Exhibition piece

This is my exhibition piece- the page from my grandmother's address book which has the Frank O'Hara poem written on it.

Final Outcomes

Just a summary of each plate and its process:

 Hammered text, oxidized with torch, waxed finish

 Photo etched text, oxidized with liver of sulfur, sanded back, heated with torch, waxed finish

 Photo etched image, polished

 Lazer cut text, rolled into plate with rolling mill, oxidized with liver of sulfur, sanded back, waxed finish

 Photo etched image, hammered, oxidized, sanded back, waxed finish

 Hand sawed image, etched with scribe, oxidized, sanded back, wax finish

Photo etched image, hammered with scribe, hammered text, oxidized, sanded back, heated with torch, wax finish

 Front: Photo etched text, heated with torch, wax finish
Sides: Oxidized with liver of sulfer, wax finish
Bottom: Heated with torch, wax finish

Finishing my plates

Heated the Buckingham Palace plate too until it went this gorgeous cherry red. Won't stay like this for very long- probably won't last the exhibition as it will keep oxidizing unless I wax or varnish it so have to get some tonight.

All my plates! Finished!

Postcard

Making the most of my first photoetching attempt which went a bit wrong- did some letter stamping (true the 'C' is the wrong way round and so is the 'D'- stupid backwards letters) and some oxidizing and now looks grand.

Finishing off my box

Began by slowly heating the surface of the box- i wanted to make it look like the original book's red exterior and also heating it would give it an older, more worn effect.
I had to leave it to cool slowly- quenching it in water would make it lose the heated effect

I then had to sand back the middle strip of my box as i wanted to oxidize it and this was really tricky as the metal had to be clean enough for the liver of sulfur to work on but the middle strip was rather difficult to get at.

I bought some black suede at the market to line my box with- decided to do each panel individually just in case one didn't go very well.... turned out to be an excellent idea as my measuring is appalling.

 

Used some crazy araldite glue which takes 24 hours to dry to stick in the lining- looks mighty fine though :)

Frank O'Hara illustration

Had real issues deciding on what to do for this plate.
Began with a drawing of a street and a man waiting on a bench...waaaay to twee though.
bleugh.
After I'd had my tutorial with David we came up with a few ideas on what to do.

I like the man in the corner, although when I looked away and then looked back, my eye was immediately drawn to him (top left to bottom right) so tried it in the bottom left corner and found that when i showed other people, they had to look for longer to find him.

 

I then printed him onto acetate and prepared another plate for photo etching. 

 

unfortunately the tape I'd placed over the back had an air bubble so some of back etched too :( 

Decided to polish this plate to make the silhouette fade into the background more.

 

my two O'Hara plates together! yaaaay!

Frank O' Hara Text

 

Hammered each letter into my plate- so difficult as there was no way of lining them up together and sometimes the hammer slipped so the letter jumped around. gah.

 

Tried some effects with the oxidization- hated it. Definitely too busy for the poem and I wanted the text to really make a statement so it needed to be plain.   Sanded back the effect and then anealed my plate to get it oxidized further.