Finally an idea came to me a little while before I met up with Luke on Tuesday.
We met up on the stone picnic tables outside the Main Uni building by the wharf, even better we were surrounded by trees on such a warm sunny day – perfect picturesque surroundings to tell Luke of my new idea 🙂
You may remember that I (for some reason or other) have a thing about trees. Well years ago I watched a home decoration program and they used this most wonderful wallpaper by Cole & Son called “Wood”;
Fig. 1 Cole & Son - Wood
This wallpaper got me thinking. Plus the fact that Conan suggested that we perform the piece in Studio X, a small studio in the LPAC that has recently been redecorated with black floor and black curtains. A black box. What if we made white trees like the ones on Cole & Son’s wallpaper in Studio X, to create a mini forest – bringing the outside, in. The images and the MP3 players hang from the high branches as like before. White paper mache miniature copies of some of the statues from around Lincoln such as the Arboretum Lion and the Lincoln Imp hiding in between the trees in the wood and some clever use of coloured lighting, maybe even some pretty fairy lights. A fantasy of Lincoln, the hidden version or if Lincoln was a real forest, a forest of buildings and statues?
I truly believe that it can be not only beautiful yet visually enchanting and inspirational. Multi-coloured lights shining onto the white trees and models, giving depth and a fairy-like picture to draw the attention of the audience to influence them to go deeper in the forest and search for more.
Luke even added an idea to this, “What if the trees represented the buildings of Lincoln? Like, the base of the Cathedral growing a forming the top of the tree.” Clever boy.
As I mentioned my resent post, we discussed with Conan about our piece.
Conan had a lot to say about it especially about his disagreement about our tree and using the paper mache materials in a different way. But we believe that the tree is or focal point, the element that attracts the audience at the very beginning and engages them to interact with it.
As I said before, the tree represents to norm that is taken for granted and also the life of Lincoln.
So to link the two points together; Conan’s objection and idea, with our significance and original aim, I came across this idea and rather fond memory.
Clive Kay.
Fig. 1 Clive Kay & his wife Enriqueta
Clive Kay is a self taught artist born in Zimbabwe. Later in life he moved to South Africa then a year later to England where he became highly influenced by David Shepard’s work, and now resides in Canada.
He is fascinated with wild life, especially from the African plains, and thus commissioned by the Walt Disney Company to paint the Collector’s edition of “The Tree of Life” for the opening of The Animal Kingdom park in the Spring of 1998. This is when I first became interested with Kay. I met him in person when I went to the Animal Kingdom the week it opened and became overwhelmed by the beauty of the “Tree of Life”, to the point when I had my parents purchase a print of his painting, lucky for us, he was there too and he signed it for us. He is truly an inspiration, even at that time for a child of 6.
As you can see in these images below, I took when I went the Animal Kingdom in Florida, the animals are carved into to the wood of tree (admittedly some are caved then place on the tree), maybe for our piece we can do something like this, not as busy, but a few elements of Lincoln that we miss, like the architecture, could be moulded into the tree and become part of the visual element, maybe even part of the slightly tactile element too. It certainly doesn’t go unrecognised at the Animal Kingdom, this could even attract the audience better here too.
On Friday 9th March, Luke and I met up with Conan and told him about our project; “Making the Unseen of the Seen, Seen” The Lost Histories and Thoughts of Lincoln.
As part of the meeting, Conan gave us feedback and personal opinions on what he feels would work better for our piece.
Feedback ETC
The slight bumps in the road…
For starters he didn’t like the idea of the tree, he seems to think that there is no real need for it, and considering that we don’t have a busking licence for the location yet, (even though we have thought of a backup location since finding out this problem) he thinks that it would be better if we mounted all the “Leaves” on the walls of Studio X in the LPAC like an exhibition gallery.
We feel that, the tree is the symbol of the norm that is taken for granted, the life of Lincoln, made and placed infront of the audience in such a way that it can’t be missed, causing them to interested and to go up to the piece in genuine intrigue, not forced to walk into a building and stare at a load of pictures on a wall, that isn’t interesting at all, we want them to be hands on and involved with the piece, make them question and realize what they are missing to influence them to physically go out and search for the images in person – to see the real Lincoln.
At first Conan didn’t understand the importance of the paper mache element, but by this point we had already sourced ALL the materials for the project and paid through our own pockets. Sadly, we have no real budget because we have no outside funding, only a little money that we have set aside ourselves.
So instead, Conan advised that we think about making something smaller, something to do with Lincoln, what that is we won’t know until as he said, we interview people for the audio part of the project – the main element he liked, even though he would prefer three times more stories than we were thinking about for the project.
Also he wants us to focus our idea more on a smaller space than the entire of Lincoln, even though our main research so far has been mostly between the area around the Cathedral, down Steep Hill, through the High Street to around St Mary de Wigford by the Train Station, with also a few hidden places around Lincoln to such as the Arboretum and the Botanical gardens at The Lawn, a few minutes walk away from the Cathedral. Places you wouldn’t know about until someone took you there who knew about them. I guess we will have to think about thinning our margins.
Overcoming the Paper Mache Problem
Even though it seems that the tree idea is out of the window, Conan’s thought about it did influence me slightly after the meeting. I really do like the tree idea, personally, it feels like an important element to the foundations of the project, but if we can keep the tree, what is stopping us from incorporating Conan’s idea of the smaller models?
