consider while working with acrylic plates/health and safety issues:

·         The Acrylic plates are sharp. Very sharp.

·         When trying to break them (as I have no appropriate equipment at home) chips will break and fly around. It is important use eye goggles and pick up all little splinters off the floor and working surface.

·         Hot glue gun can burn and set fire.  

Starting to play with paper I am enjoying it more now although it is hard to manipulate the paper to create the shadow I have in my vision. I keep ending up sculpting the paper hoping it will cast a shadow in the same manner a body does and that is not at all the point.

I am pleased that the paper can be printed with the same images I am trying to achieve when casting the light (Birds, for example) but doing so does diminish the audience intellect. I know I would have been annoyed seeing an art work that literally pushes the idea in my face and not letting me enjoy it or figure it out myself. Maybe the audience sees something different? Isn’t that the point of art?

The more I think about this idea the less I like it. In fact, I am feeling I’m being pushed away from my initial idea of 7 days of creation. Whichever way I look at it I feel inadequate and lacking experience. I don’t think it will be wise to experiment with new things for a final project. Again and again, I am thinking of my strengths and the things I really enjoy making, how I felt about the other ideas and how drawn I was to each and every one of them  and this one feels nothing like the previous ones.