Samu Patten Portfolio

Balinese Style Mask - 2020 (above)

The mask is based on the Bali starling, an iconic animal native to the island. With this piece I tried as best as I could to replicate the Balinese visual style. In its construction however, the mask is fabricated completely differently. It is styled to look like wood but the mask is in fact completely cast in plastic and fibreglass. To design this mask, I studied depictions of Garuda, as well as Rangda and Barong masks used in traditional festivities.

Pangolin Sculpture for The Katingan Project - 2020 (below)

This piece was designed in collaboration with The Katingan Project, a carbon trade and forest protection organisation. The pangolin was chosen because it is an iconic Indonesian animal, and I worked in a style inspired by my upbringing in Indonesia. The piece has almost 200 individual hand-made copper scales and is constructed almost entirely without adhesives. Each of the scales are bound onto the wire lattice frame using knitting wire, this piece took hundreds of hours to plan and complete and will soon be decorating the reception area of The Katingan Project's Jakarta headquarters.

Wanderer

I made this piece of my modelmaking course's final major project. I based the character on some of my favourite heavy metal album covers, the idea behind the project was to later use the piece, along with some strategic lighting, to create some cover art.

In this project I tried to use natural materials and authentic techniques as much as I could, everything is sewn or bound together.

Aluminium Viper Fish sculpture - 2017 (above)

Made for my 15 hour A-Level art exam. I had recently learned oxy-acetylene welding and was keen to put it into practice. Deep sea creatures have fascinated me ever since watching the BBC series Blue Planet and the viper fish made for an excellent subject that lent itself to the medium very nicely.

Aluminium Shark sculpture - 2017

Immediately after making the viper fish, I wanted to develop my aluminium fish. The exam placed time pressure on me which meant I had to settle with some less than perfect welds, but I made the shark at my leisure which allowed me to plan and complete the piece to a higher standard.

Plaster Natural Forms - 2015

A simple carving exercise that turned into a series. Plaster is a very soft easy material to carve and allows the practice of refining shapes without the hassle of abiding to material constraints like woodgrain. If the pattern does not change through the piece it becomes boring, it’s very difficult to transition into a form that’s different enough to be interesting yet remain cohesive. Working on these helped me better understand how shapes should flow into other shapes.

Helmet Wire Sculpture - 2018 (above)

An excercise in creating surfaces from wire, up until this point I had only bound around a central core or armature, like I was wrapping string. This piece takes advantage of the properties of wire better than any piece I had made preceeding it, as well as working in some copper sheets to add some flair.

Copper Earrings - 2018 (below)

These two designs are the first I ever created, I designed them to not require any heat or adhesives so that I could produce them at home without any specialised equipment. They are simple yet elegant with nothing to hide and are made from beaten scrap copper with have surgical steel hooks.

Wire shells - 2018

These shells were made for the final project of my art foundation in 2018, they followed from the helmet pictured above. With these pieces I was attempting to get more out of a single piece of wire, I wanted to utilise wire's unique property of holding its shape without support, to express a shape with minimal description.

Wire Butterfly - 2019 (above)

A Christmas present for my mother. I made her a wire butterfly necklace when I was a small child, and she still wears it every day, so it was a good place to start for a desperate son who had forgotten to purchase a present. With this piece I experimented with creating surface textures by laying surfaces to create the intricate wings of a monarch butterfly.

Man Prawn - 2020 (below)

Man Prawn was a joke that went too far. He went from a drawing, to a fully actualised Atlantean being in the space of a few weeks. Because of the short time span of the project, Man Prawn is lacking in a few areas, but he marks a developmental stage in my metal-working abilities that allowed me to progress onto pieces like the pangolin shown above.

Speak of the Devil - 2020 (below)

The demonic figure pictured in this piece came into existence sometime in 2019 after a dramatic camping trip. This being moved from medium to medium before finally materialising into this piece for my communication modelmaking unit in 2020. The Devil is constructed from iron wire and pewter, the lecterns from teak with sculpted plastic faces, all mounted on an acrylic and slate base. This piece marks an important turning point in my wire figures, with more surface texturing than previously used to illustrate musculature.