Rachel Oates – United Kingdom

Lara

Category: Modern

Description

My inspiration for this piece was that I wanted to take a man-made complex material, such as plastics, & use it to recreate something beautiful & elegant from the natural world like a simple flower, in doing so showing how the man-made world & nature can come together.

I wanted to keep the piece monotone to keep the simplicity of the design but also to show things aren’t always black & white, look closely & there is the blending of two, giving a myriad of tones of grey, silver, light & dark. Life’s not always black & white but a fusion of the two.

To create this piece I used some traditional methods & materials such as the blocking of the Buckram but I also applied the blocking technique to the Thermoplastic to create the flower base. To completely the majority of the piece it was over to the new materials & techniques. The thermoplastic requiring the use of the hot air gun to shape & give form to the individual petals & leaves, completed with the use of acrylic spray paints.

Each petal of the flower is individual in its form, no two have the same curves or paint design, but they interlock & fuse together to create the one work.

Materials

• Worbla TranspArt Thermoplastic for petals, flower centre & leaf detail on reverse.
• Acrylic Spray paints
• Strip Spadona Quills
• Scuba printed fabric for covering the hat base
• Buckram for forming the hat base

Techniques

• Hot air gun for forming the shapes of the Petals, Flower centre, Leaves out of the thermoplastic.
• Free hand spray painting for the Petals, Flower Centre, Leaves, Using Acrylic Spray Paints.
• Hair Iron for twisting & shaping the quills.
• Blocking of the thermoplastic to create the Flower Centre.
• Blocking of the buckram for the hat base.
• Sundries, Petersham Ribbon, Elastic, thread.