FINAL EVALUATION - SURVIVAL

originally I began with a different idea to the one that I ended with. I first I decided that I was going to continue my theme of motherhood and doll making babies et cetera, and create something about the beginning of life, and that spark of life that awakes us and gives us our first breath, our first heartbeat.

So I began by designing a womb vase and sort of fallopian tube with sperm cell baby had inside of it, the sperm cell baby heads were to have closed eyes to represent that they had not had that spark of life with them up yet, and the baby in the womb vase would have open eyes to represent it being awake and alive.

As the project developed it became increasingly obvious that I would not be able to create each element of the sculpture in time for the final show.

Because of this I had to make some cutbacks on the design. I decided to not make the Perspex window into the wooden plinth, which would have created a bit more light which would have hopefully flowed down towards the sperm cell baby heads. This is not an important visual aspect of the sculpture so I didn’t feel too bad about leaving it out.

Another thing I decided to leave out was the silicone sperm cell baby had sculptures that were supposed to be suspended from string inside the plinth, because of delays in the gallon of Eckel Flex 20 silicone I had ordered, it would not be there on time to mould the silicone baby heads, although it was originally supposed to arrive a week before the show it ended up arriving a week later.

To compensate for this I printed off pictures of the baby heads and stuck them inside, the plinth but didn’t look very good and others agreed that I should remove the images because the tape looked tacky. I decided to keep the images in and add more images suspended on bent wire so they look like they were free-floating through the centre of the plinth, the original images are mostly covered in dark coloured tissue paper and black bin bag so that it didn’t look too two-dimensional, and inside looked more naturalistic and gross to tie in well with the other features of the sculpture, such as the outer shell of the wooden plinth and the womb vase.

Although the sculpture would have looked markedly better if it had the free-floating silicone sperm cell baby heads inside, I’m not too unhappy with how it turned out and everybody seemed to like it at the show. I am pleased with how the womb vase ended up, but for me I think that the plinth could have been better, next time I will have more well planned out alternatives for things go wrong or arrive or are delivered late.

When I had almost completed my sculpture, I had a think about the overall theme of it. And for some reason it just didn’t seem to fit, it didn’t have enough meaning. I wanted my sculpture to be meaningful and I wanted it to be relatable to everyone.

I decided to add a quote to the sculpture, the quote about survival. I’ve always found it quite interesting the fact that millions of sperm go to reach the egg but only one makes it. I remember hearing this the first time at a sex education class at first school and thinking it was amazing, that we are all born winners we are also strong, every single one of us.

You you you So that is the theme that I decided to take forward into my sculpture, if I had coiled the vase in time to have it varnished and set I would have maybe added the court to the outer face of the vase, but then I don’t think it would have had as much impact to be honest. Having it there cut out plainly on a square paper, in black and white draws you in side of the sculpture, it makes you look closer which I think is a good feature.

I believe the show was an overall success, I had a lot of fun. And my family were there to, my grandad my Annie and my brother, and of course my children. I think it was a lovely show to end the year on.