Project 8 Stage 2 Experimenting with Structures

The idea of this group of exercises is to 'expore different possibilities, concentrating on developing interesting structures, colour combinations or contrasts of texture.'

Exercise 1:

It took some practice to get the two sheets to sit comfortably and squarely together.

Varying the size and shapes of the strips...

Narrow in one direction
Wide in another

Straight in one direction
Getting narrower in the other

Straight in one direction
Spiral in the other

Experimenting with printed words
didn't work well

I tried various combinations of tissue and coloured paper, with and without
gaps between the strips.
I find the way the colours of the tissue interact interesting and want to
try out other combinations and patterns in future.

Wavy lines in both directions.
This makes interesting shapes
at the intersections so I did
the same with different colours...

Undyed recycled paper and
red linen showing the wavy shapes
made by wavy lines in both directions.

Using different materials........

I crushed the strips of paper in one direction, leaving the other direction
uncrushed (although the paper wasn't really flat being packing paper)
I like what this did to the texture. This kind of roughness appeals to me
in an organic kind of way.

The textured strips are fashion fabric treated to look like leather,
and the matt strips are thick tracing paper.
The contrast works better in real life than in this photo- accentuating
the textured surface, and contrasting the subtle shine/matt.
I also like the rather stylised look of the alternating widths.

I cut strips from the thin textured plastic of some overshoes
that I was given for an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.
These are interwoven with plain white card.
Not immediately inspiring!

Following on from my experiments with tissue paper,
I wanted to try out the effect of other semi-transparent materials
This one is the sellophane wrapping from baby bel cheese,
interwoven with strips of linen. The red of the sellphane
seems to be much darker and more intense when it's over
the linen. I wanted to try it over a lighter colour...

...which had unexpectedly little effect.
I cut out one area to see the effect and think it would be
well worth exploring this more too,
but I have run out of time for this exercise.

I have been reading about Anne Sutton during this exercise. She seems to have worked within relatively narrow rules (as this exercise was), which allowed her to experiment with the few degrees of freedom she had with originality. I found that the restrictions of this exercise did that for me too, channelling my exploration into areas I may otherwise have passed over quickly unawares.

Ann Sutton 2003 by Diane Sheenan & Susan Tebby pub. The Crafts Council in association wth Lund Humphries. ISBN 0 85331 885