Getting my name out there

As I want art to be both my life and career I have started to think about promoting and commercialising myself. In a bids to do so I have approached my local museum to allow me to exhibit my work. They have kindly accepted and in less than a month I will be hosting my first solo exhibition

The exhibition will be a retrospective of my first year at college, with a few earlier pieces going back to 2006!

Not only is this an opportunity to get my name known, but hopefully a chance to sell a few pieces of work.

Wallpaper

Since march we have been stripping and decorating our dining room, a few weeks ago the painting was finished and I was finally able to start drawing on the walls in sharpie.

More lego

I noticed on the prototype that a great deal of water seeped out between the bricks, the larger house has windows and doors that will allow for larger seepage so I have taped them up in the hope that it will retain the fluids better.

Lego

I have built a small prototype Lego house to see whether creating a plaster cast will work.

I changed the formation of the walls, from solid double thickness to areas of single thickness to add detail, but I forgot that when the bricks are pulled apart some pieces will fall off.
At first i thought it was a failure but looking back at it I quite like the random, uneven effect if has created .

Combining ink and plaster

As it didn't work well adding ink to wet plaster I have tried out ink and dry plaster.
Using spare sculptures from previous projects I have experimented with painting, dripping and soaking ink into the plaster.

This method works much better but will take a lot more ink, as the plaster is so absorbent the ink instantly disappears into the plaster.

The results

The ink doesn't mix with the plaster particularly well. It seems to thicken up and separate similar to the idea of stracciatella ice cream.

Ink and plaster??

Before trying the plaster inside the Lego house I have created prototypes for testing out this particular plaster 'wickes one coat plaster' and acrylic ink. I have tried a combination of ink in the wet mix, pouring ink into the mould, adding ink to semi set plaster.

Protecting the moulds from the rain I had to create a strange construction out of plant pots and jugs.

I seem to be making more of a mess in the garden than art work.

Ideas

Whilst googling Rachel Whiteread I came across an image of Lego characters I the scene of a gallery reception. This gave me the idea to create a cast of a Lego house, in a similar style to Whiteread's 'house.' the use of Lego would make it possible to create a small scale cast of a house, simply creating a shell, filling it and peeling away the bricks.
To combine my own aspect of art practice I plan to miss acrylic ink into
the plaster creating organic 'pattern'

An artist that inspires me?

I have looked back through the sketchbooks I have produced during this last year to refer back to the artists I have related with. Rachel Whiteread has a tendency to pop up in different projects to inspire and direct my own works.
I even took a trip to the Whitechapel art gallery just to see her addition to the front of the building.

In particular I am interested in her spatial, cast sculptures. I have experimented with forming casts of well known, recognisable objects such as bottles in a relatively recent project entitled 'Im so normal you don't notice me'