Unit 3.2 — Caryatid plate: research drawings and process
--
I would like to use a layered drawing of the caryatids and probably some colour that relates to what I have in mind for the slip cast.
Here’s some research with drawings and scans:
I think a single drawing repeated in 3 different colours is looking like the strongest option, with two overlapping drawings also working. Or a single image using multiple ink colours.
And probably strong colours on the background of the white plate or a coloured shape behind the line drawings, but probably not a circle.
Conceptually, I like the single repeated image (or if multiple image of the same caryatid) to suggest something about the slipperiness of history, the unknowable and multiple readings of one artifact. Also a dynamic where they look to be in conversation because when found in architecture, they are always facing out and not towards eachother — and the caryatid from the Acropolis that’s in the British Museum is said to be missed by her sisters with stories of how one could hear the five in Athens crying for their sister late at night. So facing eachother may be an imagined reunification, a re-encounter and they are the same, but different.
Here’s the process:
Choosing images, colours, making the screen & printing image for transfer onto plate:
I chose the two facing eachother, I like the negative space and blank faces. To print I used three colours at once.
I transferred it onto my plate, seems fine.
With more time, I would like to add a border to the plate somehow, I don’t have anything on the reverse, unsure if that matters, pretty sure it doesn’t although would have liked to title it
I would like to make a screen using an image with the perspective of looking at the back of the caryatids head.
But — I completed the process and tied it in with my other piece, glad to have taken risks with colour. If I added colour behind them, that negative space between them would become much stronger…I think I would like that.
