I am writing a statement based on my final degree show. I have challenged myself and made a sculpture, which is something I have never done before. I successfully made a sculpture that demonstrates the seriousness of plastic pollution and it highlights that plastic is damaging our oceans, sea life and even in the depths of the ocean because it is harming coral reefs too. I made a 2 metre high sculpture that I had to display in my garden. I successfully met my goal and I did not use any paint or glue. I can also proudly say I made this sculpture entirely out of recycled plastic or reused old materials. Nothing was bought. Therefore, when I am finished with the sculpture everything can be recycled. The challenges I faced when making this sculpture were that I didn’t have enough space to display all my work. Overall, I made 50 plastic fish but, due to the lack of space I could only display 30 of them. I would have benefitted from the studio because I would have made my sculpture much larger. I had to confine everything to the space I had available. I would have used the studio walls to display even more fish. There were benefits to displaying my sculpture outside, this was due to the wind blowing the fish from side to side, making the fish appear as though they were swimming. This made the sculpture even better to watch because it caught my eye and attention. This wouldn’t have happened inside the degree show. I am happy that I challenged myself because I have developed my skills even further and can say I am a sculptor. I will take these skills with me after university and make more sculptures because I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Tag: Documentation
My Final Sculpture
This is a post about my Final Degree Show work. I went with the sculpture even though I knew I wouldn’t be displaying it in university. I wanted to make a sculpture that highlights the plastic pollution in our oceans. I wanted the sculpture to bring awareness to the public that the plastic is harming our sea life creatures and its even damaging our coral reefs. I wanted to make this sculpture entirely from recycled plastic and repurposed or reused materials. I successfully made this without any adhesive so all of the plastic can be recycled yet again. The cost of this sculpture was nothing.
I collected all the recycled plastic and repurposed materials myself, before the Coronavirus. It took weeks to make all 40 seaweed and corals from plastic bottles and 50 plastic fish. I repurposed the wood from an old shed. I used recycled cardboard and toilet rolls. I learnt many new skills from doing this and it demonstrates how much I have developed as an artist at my time at university. I learnt how to paper Mache clay for the rock. I learnt how to make a sculpture but how to make art that costs nothing and all from recycled materials. I am most proud of the sculpture because I made all this without using glue so everything on this sculpture can be recycled again and nothing was damaged. I learnt how to make the plastic bottles into seaweed by using a heat gun and soldering iron, something I haven’t used before and a technique I learnt along the way. The bottles can even be cut apart and be made into plastic fish.
This was my first sculpture and I am pleased with how well it turned out. Coronavirus didn’t stop me that much. I had planned on making this before the Lockdown anyway. The only disappointing thing is that I could only display 30 of my plastic fish I wanted the studio walls so I could display even more of them. I also would have made this sculpture larger by making it even taller than 2 metres. I also would have extended the base and made it stronger so I could have more fishing rods with even more fish. My garden wasn’t big enough to fit anymore in. You can see I did have to squeeze around the sculpture to try and video it. I did my best to capture how it looks. I did propose to make canvases as well I decided not to use these in my degree show because I had no studio walls and making 90 plastic bottles took up a lot of my time. I focused purely on the sculpture and making it look good because it is the main focus of my work.
I benefitted from displaying it outside not just because of the light making the plastic look reflective but because the wind was making the fish move so the plastic fish looked as though they were swimming and as I walked around the sculpture I felt like I was swimming amongst the fish. it gave me a good sense of how it would feel to be swimming amongst plastic and the environment the sea life creatures are in every day.
My Final Artist Statement
My artwork reflects the ecological effects of climate change and plastic pollution. Ecosystems and life on Earth are subjected to global changes, resulting from human activities. My artwork highlights our carelessness with discarding plastic which as a result has caused our oceans to become polluted.
I have demonstrated new techniques and ideas to showcase the serious environmental issues we face with our planet. I am especially interested in creating work highlighting plastic pollution. I have made my first ever sculpture entirely from recycled plastic and repurposed materials.
I have shown a passion and drive to make a stand about this topic. I personally believe I will get people to rethink how they reuse plastic or discard their waste. I have shown that plastic pollution is harming our oceans and the living organisms that live within it. That in time will essentially are harm us too.
I want this sculpture to remind us of our sinful act disregarding plastic that has ruined our seas and our planet. The sculpture was made to bring awareness about plastic pollution, but I also want it to be a reflection on how you can prevent more plastic from being dumped into our oceans.
My work fits in with contemporary art because I bring a new perspective on plastic pollution. I have made art in my own interpretation of what I think will be enough to change people’s perspectives on the matter.
My Business Card
This is my Business Card if someone wants to have a commission piece. I like the simplicity of it. I have included my contacts such as my Email Address, phone number and blog address. The blog address is so people can find out more about my art practise. To improve this business card I could add images of my artwork. This is included in my Professional Development Presentation because this is how I get people to contact me and when I made a commission I add about 4 of these cards in with the artwork so people can pass this on to their friends. It allows me to get recognised as an artist.
