Sculpture Project 1 & 2

  3-D Neurographics

        My relationship with creating art has always been related to regulating stress or a moment of escape from the tensions and pressures we as humans face in our reality. Growing up with little stress being a kid or teenager, my once a week painting class was efficient in calming my anxiety but becoming an independent adult I struggle to dedicate that time to painting. So with the decrease in available time and increase in opportunities for things to stress me out I noticed I needed a quicker or easier outlet to relieve that stress. I discovered Neurographic art, an art therapy technique that works with your subconscious by stimulating neural pathways to work through a tough emotion or issue in ones life or just create a sense of calm as a mindfulness exercise. My personal interaction with them is to clear my mind or benefit any anxiety I might be feeling which recently has been a lot. I have easily drawn at least 100 of these since discovering this process and wanted to challenge myself by creating a 3-D version.

        The inspiration for this is that currently I live with a person where the interactions leave me feeling uncomfortable and unsafe emotionally which causes extreme anxiety because my home is supposed to be my safe space. I noticed I spend most of my time in my home drawing these and wanted to create a 3-D version to hang in my house and hopefully manifest specific energy for my home. 

    

    I began by thinking about what kinds of things I wanted these pieces to represent and drew two of these neurographics with those things in mind. I chose to use different materials that correlated with the energy I was trying to express. I wanted to use aluminum wire (project 1) to simulate an easy going, flowing positive energy because of how easily one can manipulate metal wire and wood (project 2) to represent the stability, protection, and security of my energy at home.

After drawing in my sketchbook I knew I wanted it to be larger and interact with negative space and light. I took the sketchbook drawings, put them in a projector to increase the size to around 24 x 26. I traced the lines on a larger paper and began on me Wire version. 

    

        Staring the wire sculpture began with taping the paper to a piece of wood and nailing in nails that I would wrap the wire around and create the positive space of the drawing. Once all the wire was wrapped it was time to secure it together and smooth edges of the negative shapes created. I took out each nail one by one and hot glued the layers of wire not initially worried about smoothness but making sure the basic shape was there and it was all stuck together. After it was all glued I removed it from the paper and began securing the backside, once I finished that I used the metal tip of the hot glue gun to round out the glue and create a seamless look. 

Finally after smoothing all the edges I spray painted the piece chrome to hide the hot glue and began thinking about how to display it. I knew I wanted it to interact with light and thought about attaching it to a lamp shade but ended up manipulating the shape of it to stand up and let it cast shadows with an overhead light. The shape of the arch creates a space where someone could go under or have it between like a barrier protecting my energy. I also had it hung on the wall casting shadows in whatever angle the light hits it which aids to its easy going feeling.

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    Similar to the wire piece I began by projecting the sketchbook drawing to a larger size. After tracing I thought about what type of wood I wanted to use and realized that I wanted to use what was available in the scrap wood because it relates to me doing what I can with what I have at home to ease any anxiety or stress. I decided I wanted to counter the wire piece by cutting the negative shapes in the drawing and spacing them to create the black lines between. Originally I thought about framing this piece so it could sit upright in a window which would illuminate the spaces between wood pieces but I thought using plexi glass and cutting it to mimic the contour of the shape and attach wood to that with glue would look and feel better than the harsh linear lines a frame creates. 

 

        The process of cutting the wood starts with finding scrap pieces of two different heights. I knew I wanted a sense of depth within the piece to make it more dynamic and interesting to look at, I used about a quarter inch thick panel and half inch thick of probably various kinds of wood. I wanted to make sure I was keeping to shape and size so I used vine charcoal on the backside of the paper, lined the shape I wanted, put piece of wood underneath the paper and traced the shape in pencil on the front side so the charcoal would transfer to the wood. Once traced I reinforced the line with pencil and cut using the band saw, once cut I immediately sanded the edges and put it to the side. After cutting and sanding a few I would lay out the pieces on the paper and check if the shapes were matching, also making a check mark on both sides of the drawing to make sure I didn't repeat shapes and in case I lost any in the process. I repeated that process and switched wood thicknesses depending on what was surrounding the shape I was cutting. Once all pieces were cut and sanded I traced the outer line of the drawing onto a piece of plexi glass and cut that shape out. Then put the plexi on top of the drawing and began hot gluing the wood cuts to its clear backing. I realize now that hot glue doesn't stick the best to these materials to in the future I know to use better glue. However, after gluing the pieces to its backing I displayed it the best way where light could still interact with it, which opened up many new ideas for these sculptures.