Year 3 Degree Project by Elaine Hedges

This is my set up for my exhibition in this years degree show.

I chose to create a small line up of pieces as some of my pieces were very large, some very bright and some just didn’t seem to fit in the with the rest.

It took a long time to mix and match and to see which pieces would coordinate the most effectively with the others and which didn’t. The reason I chose these is because this way I could showcase pieces of varying sizes which were reasonably easy to exhibit without being obstructive.

My Row of symmetry which is the collection of small black pieces I had to separate into halves as when it was shown how it was meant to as a full line, it was very visually obstructive and created too much of a barrier between the other pieces and looked very odd as a singular pieces at the edge of the display.

Originally I was going to put my large circular piece on the Floor and display it there with a plastic sheet over it so that viewers could walk on top of it but I couldn’t find a large enough sheet in time and decided it was better to not risk it being damaging when the show came around.

I had another piece that was very long in length and Pink and Green, but decided not to include it as it wouldn’t lay straight after the damage had been repaired to it and I felt it wouldn’t look very good when presented as it would jut outward from the wall.

Another issue I came across is sharing the space with a colleague as we have very different pieces to each other and so had to find a way of arranging out work to not obstruct the others . Their work is 3-d based, whereas mine is very much meant to hang so it meant I would take most of the wall space whereas they would have the floor space.

The pieces I have included I have had difficulties with when displaying them against the walls. Due to the nature of my work, I have to cut each layer individually and then put them together to create the effect. I initially attempted to spray mount one of the smaller piece from my collection of triptychs which failed miserably. It came out extremely thickly and molded itself to the material that was behind it for stability. I managed to save the piece but not before residue from the spray mount had become irreversibly stuck  to it.

Due to this I had to rethink how I was going to keep the layers together on each individual piece, especially considering how many layers it eventually amounted to.

I found a material called Glue dots, which were clear small, round pieces of glue which clung to the paper very effectively and also to the wall without damaging them. I used this on each layer and in each corner of the layers, sometimes needing several down the sides of the larger piece in order to ensure it did stay on the wall.

With the Glue dots I also managed to pull the paper away from the different layers in order to create more of a 3-d effect, so it looks like it is pulling away from the wall, and the layers are seen more easily.

Another aspect I had to consider with my exhibition is the question, Why am I presenting it on a white wall.

I had to choice of any colour I wanted on the wall as long as it was put back to normal when the exhibition ended.  I stuck with white as I felt it would contrast the best and draw the most attention to my work as possible.  I even spray painted some of my pieces black when they were originally white because I knew from experience in the past that putting white on white even when it is a paper cut would wash out the work and people wouldn’t notice it.

Previously I had only worked in Black and White paper when creating my paper cuts and because of the white walls this did severely limit how well presented my work could be, but now I’ve switched to colour it has made me appreciate much more how the background colour can completely offset the pieces.

The material that I ‘ve chosen for some of the pieces is sugar paper, as I know that the colour is  going to fade eventually once it had been exposed to sunlight for a long enough period of time. The material really draws from my concept of taking an old craft and bringing it to the modern times. Crafts and arts from the past fade and age, becoming worn or eroded by time, weather and the elements, and so this will effect my work also in the same way.

Throughout the last year when creating all these multicoloured paper cuts I have saved all the scraps of paper which would normally have been thrown away and I have carefully stored them. I wanted to present them in my exhibition as I felt it would make an interesting trace of my work. I constantly found tiny little pieces of triangular or square cut outs that had snuck off when I have been cutting and they served as a reminder of what I was doing, and what it was made of. I feel that the trace is very effective where it is in my exhibition and also makes it that much more interesting too as it will make viewers question why I have kept all these pieces.

I discovered this completely by accident when I left one of my paper cuts on top of a piece of sugar paper in the sunlight for a few days in my studio. When I went to move the piece of paper I realised that the sunlight had bleached the paper around  the paper cut, and the areas that were not exposed to the sunlight had retained their original colour.

I’d always shied away from creating prints of my paper cuts because after ward they would be void as it would eventually break the paper, so this is quite an interesting way to create the same effect without damaging any of the pieces.

I made these 12 small pieces out of postcard sized white card to create a small series out pieces in contrast to the rest of the much larger pieces.

It was interesting to work on such a small scale as it was a more limited space to create a complex design and it was more of challenge to make sure each was unique and didn’t look like any of the others.

I ended up spray painting them black because in my degree show space it is white and if they stayed their white colour they would end up blotted out and under exposed to a viewer.

I found this piece to be particularly challenging for myself due to the size and the complexity of the pattern which had to be completely drawn out.

Each line had to be the exact length as the other in the same row and at the same angle. This made it incredibly difficult and time consuming, especially considering that if my calculations were out even a slight amount on each line then it would match up at the same line at the bottom, similar to trailing off the edge of each sentence if you wrote on plain paper instead of lined.

I’m quite impressed with how exact it came out considering how obstructive its size was when designing it.

I spoke a while back about aspirations to create larger pieces of my triptych except resulting in more layers and to have solid pieces that hadn’t been cut out of the design to create a much more solid and complex piece, bringing out the colours in certain areas.

Due to how many layers were in each piece all three resulted in certain areas not coming through as much as  I hoped but turned out to look quite effective to myself. Due to the size it also took much longer, with all 3 pieces resulting in 15 pieces of A1 paper in total, all with the same size lines, borders and symmetry.

I always worked on these in a free style way, only relying on a compass and drawing what I wanted at the time, there was no prior planning to any of the pieces, other than if some areas were more covered in some layers, I compensated for them in other areas in order to even it up. I also chose the solid colours randomly, but stayed in line with the symmetry.

I have found a lot more maths as to be involved in my designs when they become larger due to inaccuracies with a compass.