Adding the Fish to the Sculpture
In this post I am showing you how I added the fish to the sculpture. I used the broken fishing rods to the centre pole. I cut the broken fishing rods down because they were too long and heavy for the sculpture. I drilled in to the centre pole and slid the fishing rods into the pole. I had am idea instead of placing the fish on the end of the rods. in my dads shed was fishing wire. I decided at this moment to dangle the plastic fish from the rods by fishing wire. This is in keeping with the fishing rod idea. I could also add more fish to the sculpture this way. This worked out much better because the sculpture was outside and the wind was blowing making the fish look as though they were swimming. This is one benefit from having the sculpture outside instead of being indoors. I added the jelly fish to the sculpture too. I also kept to my word and by using fishing wire I didn’t need glue to stick the plastic I just tied them to the sculpture. I had 6 fishing poles on the sculpture and this was enough because I was running out of room and the sculpture couldn’t hold much more because it was reused wood. The wood wasn’t at it strongest anyway. I made 50 plastic fish from bottles but I could only display 30 of them on the sculpture because it was getting too heavy and the wires were getting tangled. I also added some plastic fish to the base and in the corals so when you get down and have a look at the seaweed and the base of the sculpture you can see the fish swimming amonst the corals.
Up close images of the Base of my Sculpture
I just wanted to make this post to show you the up close images of my sculpture so far. I wanted to take as many images as possible because I’m not going to be showing it in the final degree show so I wanted to make sure I have enough photo evidence.
I have been lucky that the sun has been out because it really made a difference to the quality of the images. The plastic reflected the light and made it look bright. I would have added lights to the bottom of the sculpture becuase the coloured plastic would have reflected on the walls and appeared as a shadow on the studio walls. The sun created this for me.
Starting to Make the Sculpture
In this post I have started to make the sculpture. I had to make it outside in my garden because there was no space in my house. The sculpture is 2 metres high and the base is 1 metres by 1.4 metres. I started to paint the base dark blue, dark grey and like a sandy colour. I used what paint I had in the house. I tried to get it dark like the bottom of the sea. I also thought the bright coloured plastic seaweed bottles would pop against the dark blue. I then started to add the seaweed into the place I wanted. I had to bare in mind I needed to leave space for the centre pole. I started to add the rock and seaweed but had to quickly nail them down because the wind was blowing them about. I had also made the tube corals to cover the bottom of the centre pole.
Making the Fish Eyes
Here I wanted to make a separate post, I wanted it to be about how I made the fish eyes. As I set myself a challenge because I didn’t want any of the plastic bottles to be painted or ruined by glue. I still wanted to be able to recycle the plastic bottles after. I made this mistake first time around. I collected the lids from carton milks. Asking coffee shops to keep the lids helped because they go through much more than me. They use alternative milk too such as Lactose-free, Oat, Coconut and Soya. I was lucky enough to get them before the Lockdown. I also before went to my grandparents house because they had buttons, I could have to put in the centre of the white lids to make eyes The buttons are plastic so they fit in well with the plastic theme. I could also put them in the lids without using glue. I just made a slit in the white plastic milk lid and on the back of the button, there’s like a loop. I could push the loop into the white lid and it stayed in place. So even the eyes from the plastic fish bottles can be recycled at the end of all this.
Making the Fish Part 5
In this post I wanted to make Fish that looked like the fish in the Oceans. After researching different fish I came across a Sun Fish. I liked the flatness of the fish and its unique shape. I wanted to create this fish in my sculpture. It shows that all fish come in different shapes and sizes.
I took a detergent plastic bottle out of my recycling. I had my eye on this bottle for a while and waited a long time for it to be empty. The shape of the bottle was perfect for me to use and turn into a sun fish. I cut down the sides of the bottle on the front and back. I then took the scissors and made it wave like the fishes fins when they are swimming in the ocean.
Making the Fish Part 4
In this post I wanted to make the fish look like ones in the Ocean. I found inspiration from a large blue bleach bottle. I thought the bottle it self looked like Dory from Finding Nemo. I didn’t want to change the bottle too much because its original shape resembled the fish already. Plus I had already changed all 7 of the bleach bottles I had already recycled so I thought it would be good to keep this one as it comes.
I love the electric blue colour of this fish with it the contrast bright yellow tail. I think I works really well together. The bottle I recycled is the largest bottle I have. I thought about maybe cutting it up and turning it into a whale however the proportions wouldn’t be right next to the other fish. he other bleach bottles turned out to be very long when I cut them up, especially the yellow bleach bottle fish. This bottle however is a different shape. It is very round and circular, it also had great marks within the plastic bottle its self that resembles scales. You can see below the real fish and the plastic bottle I turned into it.
I wanted to give it the poppy eyes like the cartoon character we all know Dory from finding nemo. I used the tops from fruit shoot bottles. The black and white pop from the bold blue colour and they stick out from the bottle. I didn’t use glue, I just cut a circle in the bottle and popped the eyes in. Therefore, this bottle can still be recycled.
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