Richard Sweeney Work Shop

This week I attended a workshop lead by Richard Sweeney, a well known designer, he concentrates on the hands-on manipulation of paper to create design models, which in my opinion, make beautiful sculptures and very intriguing and complicated pieces of art. In our session we were focussing on techniques which I feel I will find useful and inspirational during this project. Basic paper manipulation was the focus, without the use of any other materials such as tape, glue etc simply just paper and cutting tools. During the workshop I experimented with a variety of techniques similar to those used by Richard, this created some interesting shapes especially focussing on 'repeat' which is an important part of this project. Although some pieces I didn't find particularly aesthetically appealing, from each piece I learnt a new lesson, what works and also; what doesn't!

Some of his work which I find most inspiring:

My first attempts during the workshop:

My first attempts are far more simplistic than anything Richard has produced, however I hope they have created the backbone for my skills and ideas connected to this project, they have opened my eyes to the shapes and techniques that are capable of being displayed through this complex process.

This piece is very simplistic, to me it almost looks like waves crashing.. At this point I was simply practising creating a 3D shape out of the flat piece of paper, using simple slot techniques which I am becoming fond of as I feel they create the widest scope for shapes etc.

This idea has much more of an obvious 'repeat' to it, I simply repeated the same techniques across the paper. This to me almost resembles a shell, with more layers and thinner strips and a bit more manipulation it could hopefully be achieved, this is something I would like to experiment with at a later stage.

Once again, a shell shape seems to have been formed, all the curves and contours seem to be creating very natural and organic shapes which I am fond of myself. The 2 seperate sections of the paper work well together to suggest a spiralling, twisting shape.

This piece involved a similar repetitive idea to my second piece, simply slotting the strips of paper into the piece in front of them. Due to the lack of a flat surface, I found this was the best angle to view this piece from, and feel it resembles a tree/fountain, one again a very organic and flowing form! Although this piece does need to be supported as it lays on its side very unflatteringly when not held.

This was the beginning attempts of a flower like shape, I didn't complete this piece as I found the paper shape was not suitable to create an accurate, repeatable pattern around the centre of this shape, I do however, feel it was a learning curve and made me consider the original shape of the paper, the colour of the paper as well as other variables such as texture/size/opacity.