In this short assignment, you will do a cast sculpture in the style of Rachel Whiteread. Your sculpture will be a cast of the negative space inside or around a found object. We will be using cement and plaster for the casting.

Read this article and watch this video before starting this assignment:

 

In order to get started with this assignment, you must ask yourself a few questions:

 

What am I casting? Does it have forms that lend itself to this process? Is it too full of small detail and delicate forms? Is it so minimal that the viewer won’t be able to tell what it is?

Why am I casting this? Does this object have a significance that will come through the casting process? This process confers significance, does this object merit this?

Is the object structured in a way that you could make multiples, or does it have to be broken to get the cast out?

 

Your object will differ from Rachel Whiteread’s work in a significant way, your object will be a hybrid. For your work, you will combine 2 negative spaces together and cast one object from that space. You can do this by cutting your objects apart and reassembling them in an interesting way. The in-class demo will cover this.

Tips:

To make the cast work, you will need to make a contiguous inner volume. There can’t be a pinched connection between parts. Also, you can’t have protrusions that are too delicate.

 

For this project, you will need:

 

Several found objects- plastic, wood, glass, metal. Not too big, not too small- between 4” and 12″

A small bucket

Cleaning or dishwashing gloves

Hot glue and duct tape

A trash bag and cardboard box.

 

Good places to look for found objects:

Thrift stores

Goodwill Fairfax

9960 Main St, Fairfax, VA 22031

Unique

2956 Gallows Rd, Falls Church, VA 22042

Home Depot/ Lowe’s

Your parents basement/attic/garage

Dollar store