studio practice
Soft wet floor sculpture
Originally I was thinking about exploring a range of materials in relation to signs but after finishing the stop signs I felt like I was in a good place and was really enjoying the sewing process so decided to just continue exploring and pushing this material. With this next idea I also moved slightly away from road signs as my main focus, choosing a wet floor sign as a subject. I'm still using road signs but have opened my focus to more types of directional sign, like health and safety signs. This change happened purely because I wanted to make this floppy wet floor sign, I didn't yet really know why I wanted to make it but kept picturing it and in my head it looked good and effective, so I decided to make it.
I took a walk around a few floors of the building and collected several wet floor signs that weren't in use. I found that three of them were slightly different in design to one another so took all three back up to the studio to properly look at, (I did return them all shortly after). I got opinions from a few classmates on which shape was liked best to recreate and it was unanimous so that made the decision easy. To create the patten for this piece i drew straight around the sign id chosen onto two large pieces of sugar paper, I cut one out as a template and worked out and wrote the pattern on the other piece. The pattern was relatively simple, consisting of four sign shaped panels and four long rectangular staps, each piece with a one inch seam allowance. When drawing out my idea I had already decided i didn't want the whole sign to be made out of yellow fabric just certain details, so chose calico as the base as its neutral in colour and easily accessible. Although, I found looking for the right yellow fabric to be a task, all of the regular fabric rolls where either lemon or mustard in colour and although the felt they had was the right shade it just didn't look right. I walked further through the shop out of the haberdashery section and found the perfect fabric in the cleaning section, yellow dusters. This to me was the perfect choice, the material itself was the perfect shade of yellow and has a soft but imperfect texture to it. I also found this fabric to just click so neatly with my subject matter for the ideas it could imply. A widely house hold known cleaning product used to recreate a cleaning sign, a cleaning product that still holds some ideas of the traditional domesticated house wife in her pinni polishing the mantel.
I started the sewing process at home because at this point I was still only familiar and confident with my own sewing machine. I cut all the pieces out in calico but had to embellish the front and back panels before I could begin sewing the actual piece together. For this piece I decided all the embellishment would be hand sewn in a simple blanket stitch and the actual pieces be sewn together on the machine. I soon realised when I began the first yellow rectangle that I would have to alter my initial design further, opting for text only on the front panel and changing it to an original caution logo rather than the banana peel as it was just much easier. When manipulating the yellow material I lost the classic red edging of the duster so decided to to try still give the idea of the by using a red thread in the same shade to attach them. I also chose a specific black thread for all the details, A vintage terylene mending thread, advertised towards women at the time for mending there husbands socks, so I thought it fitting. The yellow rectangles took the longest but once they were finished the rest of the process was quick and simple; Sewing two of the sign shaped panels together, attaching the staps, then flipping it the right way round and stuffing it. This all went well with the first side but then I somehow broke my sewing machine. So I had one side complete but had to wait to see if id be able to figure out and use a different machine in the studio to finish it. Id never used another machine before and the one I had and learnt on was a very basic old singer but I managed to find the manual online for the one in the studio and surprisingly figured it out quickly. I repeated the same process on the last side, tide them together and it was all done.
I am super pleased with how this piece turned out, its fun but effective. I feel like with this piece I've now found the right balance between home made and just messy. Although I removed the banana peel imagery I believe there still a humorous aspect to it, a humorous curiosity just from the change of material from hard plastic to floppy material. It also feels cute to look at, a slightly anthropomorphic quality to it with the little feet and the way it slouches, it has a character feel to it, also the bows. It was pointed out to me that the bows are reminiscent of myself, bows are a style choice I enjoy and frequently adorn whether in clothing, accessories or just decoratively. This personal style liking unconsciously made its way into my artwork also, first just as an easy way of attaching things but now I've noticed it, its something I think I like being present in the work. I do think without contextual knowledge of the work it might be hard to fully decipher any meaning other than just strange humour so that's something to think about when thinking about where or how id present them.
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