Development of Ideas

Because I thought my drawings could be representative of viruses/bacteria, I wanted to look more into the science of them. Biologists cultivate bacteria by putting it into a Petri-dish and letting it grow. I decided to try and represent bacteria in a Petri-dish with my drawings. From looking at some examples of bacteria, I splatted inks onto a page and worked onto it with fine liner. I then divided this into different circles as if they were dishes.

I now looked at Petri-dish artist Klari Reis. Reis has produced as collection of Petri-dishes by adding pigments and dies to a special plastic. These turned out to be very bright and abstract, not necessarily representing bacteria. I experimented and attempted to use a similar method to produce my own Petri-dishes. I purchased some empty, plastic Petri-dishes and then added P.V.A glue to them. I next spatted them with some ink to add colour.

These then dried clear so you could still see the colour but also through the dish. I think this method has penitential but to improve my outcomes I would have had to splat the ink so that it wasn't in just one thick clump as this was too dark and did not dry very well.

Part of Klari Reis's work is how she lays out the finished Petri-dishes. She often makes them in to circle shapes, almost like one big Petri-dish. I think that this layout can be effective but it's all on one level and she does not expand on the 3D element of her work.
However, artist Alan Bur Johnson's installations are so effective because of how he uses multi-layers and overlapping. Johnson's work is based upon a range of biological sources such as trees or insects. He turns abstract, black & white photographs into lots of small circles which he arranges in a certain way, relating to swarms of insects or other biological matter.

I wanted to create a similar work, instead of using a photograph, I used one of my Crystal Wagner inspired drawings as this was actually based upon biomorphic imagery. I scanned in this work then printed it onto a sheet of transparent acetate. I cut this into lots of small circles before pinning them into a square shape of foam-ex. I cut the pins to different lengths so the circles were at a variety of heights. I liked this outcome. I think the most effective part of it was that some circles over lapped and this meant the shape of the original drawing was changed.

Next I created three more pin installations. This time, however, I spatted ink onto a sheet of paper before cutting it up. The benefit of this was that I could use a special hole punch to cut out the circles, about 2cm in diameter. I stuck the circles to the various sized pins with a glue gun the pushed them into foam-ex so they were in a tight cluster with the highest circles being in the middle. These tended to be the more interesting cut outs of the ink work.

On two of these installations I had started off by drawing onto of the ink work before I cut it into the circles. I think this worked well and was happy with each outcome.