Nature Manipulation

Nature;

. The material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of 

   human activities

. The natural world as it exists without humans or civilization
. The elements of the natural world as mountains, trees animals and natural scenery
. The universe, with all its phenomena

In this project I will explore ways in manipulating the different forms of nature, by using natural and man made techniques and materials to make the unnatural. I plan to fuse together the connection between man made materials and natural materials, with the influence of Andy Goldsworthy and Richard long. 
I will use resources such as books from the all saints library, going to art galleries; Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Gallery and using the internet. I want to explore the different ways that nature can be used as the basic material, such as leaves, bark and grass instead of the generic paper or card. I want to incorporate the workshop inductions that I have completed to experiment. Trying new materials is something I would like to do in this project because it will broaden my understanding of new materials, and will open my mind to new ideas and ways of constructing them.

I will ask other artists in my group, and on my online blog to give me critical advice which could help me think of new ideas, or experiments etc. Within completing this project I will gain more independence in completing my own personal projects, and the structure of how to balance my time appropriately. I will demonstrate my work in the form of a blog, and will also complete a formal presentation showing my progress and experimental work.

I decided to use this project as an extension from my 

last project because I still have some unfinished ideas 

and I think that it has more potential than leaving it to 

just the one project.

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, typically a leaf is a thin flattened organ, borne above ground and specialized for photosynthesis.
Deciduous plants in frigid or cold temperatures begin to shed their leaves in Autumn, although, some plants do not shed their leaves such as conifers and palms. 

I found this chart which shows all the different types of leaves that you can get around the world. I thought that it would be interesting to add to my work so I can value them more, since they are an everyday item and they're easily missed. When seeing this for the first time, I was amazed at how many shapes and forms that leaves come in, especially with the formation of the veins, it's something that i'd always assumed where the same in all leaves.

I have created my own chart of the leaves that I have found to see how many different types I have found. This has made me pay more attention to the detailing of leaves, and that they're all different.

Leaves change colour depending on what time of the year it is, in cold Autumns they can turn red, yellow and bright orange, in summer they're green and in winter they turn brown and die. This is due to hormone changes in the leaf and to the temperature outside. I think this is a beautiful aspect of the leaves, because even though they're dieing, they look so appealing and aesthetically pleasing. 

I thought that maybe using brown dead leaves would give them a new life as I would be creating them into something else.
Abscission; When a plant drops one or more of it's parts, such as leaf, flower, fruit or seeds for reproductive reasons, or because it's Autumn. 
This is interesting because it happens every year without fail, so it's like we as humans expect the leaves to fall, so then we know the season has turned to Autumn. This also could be related to death as all the leaves are dying and are falling off the trees, so that more, in a few months time, can grow and live. 

I have created my own chart on the leaves that I've found to use for this project following the information on the chart I found on the internet. It really helped me realize the difference between some of the leaves that i'd picked up and not really noticed that they where massively different. 

On this poster I have analysed these leaves in terms of the poster that I had found. I stuck the leaves on the page and wrote around them. I liked how I was analyzing my own leaves that I had found, I found it really interesting to have the leaf in front of me and know what all the names where for all the different types of variations it had.

Andy Goldsworthy is an artist who has always inspired me in my work. I think his work is really unique, and it shows the time and effort that he's put into it. I want to use his influence in my work because I think that the connection with nature is vital, I also like the way that he uses only natural materials to create his work, I think that I will incorporate this idea into my work and see how the results turn out.

Sweet chestnut green horn
August 9, 1987
sweet chestnut leaves, thorns
continuous spiral, stitched together with thorns.

Yellow sycamore leaves stitched together with thorns.

I really like this piece because its got the texture of a rug or a carpet even though its made out of small delicate leaves. I like how Goldsworthy has connected the natural world with the man made in this piece, I think that this is a really nice connection to make, with manipulating the man made and the natural, and/or combining them together.

This was the piece i created by stitching the leaves that I had found together, I used a brown coloured cotton to camouflage with the leaves, which would make it look more natural. I am really happy with this piece because I achieved the natural look with using a mix between a natural and a man made material. I thought that it looked like a pile of leaves that had just been swept up. After a while the leaves started to curl up more which I thought made the piece look more realistic, also there where gaps in some of the places because of this which made it look more natural looking. I displayed it in the Holden Gallery at MMU where i just placed it on the floor, but it went unnoticed and I think that if i where to display it again maybe I would do something different like suspend it from the ceiling so it was just lifted off the floor by a couple of inches, I think that this would give it a more mysterious factor, and putting natural into an unnatural habitat. I want to further this idea more by placing leaves in their unnatural habitat, I think that it will create enigmas and bring in the element of confusion. 

