✹ Weekly material exploration - Acrylic sheet
16th February 2021
From the feedback on our abstract, we are assigned to commit with 3 tangible plans across this term. I have planned to explore new material every one or two weeks, artists research and form experiment every week. Today I just received new material that I ordered from Etsy, an Acrylic sheet in a different effect.
I had worked with an acrylic sheet before, but not with these effects. In the second year of my Bachelor degree - I used the acrylic sheet to make a sacred heart brooch as shown below. The acrylic sheet was laser cut and layered to create depth and dimension. It was the first time I work with laser cutting technique and I still remember the day I export AI file that’s quite messy - thankfully, the technician was kind and helped me out eventually.
Sacred heart,2016. Brooch. Material ; Mirror acrylic sheet, wooden board, resin, glitter and plastic beadsThis time from ⇲artist research, Gisela Colon and her process of making - she used translucent acrylic sheet in the making of the pod. By blowing it with air and let it forms by itself - the sheet has formed in an organic shape like a cell or life-like organism. The translucent material gives the sense of ambiguity - she layering shiny abject inside of the pod and colouring it with an Iridescent effect. When seen from a different angle - the colour changes according to the viewer position. I found this material fascinating and would like to try as It gives me the softness sense within solid quality.
What I found interesting from this material is that it’s somewhere between opaque and clear - I can see and can not see through at the same time. Also, as Colon’s work - the colour and light change from different angles. The fascinating thing is it can cash the reflection of the light when I put the acrylic above shiny object. So instead of the reflection laying on the wall - it can be capture on this sheet without seeing where the reflection is coming from.
And from this ‘behaviour’ I can create a ‘moving glitter’ by moving the object or the sheet back and forth - as shown below if the object is round like this disco ball, the further the object from the sheet the more spread out the reflection will be. I planned to use this material for Fan handle as it gives some contrast between the shininess of polished metal and the dullness of this effect. It would be great to try this material with the reflection also.
The other two effects that I ordered are the Glass-like effect and Fluorescent effect. For the glass-like one, it is tinted with light green colour so when the light refracts to the surface it creates a green line at the edge of the sheet. With this one - I came up with some idea for a broken glass necklace, something that we can’t use real glass to make.
For the Fluorescent one - when I first saw it I can’t decide whether to like it or not. Because the colour is so strong and I’m not expecting it to be this bright. It’s interesting though because the edge of this material is glowing from the reflection of the light. It looks so futuristic - alienated for me. I have some idea of creating some design that emphasises the edge of the material. Maybe to form a 3-dimensional form out of 2 dimensional material as the necklace below - Cloud,2007 by Jahyun Rita Beak.
