Studio practice

 Soft stop sign no2   

For the second soft sculpture I wanted to repeat the initial stop sign idea but just push it a bit further so its a more completed piece. This time still aiming for the piece to have a homely feel but more controlled and decorative. I followed the same pattern as the last sign but this time I just sized each panel up by an inch as I wanted it to be slightly larger. When adding the front detailing I wanted it to be quite visibly reminiscent of traditionally female crafts, I think this comes through anyway way with it being a sewing piece but I tried to lean into this by giving the idea of quilting and such. So to achieve this I gathered together lots of different red and white fabrics, I cut them into strips and squares with pinking shears and for most of the pieces left the raw zig zag edges showing instead of neatly overlocking them. I used a mixture of patterned and textured fabrics, I used the strips to cover the whole front piece in a quilt like design. For the stern "STOP" text on the front I used soft felt, I felt this material was a good choice for the text as the mixture of  the physically very soft fuzzy material with direct wording really reinforces the transcoding, it also has connotations of quite childlike arts and crafts activities. 

 I am pleased with how this ideas come through into a physical piece, I believe it to look like a better representation of my initial idea, both in how its physically put together and the ideas it gives off. I believe it was a good choice to lean into the feminine quality of the materials and process as i believe it adds a kind of of second element to my overall messaging and new ideas to explore with it, The sewing originally was to just add this soft comforting element to the hard direct signage, creating a kind of sense of mixed messaging and questioning the language material held opposed to literal directional language; Would you stop at a soft stop sign? But by adding the aspect of traditionally feminine crafts it could already give it slight feminist coded messaging, its not majorly obvious but I believe it could be seen that way and I don't oppose that so its perhaps something to further explore.