This week we had another workshop with Tim. We mostly focused on the past, a very distant past. I mean 500,000 YEARS AGO PAST. So he brought some mud from that time and gave us different kinds of seeds. We could do anything we wanted with them, so I simply ate them. At the beginning he also asked us to bring an item from the past that means something to us. I brought a 50 PLN bank note which my parents gave me about 2 years ago, so I will have cash when I come back to Poland and there’s an emergency for example I have to quickly buy a ticket, but they don’t take cards. I realized how much polish money loses its value. It was much more worthwhile than these 2 years ago, then I could definitely buy more things than now. Inflation huh? The whole workshop was just a big brainstorming and trying new things. He told us to not focus on our current project and try something different from it. The purpose of it was to get inspired by something new, something that we wouldn’t do normally. We could use anything from the creative arts studio, and after we will find something we had to go further with it. I was browsing one of the rooms of the Creative Arts studio, and I found moulds which we used in the previous year in the first semester (I’m not sure if it was the first semester). The one for sweet potato stamps. I noticed that there are also numbers in the set so I took it and I also found some clay to play with.
I decided to start counting with the clay numbers with I got from using moulds. The day that became my starting point was the best day of my life. I’ve already mentioned it lots of times but the best day of my life is when I got my first cat – my animal soulmate. The date is 10/10/206. Then I made another day because these days were the time when I looked at the growth of the most amazing creature that I’ve ever met. He was my little seed that I took care of hoping that he will grow healthy and happy. My idea was to put the dates on something. The first thing that came to my mind was a chair. Why? That’s a good question. I think it just reminds me of the days when my cat lay on a chair at the dinner table in my living room.
I and Miranda talked in the tutorial about my idea of a huge head with mirrors in the eyes. She told me that she did plaster casting many many times before and that on big scale it’s not as easy as I expected it to be. If I would like to make the work human-like but more lumpy and imperfect – it would be recommended for me to try it, but when my idea for the face is to be clean and smooth and realistic it might be super hard to do. Also, I can face many p[problems that will make me angry and mad. I don’t want to go through it again so I’ve decided to do something different. We decided to focus on what I have – on a mask that I made. The idea of multiple masks came to our minds, so I decided to go to the Arts Centre and take a mask with me a couple of days later. I liked the idea of using many masks to cover some spaces like walls or mirrors, but I was still open to other ideas. I carried the mask with me the whole tile and I checked where it looks good and how it would work with the space in the Arts Centre. I wasn’t sure…
But then I noticed that there is a lift. I went there and I fell in love with the space!!!! The lighting is so perfect and as for a lift – the space is cramped. I want to cover all the walls and mirrors with masks of my face that look exactly the same. Every mask will not differ from the other one. Someone will feel watched while in the lift. I think that it will make people uncomfortable, but that’s my intention. All around you – faces looking at you and seeing your every move? are u uncomfortable? Maybe you just don’t feel comfortable with yourself. Are you scared of being seen?