Author: Jessie

For the full experience: Copy link below https://www.artsteps.com/view/61637993d4b28e99b0fec172/?

The False Reality of my works meaning is the environment it has created. My sculptures are in a gallery like display and presented like an installation to capture the feeling of surrealism.

My Reflection

After reflecting on this semesters final brief I was quite surprised on how far I had come. We were first introduced to Verisimilitude during lockdown having to to virtual online calls for the classes. This was a bit of a struggle due to the fact that we had very limited interactions with the lectures and students. Luckily our lectures were able to work around themes implications and we were allowed to proceed with verisimilitude. For me I did not enjoy virtual calls online, they made me very anxious and nervous most of the time. It had to be done as lockdown rules where not changing or looking hopeful.

When making my first couple of real sculptures I enjoyed the 1 minute task but was very lost on what to make for the next two tasks. I pondered a lot on them often overthinking before creating. This stunned me a lot as new ideas were a pretty tricky thing on my behalf at the time. I took in a lot of inspiration from other sculpture artist and caught up with other students progress. Blogs become extremely important because it helped me bounce off others ideas.

We had a very different transition of moving into digital sculpture. I first I would never image me creating sculptures in digital 3D. I have only created art hands on and in real life so it was very interesting to try out myself. This was extremely frustrating and it really tested my patience so I took regular breaks. Overtime I was able to overcome this and get a real good hang on the software and decided to carry it through to my final works. I did have a few last minute problems of the sculptures colouring and often having to reduce finer details. In the end I was really happy with the amount and the quality of my work. I did decide on focusing my work more as an installation to gathers peoples emotions, to create a weird atmosphere. I refined the gallery to make a condensed wacky environment and really enjoyed producing it.

Since the first lesson on verisimilitude I kept some of the simular ideas into my final works. I enjoyed the first task a lot and often rethought of them in another way. I am also glad that I did give Meshmixer and Artstep a real good go as I pushed my abilities and came a long way with it. Now that I have got the hang of meshmixer and the 3D digital element of sculpture I hope to use it once again with the new found knowledge. This brief have given me a lot of new opportunities to form new useful skill that I hope to use later on in the art world.

The last few days consisted of me finalising my ideas and sculptures. I worked on Meshmixer and took in lots of inspiration from the artists Tony Cragg, Mathew Plummer Fernandez and Ken Kelleher. Perusal I got frustrated with the software as it still kept bugging out, but I had a much better understanding on how to use it. I made a couple of new sculptures and went to upload them to Artstep.

I did run into some problems. I would be able to save coloured sculptures made on meshmixer, but the colours did not transfer into Artstep. I was a little upset that my sculptures were unable to be uploaded in colour on the website but I had work around this. I decided just to keep all my sculptures white. And tried to find alternatives for the plain white backgrounds.

It was bit tricky to decide where I wanted to put my sculptures as there was multiple gallery rooms to chose from. I ended up deciding on the first one and picked the back room as there was a lot more texture on the walls.

With the room I picked I also work around it, I was looking at it more as an installation. Seeing my sculptures on their own was pretty boring so I duplicated some, moved and twisted them all around. made sure that it was all exhibition ready before publishing and completing the space.

Verisimilitude – ‘Real: False Reality’

Verisimilitude is shown greatly throughout Ken Kelleher’s work. His large-scale sculptures are playful, mesmerising and memorable. His digital not only focuses on the sculpture but also the space/location and how its positioned and perceived. The visual expression Ken aims to achieve is one that is open to interpretation. In one piece someone may see something playful, or whimsical, in another, it may feel strange.

Question or provocation: What is it that you want to understand/explore by doing this work?

I would like to explore Ken Kelleher’s sculpture style into my own work by manipulating effects and emotions upon a person. I hope to make an environment confusing and out of place yet mesmerising and attentive.

Materials and Process

Using Meshmixer I will create my own digital assemblages. I want to use 3D objects downloaded from Clara.io as a starter. Also using the bushes and objects from Meshmixer to change and warp them.

Presentation Format

I will present my sculpture through ArtSteps as a virtual reality work through experience. I want my work to be shown as if it was its own exhibition and also for photographic documentation.

Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool, UK in 1949 and has lived and worked in Wuppertal, Germany since 1977. He has a BA from Wimbledon School of Art, London, UK (1973) and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, UK (1977). He has been in many exhibitions with even a couple of solo exhibitions. For many years his work has been displayed in many places around the world.

 Tony constantly pushing to find new relations between people and the material world, there is no limit to the materials he might use, as there are no limits to the ideas or forms he might conceive. Cragg understands sculpture as a study of how material and material forms affect and form our ideas and emotions. 

Matthew Plummer-Fernandez is a Colombian-British artist known for playfully and critically exploring socio-cultural entanglements with technology, through sculpture, bots, software, and the blog Algopop.

Customised software, replicability and generative techniques are the focus of his exploration of the automated systems that operate within digital culture and the physical world. Mainly, his artistic practice embraces the serendipity of digital glitch both as a playful and challenging reinterpretation of imperfection as added aesthetic value, and as a means of reflecting political views on free software applications and copyright protected artifacts.

“I believe my work can create a dialogue about what it means to make things. That it can engage through its presence in a space, that otherwise might be left to chance. It has purposeful and intelligent thought behind it.”

‘sculpture, for me, is an inquiry into the deep mysterious nature of things.‘

Ken Kelleher is an American sculptor. He studied art at Alfred University under sculptors Glenn Zweygardt and William Parry. After college he worked at Hudson Studio, Fine Art Foundry in Niverville, NY where he did finishing work on cast bronze pieces by William Tucker and Anthony Caro, as well as other artists. Hudson Studio was in a shared space at the time with sculptor Jon Isherwood and is in close proximity to Triangle Workshop. Before becoming a Creative Director in Advertising he produced several series of large abstract sculptures, some of which were sold into private collections. Now twenty years later, Ken has returned to having a full time studio practice. He lives and works with his wife of 25 years at Rehoboth in NH.

The digital artist Ken Kelleher presents an extensive series of digital sculptures rendered in courtyards, galleries, and streetscapes worldwide. While he creates sculptures using traditional materials such as wood and metal, his digital series enhances this concept.

This week we trialed 3D digital sculpture. It was new to the brief and was a good opportunity for me to try for the first time. I have experience with drawing digitally but have never tried 3D sculpture. At first I was completely lost on how it worked so I played around with all the tools in Meshmixer. This is what I came up with.

I moved on to downloaded obj’s. This was where it got confusing, the objects I dowloaded did not come out as expected. They would all be very flat looking and when ever I tried to change them it would crash Meshmixer. I was able to make a small sculpture with only limited things luckily I took a screenshot because a few minted later it crashed and I lost it my work.

Meshmixer made me a little frustrated even after watching tutorials about it so I decided not to continue. My computer obviously could not handle it very well sadly, but I was happy that I gave it a go.

To begin week 2 of Verisimilitude we shifted into more creative and stranger sculptures. I was first a little lost on what to create, but eventually I came up with a few small ideas.

In my first sculpture below I was originally inspired to put together a stack able piece of art but instead of working from bottom to the top, I tried the other way. I started with one small hook in the wall, slowly and carefully I added items. Trying to find light things to hang off the wooden hexagon shelf because most things I put up fell off. I needed to take it slow, and after a while everything was evening out each other and I was able to keep it stable.

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My next sculpture I aimed to create something simple. I took my used mug from this morning and clipped all the pegs that could fit onto the rim. Then I fulled a small bowl with dirt from the garden and placed it on top. This one was much more smaller than my first sculpture. I was intending it to be bigger but stoped myself after I really liked how simple yet confusing it was.

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For my last sculpture I wanted to play around with lighting. I collected materials that light can travel through, looking for patterns or thin materials. The lamp I have next to my bed is able to change colours, so I used this to my advantage. The colours I chose best suited the sculpture. After this small sculpture, I really want to continue using light more often and thought it was always an amazing little touch to add.

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Born in France 1966, Daniel is now based between New York, Istanbul, and Dreux in France. Firman studied at the Beaux-Arts in France, and was immediately fascinated with dance and architecture. With his eye-popping sculptures, Daniel Firman freezes moments of time and action in precarious balance.Firman seeks to construct the presence of such amorphous concepts as time, balance, weight, action, and gravity. Some Sculptures include human figures struck in precarious poses or supporting unwieldy constructions atop their shoulders.

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