Project Two - Final Work Notes and Reflection

The Badge Itself

  

I used the koi/karp yin yang design as both a personal statement and as a symbol that many people recognise. Yin Yang is the symbol for balanced choas, each fish represents a force that opposes the force of the other, for example male and female - opposing forces, but without the other to balance it, neither could exist for very long. Another is life and death - without one, you cannot have the other.

There are many examples that could be laid upon this symbol, but I have chosen it as the symbol for my piece to represent the choatic mix of learning, and instict/imagination, or perhaps talent - if an artist does not have a balance of both, their art is not likely progress or develop past a certain point, and this can be the undoing of an artist.

I chose to make a badge, because a badge is often considered a piece to say something, whether something about what the wearer believes in, or something comical, or just something about the wearer themselves, unlike forms of jewellery like necklaces or bracelets, which people often consider more for decoration than for making a statement, though this isn't always true, there are items of jewellery - of cultural or religious significance, for example - which can say a lot about a person.

 The colours are a personal touch, because this is more about my considerations of when I become an artist, as are the fish themselves. Being part goth, red and black are the colours I wear, or consider myself wearing, most often, and have become the colours I think of when I consider myself in terms of colour. Purple and black are the official colours of my arrow flights in the SCA's barony of Southron Gaard (the South Island of New Zealand), and are therefore colours that others in Southron Gaard will or have come to relate to me. I have seen many cases of red and purple not working very well together in close contact, so this made them perfect choices for the colours of Yin and Yang, opposing forces, but with black filling the nothing space behind them, and just a tadge of the other colour in each of them, the two colours harmoniously chase each other around the badge, in an endless circle patterned by the swimming fish.
The fish themselves are koi fish, very well known symbols of Japan, and perhaps a few other Asian countries. Koi fish are said to swim up rivers, up waterfalls, and rapids, right to the very top of rivers, and the one fish that reaches the top of the water path  as it climbs the last waterfall it leaps into the air and becomes a dragon. Hence the koi fish are symbols of perseverance and persistence, as well as of transformation through that perseverance. All us little student artists are struggling up through that river, all trying to become dragons in our own right, all trying to fly. This is a reference to my adoration of much of the Asian, especially Japanese, culture.

I have made a simple mechanism for the back of the badge, a piece of bent steel wire that hooks into a turned bit of copper wire to hold it in place. The difference in the angle of steel wire at each end of the copper tubing keeps the pin springy enough so it does not just slip out of the hook at the other end. I used copper for the body of the pin because the enamelling adheres to copper well, because copper is soft enough that it is not hard to cut out and file down to the correct shape, and because I enjoy the colouring and patterning of the copper once it has been heated and cooled, as has to happen for the soldering.

The photos are the series part of the work, the badge was merely the object carrying the initial meaning.
I have taken a stroll around Nelson City, and taken photos of the badge in natural and made made conditions that mimic or enhance the lines of the badge. The photos are partially trying to identify the balance between man made and natural movements in my own environment, but also suggesting the influences and inspirational qualities that come from an artists environment. But the photos on the wall are not evenly places, or squarely displayed, which some classmates claimed was distracting them from what they thought was the meaning, or the main focus of the piece. These photos, haphazardly placed in a circle on the wall, are intended to create a chaos, for the world, and even our own minds, are chaotic, yin yang is two opposing forces of chaos, creating balance, there is no order, but order comes from the chaos. Within these photos, the two fish swim round, turning a full circle, and even the size of the badge in the photographs changes fairly evenly from small to large and back, just in time for a full turn. This was incidental, though I find that only enhances the meaning, as this is a sort of order coming from an accident - something that should be, and is, chaotic.

There are, of course, things I would like to change in my piece, mostly relating to the below average workmanship I see in the badge. The fish are supposed to be balance, but the red one fiercely outweighs the purple one, partly because the purple one was smaller (not on purpose) and partly because too much black has been entwined in the purple enamel. I in tend of trying to remake this piece during the holidays coming up, and I will do the enamelling better, so that it looks more balanced. I also want to trial different layouts of the desk part of the presentation, to see if I can make the messy student desk more realistic without adding unintended meaning to any part of it.
I had wanted to make 3 badges as my series, though it has developed into the photographs I would like more time to play with the idea of the three badges, to see if I can make that work better than it did during the time I had in the passed two weeks.