Wire Sculpture

This assignment was called the wire sculpture. In this assignment, we were told we had to choose a small object that gave us "nostalgia" and recreate it out of wire. The formative assignment was recreating a small paper cup, just so we could get used to bending, sculpting, and tightening the wire. The object I chose was my first pointe shoe since I've been doing ballet since I was three and pointe since I was 12. In this assignment, I used pliers and wire cutters to mold and sculpt the wire.

Some elements of art that I used were line and space. While creating my wire sculpture, it became clear that I would have to simplify it down into different lines. Lines helped determine the actual mold of my object, and size of my object, and if I included more detail with the wire, I could have had texture in my wire sculpture as well. Space was also very important. Seeing as space represents anywhere where there's no, or barely material, I had to decide wisely on where the most and least space would be since I had two or three class periods to work on it. You can see space in areas such as the part where you would put your foot in, and you can see less space in areas such as the "box" of the shoe. The major principals of design that I used included emphasis as well as movement. Movement is used since I decided to have my pointe shoe stand on its own. This gives the illusion that it is "en pointe" and not just laying on its side. Emphasis plays a major role as well since the contrast between the black wire and the white background, are all we had to put emphasis that this is indeed a pointe shoe.

As I mentioned before, the object I chose was a pointe shoe which means a lot to me since dance is one of my greatest passions, and this first pointe shoe gives me a lot of nostalgia. I am really proud of the balance I used as well as the overall structure of it because I really think that it looks like a pointe shoe, especially when it stands on its own. I really struggled with the overall building process of it. Because wire was very new to me, it was hard to come up with tactics on the spot to creating such detailed work. If I could go back and had more time, I would probably try adding the ribbons of my shoe to add even more detail.