Gridded seaweed

Now I have printed over 121 pieces of seaweed, I have enough (and a few extra) to form a grid on the large piece of material I have in the studio. Although I have in no way decided to display them on the sheet on the wall, or indeed on the sheet at all, I wanted to have enough to allow this to be a possibility. I can now test out different forms of display, such as if they were in a column spanning the wall and floor, occupying the space rather  like the role of paper currently does.

Currently they are placed in a grid with no specific reason why one piece is next to the another, other than that they were printed, left to dry, and moved from the print room into the studio at a similar time. Therefore I want to move the pieces around within the grid themselves, forming different relationships between them and seeing the arrangement as a composition.

I also want to try mixing the laser cut seaweed amongst the printed seaweed.

Rather than keeping the seaweed flat as sheets, I could try moulding them into sculptural forms. The sheet of seaweed itself is made of strands of seaweed that have been mushed together to form a sheet, so I could do a similar thing and apply the seaweed as one would with papier mache, using water to stick the pieces together.

Laser cutting seaweed and rice paper

I have been using the laser cutter to engrave and cut seaweed and rice paper. I scanned the prints that I made on white paper, and then did some editing in Photoshop to create the file for the laser cutter.

My initial experiment was to engrave seaweed, which had the affect of creating what seemed like a lighter tone of green in the places where the laser had engraved it. It wasn't as I had imagined, and smelled horrid!

I then learned how to turn my tonal scans into line drawings using the laser cutting software, and then laser cut a few different patterns from seaweed.

I also tried laser cutting the same design into rice paper.

When the rice paper is laser cut, one can see the slightly browned edges of the cut from the heat of the laser. This helps frame the little shapes on this translucent and subtle material.

I really enjoy the delicacy of the laser cut seaweed. I could display them amongst the printed seaweed.

Drawing, a great way to spend the first day of 2014

I am conscious that at the moment, all the work in 'Brimming', my forthcoming solo exhibition at 1 Royal Terrace, is made from plaster, and I want to add another dimension to the exhibition and introduce work in a different medium.

Today I've been going back to drawing in its simplest form firstly doing some sketches of ideas for the shelves and then a colour collage.

I also made a few drawings of possible outlines for laser cutting. All will become clear later!