Assemblage Sculpture

Alive
Paper mache on newspaper using magazines, paper, and glue 

For this, I was inspired by the spring season and birds - especially since I have chickens. I also chose this because I wanted to do something that would challenge me when recreating it, and it also had multiple components: the eggs, the bird, and the actual nest.

First, I crumpled newspaper into large balls and taped them all together, forming a large nest-like base. I then taped more, making it sturdier. After this, I started using the paper mache technique. To start, I found magazine pages of desired colors and made many cut strips. After I had enough, I dipped them in a glue and water mixture, roughly made of equal parts. It took me a very long time to cover most of the base. When I was finished with that, I dipped only the middle of my remaining strips in the solution (why explained in the last paragraph). Once my nest was dry and complete (still looking ugly), I made the eggs. I balled up newspaper, and wrapped it in tape. After, I used the paper mache process for the second time to cover the eggs in white paper. For one egg that was "broken", I only used paper and folded it. Lastly, I made the bird. I did the same process, balling up paper and taping it. I finally covered it in yellow construction paper. Overall, the eggs and the bird makes it look more like a nest, but I still don't like it very much - considering I spent a very long time on this, and a very large amount of effort. 

I faced a ton of challenges during this project. One of the most notable challenges I faced was how I constructed the nest. I should have used sticks, hot glued to create a nest; rather than using paper and the paper mache process. Using sticks would have been much easier to shape/construct, and also easier to accurately represent a nest. One decision I made was how I would make the paper strips look like straw/sticks. When I glued them down, they were flat and looked nothing like what nests are made up of. I fixed/did this by dipping only the middle part of the strips in the glue mixture. I wanted both ends of the strips to stand up and not be glued down, looking like sticks, or straw/brush.