i heart art!: October 2012

Funny how we always manage to get back to where we started and find it is a compelety different place and wonder if we changed or the place did. Like a favorite childhood spot that seemed immense and transcending but later visited seems tiny and commonplace. In my undergrad senior thesis show i surrounded the installation with a floor to ceiling, thin (almost clear), construction plastic curtain that i hand sewed at the top in a gathering stitch. (for an idea of size the gallery was about 30 by twenty feet and i went around all the walls about a foot in. so that is sewing aprox. 100 feet gathered which is about 200 feet straight). this membrane had two overlaps where gallery goers could enter and exit, the plastic made a swooshing, floating sound and movement when passed and almost seemed to breathe with the shifting air currents. (for pics of this see www.ndaviau.weebly.com)

detail of plastic layers

plastic sheet two layers about 3 feet by 5 feet

inside plastic bag sculpture

crumpled plastic bag sculpture

on my list of studio things to try this last week was attaching multiple plastic bags together to make a large panel that i could suspend and possibly create a chamber for my mylar something or others (pictures of those below). I then remembered the plastic sheeting i had left over from six years ago- clearly i never throw anything out. after pinning it to my wall and heat gunning it in two layers i fell in love, and then remembered the membrane (which was not altered except for being gathered). I experimented with sandwiching interfacing (my new favorite material) between the two layers and am interested in the ways it references the interior of a body - bone cells, lung interior, or even mucus-y looking textures that happen when the plastic melts overlaps, tears, and mutates. I also like peeking through the holes and seeing the figure ground reversal of the environment behind it. One of the many benefits of the sheets of plastic as opposed to having to attach together individual bags is that it has no distracting print and there will be no visible seams. skin has no seams (unless you count scars and are frankenstien). the plastic can be seamlessly 10 feet by 100 feet!

my studio installation. for scale my window is 36 inches wide and 42 inches tall. the top unslanted portion of the ceiling is about 5 feet.

There is this overwhelming desire i have to wrap myself up in this and dissappear into the spaces. So i did the next best thing and tacked a sheet plastic up in my studio from the ceiling and to three walls then heat gunned it from the inside and outside. the way it responded to heat when it was stretched from different directions and not just on a flat wall made it seem alive. it twisted and pulled and of course came untacked from the wall every minute of so resulting in a sculpture that is compelelty different than the one i had originally tacked up. i love the release of control that comes with working with heat and plastic and the suprising outcomes. this installation was made without the interfacing between the plastic sheet. ( i ran out and will be getting more asap), so it is a little less stiff and and not quite as bone colored, more bright white. i am going to heat gun it again in spots to add more negative space.

small fabric fuse test 6 by 8 inches

larger fabric test about 3 feet by 2 1/2 feet

close up of fabric overlays

On a separate but connected note i have also been fusing fabric together in sheets to create a fabric composite "skin" with multiple layers. i am questioning my "go to" use of white for everything and thinking about the symbolism of white and what jan and fia said at my crit in june about white being a color of suppression and covering up as well as how white is used in ceremonies such as weddings, baptisims, etc. here are some of my fabric fusions. i love touching them and feeling all the different textures. Ben brought up some interesting questions about the interplay between value, culture, tradition, ritual and activity in different types of fabric. i have been reading a lot about lace and thinking about other materials uses connotations, such as muslin, tule, etc.