Plaster Mania!

Picture of the Day] Pictures of the forms I made for my plaster workshop 1A and 1B in studio.

Mood] Pleasant

Weather] Face fall off weather. There is no degree for this.

Currently] In my room.

Getting back into the groove of school has been less than nightmare-ish, which is good. I guess break was too awesome to be true. I wish it had been longer, but I didn't mind diving back into working for studio. We've started with plaster. I used plaster and went to a workshop last year for second year, but this time, we've been experimenting with it as a way of understanding and trying to think about concrete. There are three factors that you have to keep in mind when using concrete.

1. The formwork (the stuff that holds the concrete)
2. The falsework (the stuff that holds the formwork)
3. The recipe for the concrete (how many parts plaster to how many parts water)

WORKSHOP 1A: (I will upload pictures here later. I can't seem to find them right now....)
So what we did was partner up with people and tried to study the properties of plaster. We began with an analysis that studied how we could make units of sorts with a specific formwork that would really represent what we were using. Often times, the formwork is lost during the process. In the end, you never see the formwork, only the beautiful polished concrete or the raw concrete walls. Sometimes the walls are even covered in the end! What my partner and I did was used fabric. We started by simply making shapes that would take the texture of the fabric to keep a memory of what the falsework was, in a way, preserving it. With our second iteration, we studied how we could accentuate the way the fabric functions as formwork. Since plaster is so viscous and flows to wherever it wishes, it was essential that we used a semi-thick mix so that it would not leak from the fabric, but would also allow the plaster to move the fabric where it wanted to. With the addition of a peg board, we were able to show how the fabric pouches allowed the plaster to drip and droop with gravity, take the texture of the fabric. This created a memory of not only the plaster pieces' origin (in terms of composition), but also its construction. Pretty nifty, eh?

Workshop 1B:
For the second iteration, my partner and I focussed on how the fabric could act as a looser formwork. We tried different kinds and eventually decided to come up with a set of rules and techniques. The goal was to create some visuals/diagrams, forms, and also an instructional sheet on how to recreate what we did. Our final turned out to be very interesting. I was pretty proud of the results. We came up with two iterations that linked to one another by a common piece.

iteration I - focus on how the manipulation of the fabric changed the perception of the object


By using three different kinds of fabric, which we allowed to crease and to wrinkle as much as the fabric would allow, we changed the way the object appeared. The thicker fabric left a larger texture and was not able to fold as much, so the object (in this case a rock) appeared much bigger than it actually was. When it came down to the T-shirt fabric, it became the size that it really was.

iteration II - focus on how the manipulation of the object changed the perception of the fabric

By using three different objects, we changed the way that the t-shirt fabric appeared. In one, it looks as though it could be a large curtain like fabric, in another, just simply a thin fabric.

Now we've moved on to discovering some new things in another workshop, but I think that this was successful. I'll update you soon enough! :D

Plaster is CRAZY FUN, especially once you get the hang of it. :)
~Jaye