Cakeland - Scott Hove

Scott Hove says of Cakeland on his Kickstarter page;

"Cakeland is an art installation. Cakeland is also a refuge of beauty, emotional experience and safe fantasy. Everyone has a relationship to cake, in the form of memories around family, marriage, birthdays and celebration. Using the theme of cake, I draw you into my sculptures and installations with the promise and expectation of familiar relation. Yet in experiencing Cakeland, you are faced with unexpected challenges; as in life, it takes patience and determination to win your reward. I guarantee, however, that you won't have to work too hard, because Cakeland, before all else, is a place of joy."

Just recently came across the work of Scott Hove. His Cake themed sculptures and installations are amazing. He talks of his works as 'Indulgent' which is part of the reason why I love it so much. It doesn't pretend to be innocent.

Although inedible, the sculptures are all very tempting and teasing. Hove uses traditional cake decorating tools in his works.

I feel like this is definitely inspiring work.

The Event II at Winchester School of Art

On the 15th December, Fine art came together for 'The Event II'.

It was an unbelievably busy day and an amazing success.

Here's a picture of me in my mask (made of cupcake cases and sprayed gold), taken by one of the Live Press photographers;

I am with my friend Tessa Gray, who I often collaborate with. In fact, on the night we worked on a Photobooth together, thanks to previously made plans and Tess' technical know how, it went down without a hitch and we got the images we needed.

Our sign was clearly awesome.

Here's a picture of the booth:

The booth is an interesting piece of work, but the photographs are not yet ready to exhibit, as the final outcome of the project needs more work and it's quite an ambitious piece, but all will be revealed soon.

I also did a piece on the performance stage at The Event. I have yet to edit the video but see below for a couple of stills;



The performance was me 'decorating' my face with cake decorating ingredients including Icing, hundreds and thousands, edible gold dust and edible gold glitter flakes.

It was the first time I had done the performance and it went reasonably well. I would like to do it again though using buttercream and icing flowers etc and make the whole thing more intricate and less messy, so it becomes less about covering my face and more about the decorative aspect.

I also want the camera to be far closer to me when I film it next time.

Bronze

On the right hand side of the above picture you can see my bronze cupcake
And a close-up.

The bronze casts have now been removed from the molds and are sitting in water. Soon I will clean off the last of the sand/plaster and work on my cupcake, neaten it up and polish it.

Bronze pour

Today we did the bronze pour, it was great to see and very warm. The bronze is now cooling and I can't wait to see my cast cupcake on Monday.



The bronze is heated to 1100 degrees Celsius.


It is then lifted out in a carbon pot.


The impurities are skimmed off the top of the molten bronze.

The bronze is poured into the sand/plaster mix molds. (the wax structure was encased in the plaster sand combo and then put in a kiln to dry out and for the wax to melt out, so the plaster can be poured in).


It will take a day to cool.


The left over bronze cooling.

It's a lengthy process but should be worth it!

Alelier Printmaking

Here is a photo of my cupcakes in the Printmaking Atelier. Unfortunately I did not have a camera with me, but got a quick snap on my phone. Hopefully other people took better photographs! The exhibition last night was great, the whole of printmaking came together and the show was beautifully curated by a fellow student. It was great to see how the range of works in our studio came together.

We have put the desks back today, but moved them around a bit. It's nice to change the space we work in a little. It's really quite refreshing.

Preparation for bronze casting