My hole

 Working title - I sort of like the ambiguity and slightly uncomfortable connotations which might lighten from an otherwise rather serious piece... 

I debated quite a lot whether to make this piece - it's very personal. A few months ago, a few events conspired to drive me to breaking point - in rage and frustration, I punched the sloping ceiling of my bedroom above my bed, with the main aim of hurting my fist. Luckily for the ceiling, but perhaps unluckily for me, I caught one of the joists resulting in a define 'win' for the ceiling, and a definite loss for my fist - although it did make for an impressive blood splatter.

I felt that the hole in the ceiling was potent, and I wanted to do something with it, even if it made me very uncomfortable, hell, BECAUSE it made me very uncomfortable. After speaking to a few people I trust, I felt strong enough to tackle it. I am very interested in the shape, especially the 3d shape. I'm also fascinated by the network of cracks. In the end, I settled on 3 different ways to record it:

1. Take a 3d cast of the hole
2. Make a 2d 'drawing' of the hole
3. Make a 3d scan of the hole

I spent a lot of time looking into ways of taking a cast - it's quite challenging because you need something that will stick enough to take a cast upside down, but which won't stick so much that you can't remove it. I experimented with polymer clay, but that was too sticky. I think the answer is alginate, but I haven't got a chance to test that yet (partly summer holidays, partly other projects, partly fear of slopping kilos of gunk-that-sticks-like-crazy-to-fabric above the place I sleep...). I still plan to do this before I fill in the hole. My current plan is to experiment with mixing plaster and wax to such that the plaster is like 'skin' and the wax is like deeper tissue. In this way I'm connecting an emotions/structural wound with a physical wound.

I decided to draw the hole using Inkscape. I found the process a great exercise in what to leave out - so many shapes, but I decided to simplify them. I also found choosing colours very challenging, initially sticking to the 'real' colours but slowly abandoning those for colours that 'worked'. Talking to the "dead critics" as well as my plan to explore 'wound-like' connotations made me think about healing, and I was struck by the idea of turning my single picture into a series which shows the ceiling hole slowly 'healing' up until it's almost gone.

At the same time, I've been exploring ideas for making 3d shapes in plaster to sell, and one idea I've had for a while is to use layers of laser-cut card to build up a 3d shape. This connected with the vector-graphics image above to make me want to explore creating a 3d representation of the healing hole by using layers of laser cut card. So that's what I did!

I am really pleased with it. I think it's probably my favourite thing I've made. Ever. No shit. This is the first 'hole', I'm working on the outlines for the next one in the series where the deepest layers are closing up.

There were a few more things I learnt from this:

• Prototyping is a wonderful thing - I made this piece twice, and the second version was so much better than the first.
• Finish makes a world of difference. For the prototype I hand mixed the colours. For this version I bought tester pots of household paint and lucked out - they came with built in miniature rollers - the finish is so much more professional as a result
• The mesh is a real part of the original hole, but I stylised it and stylised it... It went from being an 'oddity' to being a vital element of the final composition
• Buying a shadowbox frame for a tenner or so made a huge difference - art looks like art when you present it like art
• Thinking carefully about colours and prototyping them really paid off

I really like the aesthetics for this - it feels like my 'true' style - it portrays something visceral, violent, shocking, but presents it in a pared down, clean way