Collagraph Sculptures

As previously mentioned, we created some cardboard collagraphs to incorporate in later work. The designs made during that session feature within these sculptures. I photocopied my designs in black and white (which was my preference, I could've used it in colour if I wanted). The paper version of my designs got cut up and applied to at least one side of each bit of cardboard that made up my sculptures.

The plan was to create a group of sculptures that were not only abstract, but would resultantly abstract the collagraphs since they were being cut up. My goal was to try to make something that could be looked at from any angle.

Overall, I made three different sculptures. I found that as I moved from one sculpture onto the other, I was switching up little things based upon how  I felt about the previous one. Here's my thoughts about each:

• Sculpture One: By far, this was my least favourite of the trio. To create this one, I chose to use the shapes from my "Owens" Rorschach blotting and created my sculpture by slotting the parts together. Since I was trying to cut smooth, curved shapes out of a thick corrugated cardboard, I really struggled getting the smooth lines I needed for the overall sculpture to look neat. I would've benefitted from using a thinner type of card, as it would've took less effort to cut through, and the result would look cleaner. Also, I didn't really consider how it might look from different angles since I was mainly working from one, and it makes it look a little boring.
• Sculpture Two: This one is a vast improvement from the first. I began to improvise rather than relying so heavily on previous designs, which gave me a lot more freedom to add whatever I wanted. I kept the shapes pretty angular, which created quite a dramatic look. Additionally, I kept alternating the angle that I was looking at it from, rotating and flipping the sculpture as I worked to get a better idea of how it looked. The sculpture itself is relatively simple, with quite a bit of the visual interest coming back to the collagraph imagery. This also worked against me - since I only covered one side of the card, it meant that some angles do look a little less impressive, though not quite as drastically disappointing as the first sculpture. It would've helped to have covered both sides of some of the sculpture to help prevent this.
• Sculpture Three: Eventually, thanks to my previous experimentation, I was able to construct something I was generally happy with. I kept the dramatic, angular look, and I do think that this piece, from some angles, somewhat resembles origami. I continues to work from various angles, and as I gradually built up this piece, I checked the overall "balance" with the imagery on it. Doing so let me keep an eye on which areas in particular would be the most exposed and require imagery, and which areas should be left plain to give the eyes a break. My only issue with this sculpture is that I used thick cardboard again, and I think that the exposed corrugated areas, although crisp and straight in this design, takes away from the overall design. This would've easily been avoided, had I stuck to using the thinner, grey card.

To take a look at the sculptures, feel free to download the PDF to see some pictures of each, taken from four different angles.