Convexity & Concavity

This piece, and its gradual transformation, mirrors my learning process with plaster as a medium. Plaster works in stages, and I had to work in stages along with it. I felt controlled by the medium and continually thrown off by the surprises it threw my way. However, as I embraced its layering, bubbling, and off-white properties, along with the impressions from the sheet metal, I was drawn in by the concrete-like surface it created. It is smooth yet has depth. 

In the first stage of the project, the three sculptures felt eerily structural and warehouse like. As I added the angled slots filled with the three primary colors and the mirror base, the collection of three came alive. As the pieces dried, they gradually became chalkier, whiter, and lighter in weight. The piece kept changing and evolving on its own long after I’d made the final edits.

As a lover of ceramics and the predictable and meticulous way that clay hardens, the plaster medium profoundly frustrated me. I disliked its initial liquid state and felt that the hardening process stifled my creativity. However, as I made more models and experimented with sheet metal and hot glue, I grew to enjoy the several-state medium of plaster. Its liquid state required my complete attention as its warming properties burned me through the sheet metal and seeped out of holes I’d forgotten to cover in my metal forms. The process required nothing less than my complete and present attention. In past studio art courses, only the process of collaging replicates that same sense of intentional and productive chaos.