Making the lightboxes

This is part of the process for making my light-boxes. They are made out of perspex (acrylic) sheets 3mm and 5mm thick. The backing is made of MDF. This will house the led lights, which don't transmit any heat so there is no need for ventilation for these pieces.
The MDF will go directly onto the wall and the perspex (this will hold the ceramic pieces) will be then fixed to it. This way, the weight is equally distributed along the pieces and they will be very stable once they are hung on the wall.

Artist Statement

My obsession for patterns created by repetitive elements is the driving force behind my work. I am interested in exploring the use of repetition of organic forms to create visual textures. These textures are utilized and translated into my work in the form of ceramic wall pieces.
Porcelain, with its inherent whiteness and delicacy serves to produce fossil like beings that seem to have been frozen in time. The wafer thin structure of each porcelain pod allows them to attain translucency. This transparency, paired with light, brings out new dimensions to the material. With fabric and light, I present a contrast of softness and utilize these essentials as source for colour.
I am inspired by the beauty and implicit design in nature; by its complexity and diversity in patterns and textures that. My amazement with the exquisiteness of corals and seascapes, images that defy verbal descriptions, has led me to pursue an investigation of its forms and structures. I am fascinated by their intricacy in composition and the vibrancy of colour most of these creatures posses.

My pieces hold narratives of alarming environmental issues. However, as objects they seem airy and ethereal, pleasant to look at. They hold no visual threat to the viewer but the inspiration behind these pieces is to the loss of natural beauty in nature through natural or unnatural processes. More specifically these pieces talk about coral bleaching. I then question how it can be that the interpretation of events that are so ugly in their source can result as sheer beauty in their translation as objects.

Changes in my project

Initially my project proposal was quite vague as it talked about expanding my creative awareness and technical abilities by exploring the relationship between art and design. I was interested in the idea of merging aesthetics with function, through combinations of different materials (primarily ceramics), to create functional products for home décor that could be seen as artistic expressions. It was a start, however, it had little direction and no concrete tangible aim. After spending a couple of months in Camberwell I started to get a feel of what I could and could not achieve with the help of the resources in the ceramics studio. I had also been to Contemporary Applied Arts to see ‘The Revivalists’ and the Telling Tales exhibition on at the V&A Museum. These exhibits posed to me a visual context to what was current in the ‘Design-Art’ and the significant notion of constant newness in the quest to create.

At this time, I revised my project proposal to give it a more rational direction. It was an interest of mine to create objects that served as transitional vessels between a material reality and a narrative or symbolic (imaginary) world. To do so, I decided to focus on sculptural lighting using ceramics as the main material. With the use of light, I could try to make emotional connections to my pieces; To have the viewers not only engage with my work visually but connect with it through other senses. It became apparent to me that trying to create emotional connections would be very complicated because I had learned that connectivity is not inherent to objects. A further amendment to my project suggested my obsession with repetitive patterns would be a driving force for the aesthetics of my pieces. I talked about developing textures with the use of saturation on plain surfaces to reinforce the message of pattern.

My final project certainly has tints of the original project proposals but has developed to be more concise and purposeful. Sculptural lighting took a form of ceramic wall pieces that hold narratives of real alarming environmental issues. However, as objects they seem airy and ethereal, pleasant to look at. The core element to my wall pieces is repetition and texture through it. Not only are the pieces repetitive, in addition I developed a way of practice that involved a forever-repetitive motion in the making of hundreds of organic pods thus tying in the obsession for repetition as pattern.

Introducing Light

This is a mock up of what the high fired pieces will look like once they have light coming from the back. I believe warm white light works better than white light because it gives off a more dreamy feel. I have yet to add color through the fabric that will be inserted into the tiny holes in the center of each pod.

By placing the pods on a rectangular surface and then breaking the straight lines, i discovered that i definitely want it to be organic in the overall shape. I am still trying to figure out how to fix them on to a surface that isn't square without compromising having the light reach every pod.

Process of making

Multiples of final shapes

Here are some images of the final two shapes that I will be using. Both of these shapes allow me to make the porcelain thin enough to attain translucency when high fired. I like the organic qualities they have and although I'll be making hundreds of the pods (above) and a over seventy of the shells (below) they will all be unique. No two pieces will be exactly the same.

Publish Post

Jeremy Jackson: How we wrecked the ocean | Video on TED.com

An incredible talk by coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson. Jackson talks about the alarming state of the ocean and three main endangering factors- Overfishing, pollution and Climate change.
Terrestrial life came from the ocean, but now known terrestrial life depends on ocean.
Jackson ends with a very significant question and statement.
"So the question is: How are we all going to respond to this? And we can do all sorts of things to fix it, but in the final analysis, the thing we really need to fix is ourselves. It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us, and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world which is different from the selfish world we live in today. "