Making

This week has been a race to get the table all sorted as the date that we have to be out of the studio is fast approaching, I am ahead of schedule but hoped to spend a few days taking some decent photographs of my work before it goes into the show as time then will be very limited. The challenge has been sorting out all of the finer details of the table like edging and the painting. 

The first thing I wanted to get sorted was attaching the legs to the table. Once I had attached the plates the legs simply screw off, therefore this means that the table will be easy to move around the studio and store. I am pleased that I attached the legs myself, as I am not much of a maker and haven’t spend much time in the workshop over the past three years. I marked out the placement for the brackets and carried the wood down into the workshop to attach them. I was unsure about how many legs to attach as I felt that eight might have been far too many and that they would have been too close together, however any other positioning would have been too complicated and if I chose to have six then there could again be a problem with bowing from the weight of the TVs. I finally decided to keep to the idea of the eight and once they were attached I was pleased with how they look as it didn’t feel like they were too close and crowded and also the legs stood directly under each TV, not only giving me a pointer for where I would place the TVs each time but they also become a part of the TVs, turning them into standing figures that begun to take on more of a human quality. This allied closely with the subjects of the films as the TVs became a body as the limbs were attached. 

My next concern was the shelves for underneath the table that will hold the DVD players. I wanted to get this done fairly quickly as this is something that I would require help with and also I needed to see if they would look right with the DVD players in. The shelves were quite simple, and David, one of the technicians at the institute, put them together quickly from the designs I had made. It took the two of us to attach them to the underneath of the table as this was quite fiddly. Once they were attached I was concerned about how clearly you could see the DVD players, at that time I felt that it would look much more refined if they were hidden. I played around with different ideas to cover up the front of the shelves, as I needed to be able to access them but I didn’t want the DVD players to be seen. This all got increasingly complicated and it wasn’t until I had painting the table that I realised that I didn’t really need to cover them up at all. The black took the edge off of seeing the DVD players, and disguised them a bit more than the plain wood did. I also realised that one of main ideas of this piece was transparency, I didn’t want to hide parts of the work, and again I realised that this was true with the DVD players. If I had wanted to hide them from the beginning I would have found a way that didn’t involve having shelves hanging underneath the TVs. 

The most time consuming element of the table was the painting, and I am glad that I started this earlier than I anticipated as it would have been a nightmare to paint the table whilst everyone was clearing out the studio, the table is large and there are not many spaces that fit it, I certainly couldn’t take it home. I decided that I wanted the wood to be gloss black. There were a few reasons for this, one that the black reflected what I liked about the original black wracking, it allowed the TV’s to become one with the table. I wanted it to be gloss because there was something about the shiny quality of the wood that reflected the natural aesthetic of the four TVs and created something more dynamic than a plain matte black table top would have done. It made the table become a part of the piece itself, not something for the TVs to sit on. I tested out the paint on a small piece of the same wood as the table, and knew that I would have to do quite a few coats of emulsion underneath, this was what was time consuming. I had to wait for each layer to dry and so tried to paint early in the morning so that there was the possibility of carrying on later in the afternoon. The gloss was relatively difficult to paint, it was satisfying but time consuming and I was concerned about painting in the studios as not everyone is considerate of other peoples work and there were a few times where someone would almost touch or knock the fresh paint, this meant that I spent a lot of time sitting around the table whilst it was drying to make sure that it wasn’t knocked in any way! I was overall incredibly pleased with the paint, it had come out exactly as I had planned and I was glad that the gloss paint had worked. 

I was concerned after that my tutor mentioned that the edges of the table could do with tidying up. I was worried as I had just painted the entire table top and I felt any changes now could possibly ruin all of that work. I struggled to find a way to edge the table and many people threw about different ideas, however I went and found some thing wood pieces that were the exact height of the edge of the table so they could be cut to size and attached quite easily. This is something that I had never previously tried, as I am not a maker, and I was concerned as I had no choice in the end but to do it myself as no one was really available to help. The wood was cut to the length required, I then drilled in some pilot holes for pins along the edges of the wood and painted them completely in a matte black so that when they were attached it would be a clean matte finish. The wood was easy to attach to the table and afterwards I painted over the edging in gloss. I feel that it did finish off the table better than it was previously, however, I understand that it was not the best that it could have been, mainly because I could only do to the best of my ability. I personally am proud of what I have managed to achieve with the table as it is something that I never believed I would be able to do. 

My aim for the upcoming week is to do any last minute touch ups and work on finalising the films which is something that I had to put on hold because of the limited studio time.