The unseen elements of Lincoln, maybe don’t just have to be the “Leaves” of images and audio clips, but maybe also elements of the tree.
I remembered going to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and being overwhelmed by the size and beauty of the “Tree of Life”, originally designed by Clive Kay.
The tree is not your average tree, it is built up of carvings of animals from all over the animal kingdom, carvings very much like the ones in the Arboretum in the play area of the snake and the fish.
Fig. 2 Arboretum Fish
Fig. 3 Arboretum Snake
Maybe, we can merge Conan’s idea of the smaller models of Lincoln with the Animal Kingdom’s “Tree of Life”, maybe even a little Lincoln Imp sitting at the top of the tree? Who knows? This will require further thought.
The Upside to the Meeting
It wasn’t all negative in the meeting. Of course criticism helps, we have taken on board what Conan said, and we have taken it forward, tried to resolve/tweak our problems – tighten the screws as it were.
Also as part of the audio front Conan did offer us his new toy, an extremely good recording devise, which I will say now, we are eternally grateful for and we will guard with our lives!!! This will give the added professional finish to our performance.
On Friday 2nd of March, Luke and I had a meeting with Darren the Techie about our Site Specific Performance.
We met at the LPAC cafe to discuss a few problems that were having about the piece.
1. We informed Darren of the idea of the piece. – He actually liked it and thought it was a rather cleaver idea, but as we feared he focused on the Health & Safety aspects, especially with the steps. ” You need to consider risk assessment because of people climbing elevated surfaces, and possible countermeasures.” – Darren. So to avoid any major danger we decided to shrink the size of the tree (actually amount to be decided when making the piece) and instead of steps up to the higher branches of the tree we have decided to use single block approximately 10 inches maximum in height to give a slight raise yet still safer than a set of 2-3 feet high steps.
2A. We asked Darren if we could use the workshop space to actually make the tree. – Darren agreed to this with open arms and hoped to get stuck in himself with the paper mache process. But to also consider the tools/materials we use so it is stable etc.
2B. We told Darren that we thought about building the tree around the 26th March. – For this Darren and I will meet up in the week to check over the LPAC workshop diary to confirm dates.
3. We asked Darren if we could store the tree anywhere in the LPAC, maybe under the stage.– Sadly Darren dosen’t think it would be best to keep the tree at the LPAC because he believes that it may get damaged by other students while searching in the storeroom and other projects coming into the LPAC. “The LPAC isn’t a viable option due to the size of the tree and that it is potentially fragile.” – Darren.
4. We asked Darren if we could borrow the mini block steps from the back of the stage to use for the audience to get up on to the actual platform safely. – To this he said yes because it is a necessity to our Health & Safety precautions.
5. We asked Darren if we could borrow a couple of stage weights to stabilise and weight down the tree from the inside. –He once again said yes for it is a part of our Health & Safety precautions.
Overall I think we will have to totally rethink the idea, or at least change it in certain areas.
After we spoke to Dan I decided to do some research on paper mache tree artists, here is the second of two that I found.
Jonni Good
Jonni Good is a paper mache sculpture artist who works with a new recipe of paper mache, called “Paper Mache Clay”, a.k.a: “home-made air-dried cellulose-reinforced polymer clay”.
Here are the ingredients;
Cheap toilet paper (measure the wet paper pulp, and use 1.24 cups – some rolls contain more paper than needed)
1 cup Joint compound from the hardware store (get “regular,” not “fast set” or “light”.)
3/4 cup Elmer’s Glue-all
1/2 cup White Flour
2 tablespoons Linseed Oil
Step 1. Fill a high-sided bowl with warm water. Remove the toilet paper from the roll and throw it into the water. Push down on the paper to make sure all of it gets wet.
Step 2. Then pick up the paper and squeeze out as much water as you can. Pour the water out of the bowl and put your paper mass back in.
Step 3. You will want to break the paper into chunks about 1″ across. This will allow your mixer to move around the pieces and break them apart.
Step 4. Add all the ingredients to the bowl and mix, using an electric mixer. The mixer will pull the fibers of the toilet paper apart and turn it into pulp. Continue to mix for at least 3 minutes to make sure all the paper has been mixed in with the other ingredients. If you still see some lumps, use a fork or your fingers (with the mixer turned off!) to break them apart, and then mix some more.
With this recipe she creates beautiful and amazing sculptures like the ones below…
Fig. 1 Jonni Good - Baby Chick
Fig. 2 Jonni Good - Lion Cub
Fig. 3 Jonni Good - The Wolf Mask
But the main image that caught my eye for the tree was her “Wedding Table Center Piece”, even though it’s not ten feet tall it has a certain quirkiness about it and it is made from the paper mache clay which will be perfect for our tree because it will reinforce it strength wise.
Fig. 4 Jonni Good - Wedding Table Centre Piece
I believe a mix between the two artists I found for the tree will be perfect. By using Holten’s height and amount of branches with Good’s Clay and quirkiness we will be able to make a secure perfect white tree to hang each of out “Leaves” for the project.
Bibliography
Website
Good, Jonni (2005) “Ultimate Paper Mache – tutorials, ideas, conversation…”, Online: http://ultimatepapermache.com/ (accessed: 18th February 2012).
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