I decided to experiment with mod roc so I could use it as an alternative for a possible background idea when making my map pieces

just going to toss a little notice that some of you might find my explanations a little daunting but I promise im ok 😉 I didn’t want to go into too much detail but I hope this gets the meaning of my project across more.

looking into my personal history with Nottingham and how I find it living here, in a sense I’ve sort of felt restricted to living here. my upbringing in this city and in my neighbourhood was rough in a way that we constantly struggled as a family with a bunch of life changing situations. we’ve faced a lot of hardships and challenges, some that even to this day we still face and we cant just move away from the problem because we have to stay in Nottingham to settle it, so its put us in a place where we view Nottingham in a not so positive view because we feel tied to it. we know it would be a nice city to live in if our circumstances were different, but Nottingham is a reminder of all the unfortunate things that’s occurred. So the meaning behind this project is quite darkening when you know the context behind it. And my aim really is to try interpret that visually but in a more lightening way to not give the meaning away so obviously without the context, which I think I have done so far.

I’ll talk about the meaning in choice of the materials I chose to develop with first before I explain further with the process. So because of the restricted feelings I have to Nottingham, I decided to use a material that I think could link to restraint and that was wire. When I think of wire as a material, I think of wire mess fences and barbed wire, which both have a purpose of keeping things in or out. The wire I’ve been using is a metal aluminium wire, metal is a strong and usually heavy material, so I wanted to depict that and use wire as a visual way to place my views on Nottingham and what the effects the area has had on me and my family.

Moving onto the process of using a hand sewing technique. there’s something about hand sewing that to me gives whatever it is you’re making, more meaning. When hand sewing, a lot of consideration and patience has to go into it when you’re doing it. Patience and consideration are things I’ve always had to think about and skills I developed whilst growing up as a kid. was sewing my map I came across some difficulties and worked around them, and there were moments where I felt annoyed with what I was doing. And when I think about the process of me developing the sewn map, I was thinking that the process in short is how I could explain my thoughts from my upbringing at that time in less detail.

I actually noted down some of my thoughts whilst doing my map, these are shown in the image below. I rewrote them because the original notes were a mess.

you could say that the map outcome is a relation to my outcome as a person. visibly its an interesting piece but also confusing to look at. my thoughts have gone into the making of the work and i would say that its a small extracted part of me that I’ve created from my views and thoughts on my personal history with Nottingham and how I’ve dealt with it.

i hope this give more of an explanation to my work, it was kind of hard to think about and word it in a way you could understand without making it confusing.

This experiment was made using black thread and another type of dissolvable fabric. The difference is that this one is more plastic like and can dissolve in cold water whereas the other dissolves in hot water. And on the other leg I used a simple fine liner to draw the map lines out.

Sewing into this material seemed more complicated and difficult because it would crease easier and any pencil guide lines would wear off because it was handled too much.

The idea of this was to test out the fabric and see whether sewing into would be a good idea, however I feel like it would be best to draw onto this fabric instead and because I don’t have a sewing machine it would be very time consuming and technical.

Taking forward ‘my map’, I decided to sew the intricate map onto a fabric that can dissolve using black thread. The map took me a total of 5 days to complete due to me having to hand sew, and measures to just over A3 scale.

I decided against dissolving the fabric because I didnt have acess to a sewing machine. Therefore the tread map would just fall apart once I dissolved the material.

What I want to do next is to consider my background for any presentation. At this point of the project, I still haven’t finalised an idea for my final piece, so that’s my aim for this week.

I’m still interesting in using the human form with my work, so I might set up a backdrop so I can take some images of people being included with the stuff I create. And I could consider making the backdrop the final outcome if my idea doesn’t work out?

These pages are for me to grasps some ideas on how to move forward in the project, I’m interested in developing around the idea of using the body with my maps. I think it makes an interesting concept to consider, but I also want create something that can be displayed without a body too.

So that’s my target this week, to produce something using my maps and the dissolvable fabrics, sewing with both fabric thread and fine wire. I might decide to dissolve the material or I might choose to keep it as it is. I will be posting the process and any decision making of the work as I do so.

So these are my sketchbook pages so far, I am working towards completing my artist research now, which I hope to upload next for my sketchbook update.

experimenting with wire to create map like forms