Multi-Disciplinary

The Brief

Our Theme for this project was 'Health'. So to start off my ideas, I thought of all the different memories I had that involved health within my family. I would then chose one and write down everything I could remember about it.

Sadly, my Granddad had recently passed away due to heart and kidney problems so I thought this would be a good way to look into it more and to not only understand what happened but to express my feelings within my art work.
I decided to focus on the heart as this was the main problem, I would also include the rib cage.
This project involved a lot of research about installation and site specific artists, so it was very important for me to experiment and explore interesting ways an how to display my final piece.

The Rib Cage

I started my experiments in the ceramics department, as the little work I have done there, I really enjoyed. I made a clay heart and rib cage that I later covered with a matt off white glaze for the ribs. I then splashed/sprayed a blood red, glossy glaze over the heart.

I want my final work to be an installation piece so as I was making this I decided it would be too heavy and fragile to be displayed on a wall.
I created new experiments with glass and with drift wood.
Glass because I thought it would be stronger and drift wood because it would be much lighter.
Also, the beach was my granddad's favourite place to be, so the drift wood would give my piece a more sentimental meaning.
In the end I decided on drift wood, not only because it would be easy to display but it also looks a lot like bone due to it getting warn down in the sea.
My next task was to experiment with how to make the heart, I tried:
.Glass
.Clay

.Wax
.Wire
and finally latex, which worked really well.

The Heart

After deciding on latex it was now time to experiment on how to make the heart. 

What would be the best way to make a realistic heart but to use a real heart?
I bought a pig heart from the butchers and started to make a three part mould. I worked really well and after the plaster had completely dried I started to make the casts.

Latex dries a translucent yellow colour so I added powdered inks to give it realistic colouring.

I left a hole in the top part of the mould so I could pour the coloured latex in.

I left it for 24 hours before I started to undo the mould.

You can see from the images below how the heart came out of the mould.

I am very pleased with the out come and shall do this for all the hearts I make.

 This is the bottom two parts of the mould.

 This is the top part of the mould. I was a little nervous to take it apart, because there is so much detail here, I didn't want the mould to brake.
Luckily, the latex is so flexible that it came out easily with out any damage.

 This tube is the main artery of the heart and where the hole was that I left in the mould to pour in the latex.

 Here you can see the veins in the heart.

 This is one of the rib cages I made out of drift wood. I am quite happy with how this turned out but I wont be using this one in my final piece.
As you can see I have created two hearts now, over all I shall have about ten.

Because we are looking at installation artists, I done some artist research and found this piece by Eva Hesse. I think it is beautiful, and very delicate.

At first glance I thought it was cotton, but after my research I found it was created with fibre glass.

I wish to make something this delicate and beautiful, whilst still keeping my meaning. I also love how it is suspended in mid-air, I would like to capture this technique also.

My initial ideas so far are to create the latex hearts and a bigger rib cage out of drift wood. I will attach the rib cage face down from the ceiling and along the spine ill add different lengths of fishing wire. On each of these pieces, I will thread the latex hearts and red, orang and pink beads. The fishing wire is to create the suspended look like Eva Hesse has perfected.

Final Piece

The drift wood ribs worked out well in my experiments, so I recreated them for my final piece; this time I focusing mainly on the spine. Firstly, I drilled small holes along the spine with a jewelry drill. I tied glass beads to the tops of all my fishing wire strands so they wouldn't fall through and finally threaded them into the drilled holes.

If you look closely at the above image, you can see the hooks I screwed in to the spine. This is so it can be easily transported and hooked onto different places.

 The wooden beads are related to the wooden spine. They also represent wood from the beach. 

Over all, I am very happy with this work, not only because it has a very strong sentimental value but also the techniques, materials and processes I used all worked out successfully. I have a strong message with in this piece so I didn't want to been too literal or give too much away. I want my audience to be able to explore the work and create their own meanings whilst still understanding that it represents decay of the heart.