My final project took  a lot of inspiration from my previous Upcycling project and the chicken wire frame I had used – I enjoyed the usage of the material both in terms of manipulating it into a form I desire, as well as the intricacy and detail a wire frame can offer. Moreover, with a leftover material from the Upcycling project, using chicken wire frame as a vehicle for the final project was ideal – thus, continuing on with the sculpting theme of the previous project, I created an owl sculpture with chicken wire, incorporating the aesthetic of the bare wires and flow of the woven wires. I drew heavy inspiration from sculptures of similar form by artists using a similar medium, shown below:

These artists use the wire to mimic the natural form in a way that is fundamentally abstract, forming shapes and lines where they usually wouldn’t be. There’s a level of intricacy and intertwining that is hard to capture in other mediums besides this wire-frame type of sculpture, and complement the dynamic portion of the project very well. Specifically, for the dynamic component of my project, I had initially planned for the head to swivel and rotate.

In terms of the aesthetic, I had wanted to capture a contemporary and surreal aesthetic – the sculpture made out of chicken wire fence is meant to both model something realistic, but also be constructed in a way that the form is ‘otherworldly’ or unnatural. Moreover, I want the piece to construe a meaning or inherently represent something beyond the form and structure. Generally, the contemporary aesthetic incorporates a more modern complex message into the ‘meaning’ of any given piece. Generally, something with a contemporary aesthetic is making some semblance of social commentary or is meant to intrigue or lead the viewer into further interpretation. A surreal aesthetic generally rejects a more rational interpretation and to remove itself from the conventional. Surrealism is an aesthetic that tries to move beyond the general perception of ‘reality’ and instead uses the uncanny to construct meaning.

For the sculpture, the form and structure expresses the contemporary aesthetic – the usage of the material, form, and the construction of the sculpture all help represent a more industrial and inflexible theme, while also expressing flow and movement via woven wires. On the other hand, the dynamic portion was to express a more surreal aesthetic – the sculpture will have a relatively unnatural and unexpected set of movements, which helps bring to life something that looks inanimate.

The frame of the sculpture will be constructed from an initial skeleton of natural wire fence with the rest of the form created with interwoven strands of wire. Below are some initial sketches and design deliberations: