There is a definate theme in most the work i have created in my first year of university, the repetition, squareness and frigidity in the gridding, collecting, weaving, etc has accounted for a large majority of my current art practice.
However natural forms is something else i have been exploring, totally reclused from my other work and the complete opposite of the above. Experimentation with pressing natural occurances between cotton fiber hand-made paper and tissue paper was something i became obsessed with for a little while. The ghostly appearance of nature when it is imprisoned or being preserved in between paper really interested me, like it was something which was alive and wanting to escape but couldnt. Other times when im in the process of creating something like this, the idea of safety blankets and keeping something preserved and eternally safe pops into my head as well.
The first eight photographs are using tissue paper, with dead leaves, ivy and red berries as the natural forms in these examples. I also had a play around with combining my other gridded work with this which can be seen in the gridded red berries and pomegranate seeds.
Further down, the photographs underneath those are using cotton fibre hand-made paper, which i think works better. This was using rose buds, pomegranate seeds and other seeds i could find, which meant as they dried out the natural dyes in the seeds and buds infused the paper, causing a natural colouring of the paper. When the pieces were tilted on the side, the bumpy texture of the paper reminded me of snow settling on objects which i liked a lot better than the tissue paper, although the opaqueness of the latter was an advantage.
Completely smothering the seeds in thick fibrous paper took away the identity of what was beneath which is another aspect i like, and since making them, some of the seeds and rosebuds have fallen out and cracked away underneath, leaving just the imprinted mould of what used to be there but no longer is.
Here are some pictures below to show the exploration of this.
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