This is the image I took of leaves in front of a fireplace, acting as a mat. I think that in this image it looks like the leaves are supposed to be there? whether its because of the neutral colours of the fireplace and the colours of the leaves that are making it this way, or it's because I've been used to having leaves around the house and everywhere I go with me. I do think that the image works well though, I do want to further this idea more, and if I get a chance to have more time I will create more photographs like this.

I found this book in the library called Leaves and pods by Josie Iselin and Mary Elllen. It is an information based book about the various types of leaves and pods that are from different plants, trees and bushes. It includes information about each separate image displayed, also with some analysis about the leaf or pod. I thought that this was really interesting as I had already carried out my own analysis on the leaves that I had found in preparation for this project.

Whilst researching into Andy Goldsworthy, I came across the artist Richard Long. I recognized his work 'South bank circle' from Tate Liverpool when I first saw this piece i was really drawn to it, maybe it was because it reminded me of Goldsworthy's work. I like the way he has fitted all the slate pieces together, but there is a bit of space between each one, but some are touching, although it looks like all the pieces are all joined together. When I first looked at the piece I thought that it was made out of bark from a tree because of it's texture and wood like colouring, although the piece is made of slate. Some of Long's other work is quite similar to Goldsworthy's pieces, with the way he uses circles and how he creates paths. I think that this pieces of work relates to mine because he and Goldsworthy are discovering the natural world in a whole new way. 

 In my last project, I discovered a leaf which looked like it had been painted, it was red with an abstract black pattern down the middle. I thought that this was really strange and interesting so i decided to make some experiments on paper by putting a line of paint in the middle of the page and the closing the page over and spreading the paint out with my hands, then when you open it up it becomes a pattern.

I have decided to carry this experiment on further by putting some paint on the leaves and then folding them over to create patterns. On one experiment i put the paint down the middle of the leaf, and on the other i decided to spread some further out onto the leaf, to see if the results differ.I really like the way these turned out because I again like the link i've created between the natural material and the man made one. I think that the pattern of the paint makes it looks natural even though it's an unnatural colour in relation to leaves, and it's paint.

I really like the way these turned out because I again like the link i've created between the natural material and the man made one. I think that the pattern of the paint makes it looks natural even though it's an unnatural colour in relation to leaves, and it's paint. 

Whilst researching natural related art pieces on the internet, I discovered an artist called Mike Hill. He is an animator and photographer, who uses nature as his base material. He creates unusual sculptures out of leaves, twigs and other natural things. This reminds me of Goldsworthy's work because he uses only natural materials in his work too. I want to use his influence in my work because I think that I could create some really interesting sculptures with this combined with the ways of working now.

I tried recreating Hill's bowl like shape with his sculpture by placing wet leaves in a bowl to see if they'd take to the shape of it. I thought that maybe the leaves would dry in the shape of the bowl and dry together so that they would stick together.
The images above are of what the leaves looked like when they where first soaked in a bowl for about an hour to make them more soft and mouldable, then they where placed into the bowls, I thought that I'd do it with two bowls because  placed the leaves more carefully in the second one, I made sure they where all overlapping each other and there where equal layers to the leaves. 

This is what the results where like when i took the leaves out of the bowls, the first one didn't stick together as much as i'd hoped. I used quite large leaves so maybe if i used smaller ones they'd mould together and take the form of the bowl better. The second experiment worked better, I used more leaves in this one and placed them more appropriately than with the other one. I like the effect of this one, because even though I didn't make the perfect bowl shape like Hill's, I created a curve although it still looks like a natural shape and with only using water, I think it's an achievement. I like how they all join and slot into each other because of the way they are curved. Even though this one worked better than the first, I still curious as to what the smaller leaves would do in the same position as the bigger ones, I will try this experiment again but with smaller leaves. 

This was my third attempt of making the bowl shape and it didn't work with just using water. I thought that this might have worked better than the other attempts as I used smaller more fragile leaves. 

This is a piece which relates to my last project from when i was experimenting with stitch. I really liked this piece when i did it because it was two leaves overlaid on to each other, and stitched together using cotton, I liked the way that you could see the both layers of the leaves. Even though I really liked this idea. I wanted to make progress with by incorporating other ideas, so I used 4 leaves this time, and they hadn't been pressed down straight like my original experiment, so I achieved different results. I think that my second attempt of the experiment was better than the first because the second one looks more natural, because the leaves have just been left to dry up naturally, whereas in the first experiment, the leaves had been pressed before i'd used them to experiment on. I don't think i'm going to carry on with stitching leaves together in this way because I don't think that there are many other alternative path ways to go down with this, so I think i'm going to carry on with other ideas that I have been suggested or have worked towards in my last project.

From the last project I created an experiment in the bookbinding workshop which i made leaves into my own 'book'. I really want to revisit that experiment and make some improvements or add new pages etc. I also want to re-visit the letterpress prints onto leaves that I did, I think that maybe combining these two experiments together might be an interesting outcome. I think that I want to experiment with stitching more of the leaves together and see how far I can get untill I cant stitch them together anymore. 


