#WorkshopInductions

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Plaster caster- Bonus A dedicated fan..

When it comes to groupies, there’s no doubt that rock bands have some of the craziest. Some collect autographs, some collect t-shirts, some even collect locks of hair and used tissues. And then, there’s Cynthia Albritton, known now as Cynthia Plaster Caster, who collects a somewhat different kind of keepsake: plaster molds of famous rock and roll penises. Since 1968, Cynthia has cast over 48 famous rock singers’, guitar players’, and managers’ penises.

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Workshops : 02b_LETTERPRESS

The brief : For your letterpress induction project, we would like you to typeset a selection of lines from Jones’ most celebrated long-form poem In Parenthesis, which details his experiences of the First World War. These lines will be allocated at random on the day of your letterpress induction. You will explore how scale, composition, and spacing affect the meaning of your phrases while learning the basic principles and practices of letterpress printing.

I wanted to make the different set of words stand out by separating them according to the punctuation of the poem. I chose a simple font with capital letters to make the message stronger.

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Kate Brinkworth is a painter who held a presentation for us regarding different types of colors including inks, acrylics, oil based, spray, paint markers and other materials which we got to use. She introduced us to organic and chemical products, their origin, the materials that are used to be produced and she showed us how to prepare a mixture between charcoal and a liquid transparent substance to form paint. I was already aware of most of the materials and techniques she presented but I did not use them for my Storyteller project as I already decided that I will make a pencil drawing. Overall the experience was interesting and I have learnt new things about the production of painting.

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Abstract photographer

Andrew S. Gray creates beautiful abstract landscapes with a unique style using intentional camera movement as well as well-planned color palettes. Some are recognizable perspectives but others are forming from feelings and emotions as if from a painter’s brush.  

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Lens based media and photography artist

Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer best known for staging cinematic scenes of suburbia to dramatic effect. His surreal images are often melancholic or disturbing, offering ambiguous narrative suggestions and blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality.   

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Plaster artist

Peter Agostini is considered one of the most prominent plaster sculptors in the US. His work made in large formats anticipated Pop Art with representations of egg cartons, pillows and bottles with plaster applied over large balloon-like spheres. He also created abstract work, expressive, nonfigurative forms that often resemble different crumbled materials and which defy gravity and frailness of plaster.

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Woodworking artist

Alison Elizabeth Taylor is known for marquetry, a medium typically associated with wealth and power which is used to portray dystopian scenes of everyday life , a technique of applying thin pieces of wood to a surface in order to form a pattern or image and the outcome is amazing. “I like making flat images out of three-dimensional materials” she says. Her work shows quotidian scenes, such as those depicting pleasure-seekers at casino machines or posing with whalebone cocktails, so it is a more contemporary work rather than Renaissance work. 

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Studio Lighting and Set Up Induction

During this session we learned about different types of lights, how we can diminish the power of light to get the desired outcomes, how to set up the three different backgrounds: white, black, gray and green and how to position the lights in such way that they shine above the object to obtain natural look.  For this session we used one of our classmates’ storytelling work, a sort of crown, which was photographed on white and black background. The setup started from simply one light to up to three shining at the same moment. The white balance was set up for the black background to obtain a white- yellow ish color for a greater effect.    

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Printmaking artist

Benjamin Rider, a renowned print technician at Print Club London, is an illustrator and graphic designer who specializes in various print techniques including an unconventional process such as Cyanotype printing which is regularly used by engineers and architects to create blueprints. His work reveal a vibrant, edgy, punk look and feel, which is built up from a hybrid of drawings and collages. His time-served expertise in print together with his sense of humor then results in a memorable series of eye-catchy prints.

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Printmaking Induction

Fine art printmaking is based on the concept of creating a master plate, known as the matrix. This is used to transfer the image onto paper. The most common plates are made out of metal like zinc or copper used in etching or engraving, stones in lithography, wood for woodcuts and engraving and silk screen for screen printing. The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. There are four main categories of printmaking: relief, intaglio, lithography, and screen printing.  We were presented different machines for printmaking like the pad printing which transforms a 2D object in a 3D one, lithography (stone printing), laser printing, printing press, woodblock printing, mono printing and a lot more which I cannot remember. We mainly used the printing press to do our own work.  

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Metalworking artist

Alan Williams is an artist who creates endangered species, monsters and aliens out of metal. He uses recycled materials or very old and rusty tools as often as he can through he finds fantastic shapes. The artist is trying to bring the old materials back to life through his work. He is trying to think of the subject’s personality and character and he tries to get in that mood to represent his feelings as an artistic metal work. The way he places the body components and the scales and things like that are all part of the thinking process and there is not much he can change about the final outcome because he gets fixed characters and it’s got to be right, this being one of the challenges that he deals with. He completes his work doing his favorite part which is giving life to the sculptures by polishing and working on highlights through which he creates those finished touches.

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Metalwork induction

Metalwork is an activity of making metal objects: individual parts, assemblies, or large-scale structures. The activity covers a wide range of industries, from bridges and ships to jewelry. It is needed some skills and tools for these to be done as in the book. This type of work can be a hobby, science, industry and art. It has been evolving from the discovery of smelting ores.   During the induction we were introduced to some basic machines that were used for folding, curving, cutting, joining, grinding and sharping multiple types of metal. Most of these actions require mechanical force to be done. Some of them deform the metal object without getting rid of any material. 

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Camera Induction

During this session we were shown how to work with a professional camera, how to set up the exposure, the white balance, the lighting and much more. Then we had a 30 minutes period to wander around the school to put in practice what we were taught. Each team had at least one acceptable photo that was correctly made. 

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Lens Based Media

During the session we have been introduced to the Adobe Premiere program through which we learned the basics of movie editing. This was really helpful when we did the drawing machine short movie. We took some short videos that lasted originally no more than 1 minute and we combined them in order to get a desired outcome. We were shown how to cut movies, to join them, to edit the appearances like lightning change, different effects, how to add writing over the videos and a lot more which were too much to remember just from one session.  

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Plaster casting research

Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. The most common types of plaster mainly contain either gypsum, lime, or cement, but all work in a similar way. A plaster cast is a copy made in plaster of a 3-dimensional form. The original from which the cast is taken can be a sculpture, a building, a fossil, teeth, and others. The method of creating a plaster cast is the plaster is being applied to the original to create a mould/cast which will be later removed and poured fresh plaster into it, creating a copy of the original, but out of plaster. Plaster is not flexible and the moulds were made as 3D jigsaw puzzles for an easier approaching. Later gelatine, rubber and silicone moulds were used, backed by plaster or polyester for support. 

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Woodworking research

Woodworking is the activity of making items from wood, and includes furniture making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and wood turning. The techniques are common to those for metal working, like heat bending, cutting, sharpening, joinery, carving. Wood may be one of the oldest and most commonplace art materials. Woods are typically sorted into three basic types: hardwoods typified by tight grain and derived from broad-leaf trees, softwoods from coniferous trees, and man-made materials such as plywood.