Maps and Journeys: Evaluation

Evaluation 

When beginning this project, I found it quite difficult because I was jumping from one idea to another. Documenting the process of how a bronze sculpture is made through a series of photographs presented in a book.

I had a hard time starting this project off, not knowing where or who will be working with a sculpture, so I sent out a few emails to the Art department wanting help with this project. Not knowing if anyone was going to reply back however having been lucky I got a reply back from someone named Chloe Napier a third year fine art student who has kindly agreed to let me work with her. Documenting this process has been exhausting because the casting of a bronzed sculpture has to go through various different stages, I missed some of the different stages the bronze sculpture had to go through due to having classes at the same times, however I managed my time and worked with the photos I had. 

I found myself documenting this process very enjoyable and learnt a lot about bronze casting along the way, I also found this interesting to document and has definitely inspired possible future works of mine.  it has been fun collaborating with Chloe and getting to know about bronze casting, as I had to work hard and progress faster I consistently kept messaging Chloe if she could come in on certain days to work on the sculpture so I could get the necessary photos I needed to progress further with the project. However  I found myself changing ideas again from deciding to go from a Constantine fold out book to a A4 landscape oriented book, once I had established that the book was going to be landscape oriented, it was easier to develop my idea further.   

     

Because this project is a book documentation of an bronze casting sculpture, a fairly simple straightforward process, although it's a book layout it's about the content of the work that I will be presenting  that will be the  important aspect of this project, and how sometimes less is more and effective. Furthermore what makes this project a little bit more interesting is that fact that sculpture (Torso) shattered and left a massive hole in the centre, this unexpected turn of events made this project exciting, showing how things never turn out the way you expect especially within a journey as the outcome is unpredictable. 

I am pleased with my outcome and believe the content of my project is strong. However being in a digital based course I should have done something digital based that would have best represented this process in a much more exciting way, I know I chose to do a book presentation however I feel something digital or film based would have been better.

  

  

Gallery set up

 

In terms of the gallery space needed if my work gets chosen, where I've outlined in red on the gallery plan as you enter the gallery just until you get to the Centre of the gallery onto your right side of wall where its labeled 'D' next to the existing wall I will place a plinth next to the wall where my book will be displayed. Next to the plinth on the right hand side on to the existing wall I screw the sculpture on to the wall, however I am not sure weather I am allowed to screw into the existing wall or weather I need an small artificial wall. Which is something I need to speak to Richard about.

 

So in all the space required for my gallery set up is very simple and minimalistic and doesn't require a lot of technical or DIY set up.

Book:Putting it all together

Having designed the book in Adobe InDesign, i will then get it printed and made professionally online through a website called blurb an American book making company. 

Text - because I want this book to look professional I used 'Ariel Regular' style font and kept all the texts centered of page, at size 24 having the texts in small caps and subscripted as I liked the look of style and thought it suited this book layout.



Layout - In my previous post' designing the book' you can see I had the page displayed as an A4 portrait, having looked through the  photos that I have taken majority of them are landscape so decided to change the layout to landscape instead as this would be the easier option and would believe having the book landscape would look better. The initial design of the book I was going to have the book in a repetitive style with text on the left page centered and image on the right I was going to keep this repetitive style throughout the book, but thought this would bore people viewing the book, instead with some of the final photos being portrait I decided to mix the book design by having the photos in a series of triptychs on some of the pages and on other pages have continuous images to add excitement to the book, rather then a keep a simple text image layout which people would get bored of.


Language -  In terms of the tone of the text within the book I went for a more direct tone and chose the text to be written as if you were reading instructions. The reason for this is because John D Joyce who bronzes the sculptures gave me a handbook called 'bronze casting' having looked through this handbook the way it has been written and how its a detailed and constructed handbook on the process of sculpt making, and how this has influenced my choice of language within my book.
the coloring of the texts I will be keeping it a simple black color. throughout the pages of the book I've used 3 to 4 lines of text as sometimes less is more.

Originally I was going to have the book in a Constantine layout with the pages extending out, however after consideration I changed it to a standard A4 landscape book. The reason for this is because rather then concentrating on the books looks and aesthetics I want the book to focus more on the process/journey of a how a sculpture is made and the various stages it has to go through as i really wanted to capture this and the intense intricate details the sculpture goes through after having been bronzed.
 I still need to do a thorough research into the book cover design as I want something that will suit and reflect this sculpture process, and want the book to be visually appealing so would need to do more research into this weather I want the book to be embossed, debossed, a hard cover with image wrap these are what I need to consider and research into.