Sculpture Studio Spring 2012

Project 1: Process

For this piece, I wanted to explore the properties of a material I had never used before: fluid medium, because it transforms paint into a very fluid material, allowing it to be poured over surfaces. I wanted to see how the paint would adapt and take shape after being poured onto a surface, and how it would dry.

I chose to use wood and a square of fiberglass window netting to provide a surface/structure for the poured paint. The wood was cut with a slope at its top as to encourage the movement of the paint onto the fiberglass window netting. Wooden dowel rods support the structure as it hangs from the wall, the mesh appearing to act similar to a curtain.

Aside from creating the structure, I simply mixed the paint and fluid medium and poured it onto the surface, allowing gravity to finish the process. My first color, yellow, was chosen as the first color to act as contrast to the second and third color. After mixing and pouring the yellow paint onto the structure, I immediately mixed together the blue, then the red. With these colors, instead of pouring the entire contents onto the structure, I dripped various amounts on top of the yellow, using very little red as the final color. The blue and red were applied to the yellow while it was still wet, which allowed certain drips of color to streak and almost mix together. What was created was a curtain of poured primary colors, which diminish as they reached the bottom of the fiberglass netting.

Though I am still unsure of how I expected the piece to turn out, it has definitely allowed me to achieve my goal of experimenting with a medium as a way to express process in this sculpture. If I were to make something similar to this piece in the future, I think I would rather pour the paint onto a sheet of plastic and allow it to dry before placing it on a mount. Though I find the fiberglass window netting to have been a great structure for the paint, I sometimes feel it may be distracting.