Stoppages, Take Three!

Once again, I am here writing about Duchamp, readymades, and stoppages! As I mentioned in my Stoppage Sculpture post, I used my stoppages to create a sculptural cardboard piece.

Our professor, Nikki Moser, then assigned us to go even further with the project, allowing us to use any material we felt fit our cardboard sculptures. We were allowed to create a new sculpture as well but we had to use our original stoppages. For this next phase of the project, I knew I wanted to work with wood and found materials, just as Duchamp worked with found materials for his readymades. I knew I wanted to incorporate my ceramic fish I made last semester in Eva Polizi’s Ceramics I course as well. I never found an ideal way to display my fish and as I worked on this project, I felt I could somehow incorporate them. After countless hours of thinking, planning, and creating, I came to this conclusion:

The frame of the piece contains my stoppages all of which are wood. For my top layer, I kept the wood showing on purpose because I wanted to establish a difference from the sides and bottom of the piece and because I love the way raw wood looks. For me, it adds this modest authentic element. I painted the wood with acrylic copper colored paint because the paint gives off this vibrant metallic look. I incorporated a glass bottle that I obtained at a Renaissance Fair several years ago. I do not want to say the glass bottle was necessarily “taking up space”  in my room but it was just another thing I had in my room. I added the glass bottle specifically to correlate with the bottle shape I saw with the excess wood I had leftover.

Of course glitter was added to this project as well! My ceramic fish were not glazed on the back since one side needs to be unglazed when firing. I knew I did not want to paint the back of them and that is when the glitter came in. I did not think the glitter would hold to the fish either but it did! I was beyond pleased! The shine from the glitter go hand in hand with the shine from the copper paint and glass bottle.

Overall, I am quite pleased with this outcome. I love the materials and colors I used especially my ceramic fish because I have been thinking long and hard for a while now to how I was going to display them. I am glad they finally have a purpose and home!