EN POINTE [Y1 Foundation: 3D Project2B]

Among the 3 dance pieces given, I chose AMA by Julie Gautier as my study.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdBuDg7mrT8

Research and ideas

Words expressing the dance:

swing, flowy, outburst, freedom, empowerment, elegant

 pain, strength, power

So, I started researching online:

  

and I also thought that a blind drawing I did in 2D can fit my ideal style very well:

to express freedom, strength and elegant

Inspired by my blind drawing, I sketched some ideas:

 

Basically, these sketches look like this sculpture:

It looks a bit odd and plain. Then, I thought of adding texture using origami, a folding paper technique.

And I found my reference artist: Richard Sweeney who uses wet-folding technique to create curved paper sculptures: 

I really like his style of creating sculpture. They look so weightless, simple and elegant.

Possible materials to use: *Mixed media

Wet-folded watercolour paper/ card stock paper/ thin wire/ stick/

Development

Processes

Difficulties of manipulating my material

I tried out different kind of paper to experiment with the wet-folding technique:

First using A4 white sheets: too thin

Watercolour paper is too thick(too heavy) for me to create a weightless feel sculpture. I can’t blend the paper without creating crease on it.

Thus, I started to use a lighter paper, the Chinese ink paper. This time, the paper is too thin to hold the structure.

I also thought of composing different kind of folded paper to create my sculpture:

Finally, I used a random sketchbook paper which is not too light, too thin or too thick.

Difficulties of trying to mimic Sweeney’s style:

I tried multiple times to twist the paper to make it curve… but I couldn’t.

Sweeney’s sculptures aren’t easy to resemble. They required high level of wet-folding techniques.

So…

I played with the composition of the paper and created this which I satisfied.

I felt the lower part is too heavy so I tried to use another material (a ribbon) to balance out:

The ribbon is too distracting and I tried another material,

and here’s my

Final result

   

Metal wire: represents sense of strength and power

Reflection

Reach satisfaction but still have rooms for improvement

  • I should have experimented more compositions to utilise 3D space
  • But I really like how elegant it looks in the final
  • Failure of mimicking Richard Sweeney’s style of sculptures, I really want to achieve his style… but I can’t figure it out… Maybe when there is more resources or tutorial about wet-folding paper sculpture, I could try again.

 

Feedback after presentation

  • able to express the idea of flowy and elegant
  • classmates like the composition of the sculpture
  • the sculpture is too 2- dimensional, should utilise the 3-dimensional more

Thank you for reading ?

One Reply to “EN POINTE [Y1 Foundation: 3D Project2B]”

  1. – The ideas of expressing elegance and a sense of flow was achieved well in some areas of the composition.

    – The use of the pleated paper was nice contrast with the multi layered wire, however as mentioned, it felt like the folds could have been more expressive in terms of an added 3-dimensional form to the overall composition.

    – The bottom half of the sculpture with the mostly paper elements felt too heavy and if some of that could have been brought to the “top” half composition, it would have been more balanced.

    – Good effort on the whole, especially with wanting to test out paper folding techniques. Further explore this if you do get the opportunity again.

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