Studio Notes: Large Capital and Capital Construction

Capital Construction - in progress. Photo by Shirin Shahidi.

Inner platforms/skeletal structure of Capital Construction, in progress.

Mobile Notes:

29/11/16 

Skeletal structure of large sessile stigma - becomes cage-like, reminiscent of bamboo structures in Bangladesh pre-papering. On its side it becomes like a plough, a rotary blade to churn earth. And like a waterwheel, and like an industrial wallpaper machine.

Urge to make flat, severed top of ovary structure. A flat top with prong/rod sticking up….its counterpart receptacle embedded within the surface of the stigma (Large Capital). Borrowing from the format of botanical models which open up/come apart.

Urge to make wall-based relief structures. Parts semi-flattened through shape and colour, rather than, or as well as, the 'mosaic-ed' flat collages ….which cd then be suspended within the architectural panels. Cut up the large Pollen Factory collage? Mount it on cdbd? Cut out the centre turbo-turbine-triads …to reveal in 3D the 'pollen dynamite sticks'.
Captain(s) of Industry (= Stamens/Anthers). Capital Construction (ovary). Large Capital (pistil head/stigma). 

Autopsy. Deadhead. Dissect. Cut open. Sever and splice. Klappe zu, Affe tot: downward vertical swipe followed by left to right horizontal swipe.

Studies for Large Capital (above top) and Capital Construction (above bottom). Gouache on paper.

Misc. references:

Felt pen drawing of tulip pistil.
The purple shadow becomes an additional
pediment to the 'capital-like stigma'

Drill bits for mining coal:

Architectural Capitals:

Anticlockwise from below:

- Classical order ionic capital

- Page of Egyptian Capitals from Owen Jones', The Grammar of Ornament, 1856

- Illustration by May Morris for William Morris lecture, 'Some Hints on Pattern Designing'. Image courtesy of William Morris Gallery

Studio Notes: Pollen & Coal

Pollen studies. Felt pen on paper, 2016.

Mobile notes:

19/11/16
• Painting on 3D pollen.  The painted colour has a different register to the collage - much softer, perhaps too soft. Or perhaps just not enough of it yet? Some areas need going over - a 2nd layer, to obliterate brushstrokes, and increase flatness of the added colour. I like and dislike the confused, multi-layering of structure and pattern. A sense of shifting realities.

• To do: collages of pollen.  Collages of packaging textures/patterns, samplers for borders. Testers of pigment pollen surface. Collage from gouache of Study for Large Capital.

8/11/16 

• Image for WMG by 2/12/16: s'thing to convey key idea of plant machines/plantworks - the botanical and the industrial, Morris and the domestic (Study for Large Captial? Includes both plant & machine refs (e.g. tulip stigma/wingnut/drone). 

• Make 'Large Capital' (Tulip Stigma) 

• Collage or object itself? Sheet of gouache &/or collage studies of crosssections of pistil like cogs. Crosssections and heads (capitals) 

• Anthers - continue with longitudinal crosssections and transverse crosssections. Re-implant the 3d cdbd cross-section into the papier mache exterior walls.

• Fragments, dissected parts of plants, pulled apart. In the quest to understand, the plant/flower is destroyed. Nature violated. 

• Fragments, isolated motifs: woodblocks...

• The woodblock itself, as an object, like layered sediment of plant matter: i.e. likened to formation of coal. Loop - coal lump/clump faceted woodblocks with surface motifs (tulip stigma, collage of palette painting that appears like the coal structure).

• Wall panels/wall charts. They don't have to be rectangular.  Cut out fragments…semi-relief blocks on 'jigsawed' cardboard shapes. Isolated shapes suspended from the hanging rail, and/or, a combination of pieces strung together. E.g. The style and stigma…separated/dissected sections. Flattened versions of 3d models.

• Pollen grains… Papier mache ...layers over egg-box spikes, gesso'd, painted • Like ornaments? Too much like ornaments? 3D pattern components. Morris's relationship to ornament - re. architecture and the gothic - anti utilitarian, purely functional...preference for adorning, ornamenting. but specific in his ideas of tasteful ornament - pro-organic - architecture that includes 'growth'. Against overly geometric design. Interesting rub - incompatibility of Morris/Mitten aesthetics!

28/11/16 

• Unravelled, spliced coal structure. Something interesting happened when partial sections/layers slid over the layer below…like graphite sloughing off mid process, suggestion of how this cd be built back up - new facets added to solidify voids.

25/11/16 
• Walls, borders and blocks. Cdbd double-wall. Single wall. Honeycomb wall, small, medium, large. Walls with windows. Ornamental margins. Coal 'block'. Energy block. Woodcut block. Thinking of layered sediment of cardboard and offcuts. Ontop, ridges in the arrangement of coal structure, facets coloured in shades of black, brown, blue and purple (bruise colours).
• Colour palette: ‘colourless’ cells /'neutral' cardboard.... neutrality of (as in colourless cells), translated/seen through making painted drawings, become colours of bruises and colours of coal - buff, ochre to tangerine and light blue/grey in light to deep purple/brown/maroon in shadow.

Pollen in progress with small constructions of tulip pistil (Capital Construction) in progress

In progress: Pollen - papier mache model - testing painting reticulated pollen pattern on papier mache surface. Photograph by Shirin Shahidi.

3d paper sketch of coal structure

           

Drawing of coal structure, taken from molecular structure (above left, 'coal' images from google images), and paper model (above right).