Giacometti inspired sculpture
Ever since last year when Nixie discovered Nixie's love for Barbara Hepworth I knew that we would at some point spend more time learning about different sculpture artists and the different mediums that exist to create sculptures out of. This topic is is such a fun one and there are so many things we want to do that we can only do so much at a time while we are drawn to it but I'm 100% sure we will continue this topic over and over again.
One of the artists we learned about was Alberto Giacometti and before we begin creating anything we spend some time looking at books and videos of the artist's work and possibly their life.
We had a look at this article about Giacometti via the Tate and below are some of the youtube videos we looked at (you may want to watch them yourselves) about him as well:
Next we had a go at making our own people sculptures out of wire and clay inspired by his work. Our process is not an exact process at all, we just kind of play as we go along and figure things out so the below is more to be used as a guide and inspiration rather than exact instructions. If you'd like to try a simpler Giacometti project here's one by NurtureStore.co.uk using only tinfoil.
What you need:
- wooden bases
- wire
- tinfoil
- staple gun
- wire cutters
- air dry clay
How we went about creating them:
- The first thing we did is cut a very long length of wire (it is better to have longer wire than too short!) and begin to shape our bodies. We used more than one piece of wire for different parts so don't think you need to make your body using one piece of wire.
- Next, we wrapped our wire in tinfoil to make it stronger and to build up the body.
- Once we finished covering our bodies in tinfoil we staple gunned it to our wooden base.
- Then we began covering our tinfoil bodies with air dry clay. It helps to use really small pieces at a time and smoothing it as you go along. I love how all of our bodies look different, Forrest says that his is holding out his arms for a hug, Nixie wanted hers to be waving, Kevin says his is opening to love while mine is on a mission as I was thinking about hiking and walking while making it!
- Once the clay has dried and hardened then you can paint them if you so choose. We all did except for Nixie who wanted to keep hers clay coloured. Forrest made his as Thanos from Marvel.
