Paper Installation and Initial experiments

During the first week of the Unit I wanted to reflect on my feedback from the practice Unit and start work on my new concept. Therefore i started to find research in general for paper art using the Final Cut exhibition as a starting point. I then produced a moodboard of a range of paper installation (see below).

Paper Installation Moodboard

Because working 3d large scale was a new territory for me I wanted to progress and work up to that scale slowly so I started with paper cut art sourcing inspiration from Rob Ryan.

Rob Ryan - Entire Map of my Life

I enjoyed using the negative space as my way of revealing detail and silhouettes giving my illustrations a very graphic feel. However they were still 2d which is not what I was aiming for so I started to fold them into cylinders and shine light through them to bring the drawings more to life. I particularly felt the light through the pin prick holes worked well giving a star detail effect to the drawing (see around moon below).

2D combination of Illustration Paper cutting and light.

(left) Paper cut with Pin Detail Lampshade, (mid) combination lampshade and (right) Paper Cut with textural detail Lampshade.

Although i felt the Lampshade experiments worked well i was still working 2d so i looked again at my research and found Guy Laramee a book sculptor. I enjoyed how he carves book to create 3d worlds (see below). 

Guy Laramee - 'Grande Larousse' 2010

Responding to Guy's work i bought some old books and attempted a book sculpture myself. I really enjoyed the process of each page building up to create a piece of art and overall it was successful. I wanted it to look like a cave within a book. I also screen printed and painted the cover to add some of my illustrating to the sculpture. This is something i would like to revisit and make more of. However, i felt i was still confining my work to small scale so wanted to progress further to large scale.

First Book Sculpture Attempt