First Week of Plaster Course

Monday Morning we started at 9. Our tutor for this course is a ceramic artist based in Oslo. She would be with us Monday and Tuesday this week and the rest of the week was to be self directed until her return next Monday for the full week. Monday she outlined to course, where there would be 3 projects running. One was to form a couple of objects sculpted out of plaster by hand, to then be used to make a mould from. The second was to create a mould from either a ready made object or something we had made from another material. The third Im still not sure on as all the written instructions are in Norwegian, I think its has something to do with elements?

After a morning of explanation, demonstration of how to make a mould and how to sculpt plaster, in the afternoon we had a try at sculpting plaster ourselves. There are several ways of doing this carving into dry plaster that had formed in a container, removing the plater from the container before it has set and removing as much material while it is still wet and using condoms to create more organic forms.

Tuesday we had more demonstrations and experimentation. Our tutor told us that she wanted us to concentrate on the couple forms for the rest of the week and on Monday we would look at peoples experiments with carving and sketches for ideas of relationships.

I didn't like to plasters surface texture once it had been carved but did like the smooth surface given by the condom. Lene and I went on a hunt to get free condoms from a student bar, allowing me to do lots of experiments. I tried hanging them, wrapping with string when wet, when dry, hanging from various points and turning in on itself. I also tried with other flexible plastics like small bags and ice cube bags. With my first attempt with the ice cube bags all the cubes came out separately. The second time i tried to keep them all intact and was very care when removing the plastic, they had curved from how i had hung them while drying which i really like. I also tried plaster in other things such as, polystyrene packaging, baby's cloths, neck ties and bent bicycle tyres. When thinking about couples, i leaned more towards juxtaposition and opposites within objects and the relationship of puzzle pieces. I want to work with maybe water and rock and the coastline of Bergen as a puzzle piece.