Year 2: Sculpture – DMU Commons

Day of the Dead origins in Mexico

In my approach of reviewing on one of my favorite holiday events, but in a inspiring way to do practical modelling from a primary genre of comedy to combine with a theme that goes bump in the night or spooky arts to reflect onto my sculptural journey in year 2.

From my chosen path to research on certain holiday’s in different countries/regions, is what I had examined into a country of Mexico because its culture are used to influence our thoughts of emotions like its focused on memories of whose who passed away during lifetimes. Which I found Mexican arts very fascinated to look at, because their festival arts had me fond of aesthetic colours to produce on any items or products like skeletons and skulls and the Mexican people named Día de los Muertos or translate in English – Day of the Dead celebrated every year on 2nd November 2021.

When reading on the origins of Mexican’s Day of the Dead, are about digging up its roots of going into their early contemporary arts amongst many heritage throughout the United States. It once happened around 3,000 years ago where the Aztecs honored with their deceased in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. In my critical response of how they originally used to examine on death, like when a person dies they travel to Chicunamictlan in most cases Land of the Dead where souls went on a journey to their final resting place.

Day of the Dead origins/website: https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/day-of-the-dead

After my investigation onto Mexican’s origins involving with Day of the Dead, I felt the emotion of festive joy/sad when someone passed away but its our way of honoring the dead. To remember their love-ones family members brings the offerings of food, water and accessories to aid the deceased on their journey and that helps to keep their memories alive.

At my response into Mexican’s influence of festival arts, are what I could use my doodle techniques to transform my old-fashioned shoes into something zaniness like laughter and my manufacture of foam materials/equipment. Then to combine with cartoon patterns in acrylic methods to make them like 4D models, like the Mexican people used to decorate the graves as their beloved burial place and to absorb the festival’s love of colourful arts to skeletons appearance of pale textures also to use illustrations in my expressions into comedy development onto my Simpsons telephone models.

Culture influences in Mexican arts:

Mexican version of Halloween
Festival parties and parades
Border between spirit and real worlds
Offerings brought to burial graves
Reflected on Disney’s film Coco (2017)

Sculpture 2020/21

Arriving at Vijay Patel-Arts tower to begin year 2 studies in sculpture, I would prep up my new studio on floor 8 whilst been given a brief to organize on my selected object in 20th-21st centuries and to describe my means of being an sculptor and how its taken a place in the world.

Project in Sculpture: “Making a Thing”

Items list in Thing project:

Ready-made objects:

Shoes or Trainers
My DMU bag
Fruit Bowl

Environmental objects:

Tombstones at church
Flower pots
Old benches

It can be difficult but I’ve decided to choose my beloved shoe as my primary item, because I wear them into the outside world and to organize them at home to sketch my blueprints.

Primary object: shoes

Investigating onto my shoes is the first step, is how to build my early works while I was sketching up my creative ways of colour decorating and to help organize which methods to experiment with.

Blueprints:

Sorting my foam materials to build my prototypes, is trimming off rough areas to make both of my design look nicely crafted and manipulate with mod-roc to show a skeleton appearance seemed pale but I can adapt to its cultural theme.

Next is using fabric arts to experiment with coloured tissues onto my festival shoe, which orange petals are telling me a reflected theme in Disney’s Coco and to combine both old-fashioned/humorist effect.

Prototype shoe:

Festival shoe:

After my prototypes I can organize my large set of reused-foam to mark, sand-off and positioned my toothpicks to put all of my pieces together in a whole stronger model without breaking.

Finalized-diagram:

Once I’d used mod-roc, I can start painting my cartoon patterns all around my design like decorating its pale texture into wonderful festive feeling of laughter and blended with spooky arts like live-action movements.

Mexican Trainers:

Second project: “Making A Space”

Reading my next brief to examining an empty space, because by calling out sound-waves/echoes when answering someone from the horizon and I can use it to my advantage of experimenting on telephones.

These are my new diagrams of building my early prototype, to help me prep up my final model with most of Simpsons pattern arts whilst I’m painting them.

Prototype-phone:

Finalized-phone:

Simpsons-Telephone:

Once my telephone models are completed, I must mount them on the studio’s wall for open space like my shoe models within the exhibition and to describe on their clashes of different cultures alongside my experimentation of 3D abstract colouring.

Since my completion of festive shoes/telephone designs, I took a different approach in foam manipulation were my early theme of hybrids because some of the animals are currently in the present and others in folklore-tales to my reaction of their origins in mythology arts. Which I had worked on their diagrams over term 2’s January and February via pencil-drawing, to help with my continuation in Sculpture is to absorb my humanoid/monster textures to experiment unused items as foam materials, to act as my models main bodies all in six designs in many doodle patterns to reflect from my blueprint drawings to build at large scale as if being amazed and frightened from monster-verse themes.