Wearable Sculpture

For this project the objective was to construct some sort of headpiece for the spring fashion show at the high school. I chose to create a crown because I wanted to build texture off of it. The structure is made out of newspaper, tape, wire, and plaster. To begin I folded newspaper to a width I liked and taped it in a circle shape and surrounded the shape with wire and covered the structure with tape. Next I used paper mache to cover the base. I used paper cache because the tape, newspaper, and wire didn’t keep the shape very well. Because I wanted the base to be different than most crowns I curved the sides in and out to create rounded dents in the crown.

I didn’t really have a set plan going into the project but I knew I would find what I wanted to do along the way. This was very bad planning on my part because I wasn’t able to complete my project in time. I ended up going to a craft store and looking at the ribbons and my ideas came to me. I originally went to the craft store to buy a feather boa to string across the bottom like a crown. When I was looking at the ribbon this pearl and gold ribbon stood out to me and reminded me of royalty. Deciding to play off of that I chose black velvet, and some black schrunchie material and some pink flowery ribbon. I wanted to play off hard and soft. Like the pearl and gold chain and pink flowers are very delicate and then I wanted to use black to create contrast. I kind of thought about how women monarchs would carry themselves; as a woman I know it’s hard to have your voice heard in such a male-dominant world. I really wanted to use delicate materials but use more solid materials also. I also wanted to play with texture, so all the materials have different texture. When I was choosing the ribbon I thought about how the piece would be photographed in black and white and I wanted the viewer to be able to see the different textures coming together.

When I went to contrast my crown I had a plan on how I wanted to attach the ribbon. I used the black schrunchie material as a base around the crown, and I layered the pearl, gold chain on top. I then added the white feather material on the bottom. I knew that this wasn’t extravagant enough so I used the black velvet across the top, crossing each other to creating pie wedges. I then attached the flowery material to wire and had the wires curve across each other on top of the crown. Then as a cherry on top I used some of the left over feather material to create almost a pom-pom (binding it together with the velvet ribbon). I used hot glue to attach all my materials.

If I were to do this project again I would definitely want to have more of a plan. I do believe that art is always changing and ideas will always develop further during the process but I felt super disorganized and stressed about what I was going to do. Overall I am satisfied with my work and I do like the concept of playing off hard and soft.