So just a recap we had an awesome amount of vinyl records and wanted to (try to) reuse them for a sculpture(s) for the upcoming assignment. The inspiration came from Willie Cole Shine’s amazing abstract mask made from found heels so we thought we might try with vinyls. We initially thought it was hard to mould vinyls into shapes, or in our case African heads with bumps & curves, but quickly we resorted to using heat to soften the vinyls then re-shaping them as Katherine suggested. That worked fine but vinyl records were quite hard to work with in general.
OCTOBER 18
We experimented with all types of tools and methods in re-moulding the vinyls during our first working session. In the end it was heat gun, all sorts of metal pipes and our vinyls. We would first heat up the area we wanted to curve then rest the vinyl on top of a metal pipe. We then manually pressed the softened vinyl onto the curved surface to produce the curvature we want. We mainly used the thick pipe on the right. It was hard getting a smooth surface and we had to try keep the pressure of our hands constant. Very crafty 🙂
This was a mockup/foundation to our masks. We managed to give it ears & an upper lip but not all had them.
OCTOBER 22
We then had a second working session yesterday and managed to make more masks. We hope to produce an array of masks with different features (similar to the following) and have a display of them rather than just a single piece. These were our references:
MORE UPDATES TO COME TOMORROW!