This project had a lot of hurdles that I had to cross, because of the lack of ideas and interest in the project I started to get less and less interested which made me disappointed in myself as the aim of the project initially was to help me find my own ways and paths and ideas towards the theme of nature. I decided to paint and draw some leaves, as I was doing so, more and more detail jumped out at me and I started to realize some of the lines and unique imperfections even more.

I really like the fine liner drawing I did of one of the leaves because I like the way I've captures the shadowing on it. I've never painted using watercolour paint properly before so I was really proud of how the other two turned out.

This weekend I visited the Whitworth art gallery and the Manchester art gallery for some inspiration on where to go with this project. I found two pieces in the Manchester art gallery by Su Blackwell that I was drawn to. These pieces are called 'Wuthering heights' and 'roses from sonnets' 

I really like the way that she has used pages of a book to create these models, and how that in the first one she has related nature to the printed paper which originally came from a tree. Her sculptures are so delicate and fantasy like, on her website she claims that her work is very fantasy based because as a child she used to fantasize about lots of different things: 

'As a child, I spent a lot of time playing in the woods near to my home, in my own make-believe world. I gave the trees names, and believed that they would protect me. I made dens, with curtains and carpets that I scavenged from home'

I also found this quote about the way Blackwell deals with the material:

'I always read the book first, at least once or twice, and then i begin to create the work, cutting out and adding details. The detail is what brings it all together, the magic element. It is a tediously slow process' 

I really like the way Blackwell engages with her work and I think that it's a good quality which adds to the effectiveness of her pieces. I want to use her influence in my work because I love the way that she engages with the book first and then creates her sculpture with something that relates to the book as a theme, and then uses the physical pages to create them. I think that if I used this influence in my work that it would relate to the leaf book idea because then it could be like an actual reading book, and then as the leaf decays, then the book would be unopenable and the story would then be lost and untold. With this idea I have thought about using newspaper print, book print and printing out from a printer, then trying different materials such as water and  nail varnish remover to transfer these words onto the leaf.

I decided to create a page of experiments on trying to transfer the newspaper print onto paper by using various random substances such as coffee, lip gloss, vodka and fabric softener. I thought that one of these might have worked as they are all liquid, the only one that left a slight resemblance to words is the coffee experiment. The remains where very light and hard to read so it wouldn't have been suitable for this part of my project. 

I then found this material called 'image maker' which is used to transfer images from paper to material. I thought that I'd try it out on transferring newspaper print onto paper, and onto a leaf as that was what I was going to use as my final base material to print on. 

This technique didn't work as well as I'd hoped because the papery surface has been left behind from the page the text was originally on. I didn't think that this would have been the result, but it's not the result that I'd prefer, I wanted the result to be clear like as if it had been freshly typed onto it. Also the text was backwards when the experiment was completed, so in order to fix this I'd have to print off the text that I wanted backwards first off my computer for the letters to print out forwards.

I was recommended to use 'Letraset letters', they are like transferable numbers and letters that will stick to almost anything. I tried Letraset out and it turned out really well, I was really impressed with the way that it looks so clear, although it took me a while to get it right because the text is so small. It's hard to burnish just one of the letters without rubbing some of the others, like I did with the 'e' another one printed next to it. Once I have practiced enough with the spacing and the neatness of the letters, this could work really well for the leaf book idea. 

This is the practice that I did on paper to see what the result was like first before trying it on the leaves, I was impressed with the result, some of it came out patchy and unclear but it was my first practice so with time the result will come out better. The font i used was Times New Roman in 3mm letters, I thought that this font is more book like than some of the others avaliable.

This is how the lettering came out on the leaf, it's really clear although the lettering is quite small. I got the hang of the technique more in this try.

After a couple of days the leaf started to curl up and die, I really like this effect on the leaf because it makes it seem slightly unreadable and that's the effect I wanted for the book idea. 
After this idea I decided to buy some more of the Letraset paper in 5mm text and a different font to see what text would look better on the leaf. I created some experiments with the lettering such as having all the letters capitals, all the letters lower case and the different positions that I could put them in, for example like a book, written from right to left, one word on each side of the leaf, written horizontally etc. 

I put the experiments in this way to see how they would look when the 'book' was complete. I thought that it would be easier to rule out ideas that would be unreadable or unsuitable for this. 
As I was applying the letters to the leaf I realized that quite quickly that the leaf where the lettering was applied was starting to die and go a brown colour.

This is an image I took of the leaf experiment I created, with a light shined at the back of it. I really liked the affect it has on the leaf because you can see all of the unusual patterns and lines that the leaf has including the words that I have put on myself.