Sculpture Creative Process - Week 1

At the very beginning of this project I had created many different thumbnails, all touching on different aspects of my theme and I was still very unsure of what media I wanted to use. When I was finally able to narrow it down using feedback from others, what I need to do became clear.

For my first project of my grade 12 visual arts semester I decided to use plaster, a media I’ve never used before, to make a number of molds of people’s hands and arms.

One of the artists that I looked into that influenced and inspired parts of this piece, as recommended by my art teacher, included George Segal—who has made many full body plaster molds and is the reason I wanted to keep the hands white and not paint them, much like his own work.

The hands were to be positioned in a way so that it would be ambiguous whether or not the hand on top is reaching towards or letting go of all the other hands which would be stacked on top of each other. In comparison, the hands stacked on top of each other reaching upwards are meant to represent people and opinions that others may have on one's identity, and I am creating the piece from a female perspective.

With a quick tutorial from my teacher, I was able to begin.

I finished the week with one hand completely finished and learned that it took approximately 2 hours to apply the plaster strips to both sides of the hand—making sure to leave a small amount of space between the top and bottom halves for easy removal—and a little longer for it to completely dry. After finishing a hand, as I was only able to complete one a day due to how long it took, I would take both halves home and connect them in order to finish the hand completely before it would become too dry for me to continue working on it.

At this point, I am prepared to start the next week and get started immediately, as I know the process and exactly what I need to do to in order to get this piece completed.