After creating my small maquette, I started working on my bigger piece. I really liked how it looked as a small experiment, and thought that it being in a larger scale would work even better.
To get the shape right, much like my smaller piece, I used my large cushions as a base and wrapped thin, modelling wire around it, making sure to wrap the ends round each other so they would be secure, however once I removed the cushion it would end up looking and feeling really loose, and wouldn't keep it's shape. I managed to move the wire strands around so that they would lock in place and keep it's shape. It took a couple of attempts wrapping wire around the cushion to get the right shape and firmness. I did want to use my hot glue gun to help secure the ends together but after using it to fix something else I wasn't sure it would be stable enough to hold wire, and the glue kept drying quickly. I managed to secure the wire without the use of glue luckily, and once I had placed the filling inside the wire shell, it because more of a solid piece.
The filling completely changed how it looked, and it became more sculptural than it did without it. The wire around the filling really contrasts with the soft filling on the inside, and really plays with the idea of inappropriate touch. Again, I really liked this idea of using different materials to create soft looking cushions. I definitely want to keep developing this idea into the next unit and make a series of cushions out of different materials with text possibly? I was thinking about placing scraps of fabric in between the wire as a fragment of some sort of functioning object, but I tried that in the smaller maquette and it didn't look right, but perhaps on a bigger scale it might work a little better.
I do want to document these in a comfy setting such as my room, which I will do in the coming weeks, I want to document them with my clay piece. It will be interesting to see how the environment changes their reading, and it will be interesting to compare it with the shots I took of it in a gallery setting when I worked with Beth in Project Space 1. I think documenting them in different environments really add to the piece, and adds to its context. The idea of the cushion becomes more stronger when it is seen acting like a cushion. I might think about using materials such as wax, rubber or plaster in the next unit, and display them on a sofa perhaps? I do want to add text to these, and I did get the idea of combining embroidery with them to bring back the materiality that is lost through the solid materials.