Drip
Explorations of materials and processes- Wood carving, Mould making, Plaster Casting
Basswood is really soft and its grain pattern is faint. Hence, organic and flowy forms would be easy to carve. I also wanted to make sure that the wood carving itself could be repurposed into something useful. Eventually, I decided to go the artistic route and create a clock inspired by the work of surrealist artist, Salvador Dali.
The vacuum forming process was straightforward. Since my basswood form had a lot of complex, organic curves, I used Polyethylene plastic to make sure it captures all the details. After a couple of failed attempts, I had to go back and add a steeper draft around my carving, drill a hole in the center to let the air out of the cavity and increase the distance between the drips to avoid webbing.
In the end, I was able to get 4 (almost) successful moulds. The little bit of webbing that remained between the drips was unavoidable since the material was too close together.
Casting plaster was a fun (and very messy) process but presented a new set of challenges. The drips that I thinned down to make the vacuum forming easier, ended up being very brittle when cast in plaster and were breaking off as I got them out of the mould. In an attempt to minimize this, I went over the thinner areas with a heat gun to modify the mould to be larger but it did not help much.
For the first set of modifications, I mostly focused on adding materials like fabric, wire, and wax crayons to the plaster before it cured. Next, I tried blocking out some areas with clay on the mould before pouring the plaster to add details like hands to my clock face. And there were a couple more attempts just to get a simple form that did not break off. I can say 5 out of my 9 casts were successful. This experience taught me to make sure I test out the properties of the material I will be working with and then decide on a form that works well with those properties.
After a long, long clean-up session....
