Author: Autumn

I wanted to work with light or have some form of lighting element to what I was making. I ended up collecting leaves from outside the campus buildings in reference to using things that are found and that are more common for that week. I punched holes into the leaves with a craft knife so that the light coming from the box ends up as an almost night light effect and also illuminating the leaves into these bright warm colours rather than the darker browns and blacks that the leaves started to become due to their ageing. I’m super happy with how this turned out, I really like the way it looks looking down on it with the lights off. I would have liked to somehow get an instruction with a window-like opening to make a dome so that the pattern of the lights through the leaves is easier to see.

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With plaster being the main focus of the week I ended up having to take another approach and look at what ‘weight’ is since I couldn’t work with the materials given to us. What I ended up doing was looking at emotional weight and the weight of words. So what I thought about was the weight of things that have been told to me. With the play of weight, I used words and things that have been said to me by my mum onto a light object to contradict the heaviness of the words. I was going to pop the balloon but I then thought that it wouldn’t be achievable due to the noise being too loud and I also thought that I wanted the words to be able to be read. I’m not unhappy with how it turned out and how the process was but I’m also not happy with it. The whole process and then also seeing the result of all the ‘weight’ it has was very difficult.

I also went to video and used premiere pro to create an idea of whispering something with emotional weight into something that I find comfort in and that’s in my head with me every day, where my dreams and thoughts go. I then handwrote the thing I had whispered into my pillow using after effects to give the video more ‘weight’ to it. I’m happy with how it turned out but I also think that the lettering could have been cleaner but I couldn’t get it more clean and sharp than the final result was.

I had real trouble with the beginning of this brief and trying to start making art when I physically couldn’t handle being in the labs or working with the loud machines that were being used to make them. So, from that, I ended up using a lot of leftover pre-cut pieces of the metal that I found or that were going to be thrown out. Except for the founded piece and the curved piece which I managed to bend using one of the machines.

The first one I did was experimental because after my piece of metal went through the machine that I used to bend it, I thought it looked like something that’s been through a natural disaster or had been broken. So I added smaller offcuts of metal in a way that resembled a broken satellite dish that’s been through a tornado. It ended up looking exactly like what I had imagined and I’m really happy with the outcome considering the amount of struggle I was having using and making and altering my materials into art. I think going forward I would look at finding a way to connect/attach the metal pieces together with other than tape.

I didn’t end up taking a photo of the final piece before I had added the embroidery threads to it so I’ve added a photo of it with the threads in the middle. I wanted to make something that would make sound if you interacted with it. So what I did was attach some smaller offcuts of the metal I was using to this circular piece so that it would clang together and make sound similar to a wind chime. I’m very happy with how it turned out as it makes a really good noise when the pieces hit each other, I do wish that I had added more of the pieces to create an even louder noise and more opportunity to make noise. I also wish that I had chosen different colours for my threads, maybe more neutral tones.

I started off the day with an offcut of paper I was using for a personal artwork I was doing for my room but I liked the shape of it so I used it to start the next stage of the Palimpsest. I really enjoyed working with my makeup previously so I got out my makeup again. I used my foundation tube like a tube of paint and brushed it along the paper and made little dollops of colour. I also used. my makeup glue and made little glitter dollops too, I did this to add different textures and to make some areas shinier. I then dusted the entire work with my foundation powder to almost intimate splattering paint with your thumb off of a paintbrush.

I then stuck the makeup strip onto my previous day’s paper and the offcuts off of those with sellotape to make the shape less boxy. I thought this added to the piece and made for a more interesting shape and some different textures.

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Overall I was quite happy with how it turned out. I think though, tomorrow I might take away from this piece since today I have added quite a bit to it. I want to try all different techniques and I have definitely tried addition, I want to now try subtraction. I do think this was a successful day for the palimpsest project.

I used the leftover map from my previous day and had crumpled it up with another piece of paper and then stuck them together with celeotape and some pins from my pinboard in my room. I made a little circle out of the pins of area on the map of where I was during lockdown, and where I am currently living in regards to the rest of Auckland Central. I did this cause I thought during lockdown everything was, like the paper a bit crumpled and messy so I decided to reflect that onto this.

I also made this little piece of paper from the offcuts of the one above, and used some threads to tie it tight and put wall hooks on it. I don’t really have a reason for this but I was just experimenting to see if I liked the process or the outcome.

Overall I didn’t like either of these, I won’t continue with the ideas, except maybe bring in later on the threads but in a different way than I did now. I think next time I want to not go in for the day completely blind and try to have some sort of idea in my mind of what I want to do.

Whilst I was putting away my artwork the night before I started the second stage of this maybe endless artwork, I had put makeup on since I was going out, and had smudged a bit onto my work from it ending up on my fingers. I had stained the paper with my foundation. But looking at it closely I liked that the foundation looked a bit like paint in its texture and colour. So I ended up the next morning bringing out my makeup and playing around with squirting, smudging, spreading, and dabbing foundation, mascara, highlighter, and contour. I ended up really enjoying playing with the makeup in the same way I would play with paints, it was also really interesting to see how the surface of the paper would react to the materials too. I not only found that the front was turning into this explosion of happening, but the back was also creating these almost wet-looking stains which I found interesting. I decided that I’d continue with the front though and maybe come back to the, well, back later on down the track.

Here’s some of the process of me putting on some of my foundation and powder concealer onto the artwork.

Here’s what the artwork looks like with the pins, sellotape, and makeup covering the canvas.

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Here’s some of the detailing of the artwork.

Overall the makeup idea was fun, and something I had never done before, but, I wasn’t completely happy with it. I think if I am to continue on with the idea of makeup I might not use all that was used today, and maybe swap my foundation colour to my summer one, not my winter one – referring to the colour being less pink and more yellow. As I am liking the colour pallette I have created with the beiges, the blacks and the greys/whites.