As an A2 art student at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College I am currently working on a project, ‘Art of the Lost Words’ , a project aimed at reintroducing words that are either no longer used at all in modern language, or are slowly in decline. The overall aim of the project is to prevent these words from being lost altogether and to bring them back into common use through the medium of art. The word I chose was ‘Scathefire’, meaning very destructive fire, part of the project brief involved creating origami models relating to the chosen word. I elected to make paper trees for my origami and made a large number in order to compose a ‘tree forest’. After photographing them together I decided to reintroducing my word back into my work, by setting fire to, and burning my trees, creating an imitation of my version of a ‘forest fire’.
In order to try and bring back my chosen word another element of the project requires a ‘Graphic Product’ to be made using images and photos from earlier in the project in order to carry on the theme and make it flow. The function of the graphic product is to spread the use of the word by mass distribution. In order to do this I decided upon a CD album cover, bearing the band name ‘The Scathefire’, using an image from my burning trees I ‘photo shopped’ it to make it more exciting and bold. Incorporating a lighting strike as is the cause of many forest fires.
On completion of my graphic product I then resolved to explore the theme of ‘environment’ and issues that surround this topic; using work that I had previously studied gave me inspiration for this area. After looking at work by ‘Andrew Tift’ a painting of a car factory onto a body panel, my first step in the direction of environment was to source a car body panel that was to be scrapped. I then proceeded to paint an image that would be the opposite of the damage that cars inflict upon the environment; the object I chose to signify this was a tree.
I also decided to have an attempt at pencil carving with inspiration from an artist previously looked at with the theme of environmental art. Dalton Ghetti creates highly intricate sculpture out of nothing more than an old pencil, shaping the lead into amazing shapes and objects. In my attempts I copied his idea of the alphabet and after many trials with broken lead I finished with the letter ‘L’ and the Letter ‘F’.
After this was done I decided to reverse the roles of my work, instead of painting an image of a tree on a car, I painted a car onto a piece of wood. I wanted to create a highly realistic and detailed image that could almost be lifelike. First I had to scout out a vehicle that has a distinguished shape that is common and instantly recognisable as ideally this piece should be viewed from a distance and therefore the shape and lines are important. It would also be imperative to get the shape and shading of the vehicle correct or the whole piece would look wrong. After looking around a local car park I settled upon a ‘Peugeot 206’ for its significant shape and front grille section.
After doing both of these pieces I realised that I had theme running through my work, painting on things that are not necessarily painted on. I therefore went about looking for things that are not normally considered as canvases, the next item I decided upon was a television which I am currently working on painting a scene that includes a tree.
