MA Project Work in Progress

Flight series

Birds are a recurring theme in tribal initiations/rites of passage ceremonies. The brightly coloured plumes used in the elaborate Huli head dresses are gathered from birds of paradise in the Papua New Guinean rainforest (http://www.birdsofparadiseproject.org). The feathers perform more than a mere aesthetic function; during ceremonies, the participants adorned in these feathers move and sing like birds of paradise. There is metaphoric potential in embodying a bird during a rite of passage ceremony; it is as if the initiate is taking flight into adulthood.

My initial experiments were in willow as it was the perfect medium to articulate line drawings in space; it allowed me to make contour drawings three dimensional quite quickly. Working with the material is a joy as the branch has a will of its own, it wants to move in a certain direction and so while you can begin with a plan, the material dictates your decisions; an apt metaphor for parenting!

Sketchbook I Willow was a good transitional material for me. As a printmaker who favours hard ground, I work comfortably with line and so willow allowed me to create contour drawings in space. I found it interesting that I could achieve more in willow than I could in a two dimensional drawing; the willow was more sinuous and strong and the sculptural form allowed me to investigate balance.	Sketchbook II I began building paper maquettes of birds. I was interested in bending and folding single sheets of paper with a view to eventually transforming my intaglio prints into sculptures. As a printmaker, I am quite concerned with refining the technicalities of a medium. I was keen that my paper maquettes could be joined without an additional medium like glue or pins so I used slots and tabs.	Sketchbook III When I visited the Isle of Wight I saw birds above a fishing boat. They moved in a desperate frenzy over the fishing net and yet they didn't collide; their movements seemed almost like a carefully choreographed dance. I experimented with combining my paper maquettes in different ways and then overlaying them in an effort to reflect the movements of the birds above the fishing boats.
Sketchbook IV Laura Ellen Bacon taught me to translate my paper maquettes into willow. She works by creating a broad structure and then reinforces it with layers of willow. When emulating this process I found that I loved the way that the flexible ends of the willow could be used to knot the form together and so no bonding medium was required but I thought the process of reinforcing the initial structure made my forms look messy and unrefined because they were based on planes rather than solid forms.	Laura Ellen Bacon Workshop	Laura Ellen Bacon Workshop
Bird in Flight I	Bird in Flight II	Sketchbook V I created a series of drawings from the sculptures but they lacked the wonderful weightless quality of birds in flight so I experimented with creating cynotypes using my paper maquettes. I placed the maquettes on the Natgraph, put the coated paper over it and exposed. I did not use the vacuum so that the light could bend around the distant planes and make some edges undefined; this gave the image a sense of movement. It destroyed my maquettes but I think it was worth it.
Bird I Clay is quite a weighty material so it is perhaps a little incongrous to use when exploring the idea of flight. However, the medium is wonderfully malleable and gives the practitioner a sense of freedom when working so in a sense, the material complements the concept. When fired, it transforms to a wonderful pure white. The colour and the fragility of the final piece is reminiscent of an albatross that is at once both weightless in the air and sturdy on the ground.	Bird II Fired paper clay	Bird III Fired Paper Clay
Bird IV Fired Paper Clay	Amulets Sculpted from precious metal clay