Category: Research

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 ?