Priley Riley, An update on my work, November 2014

In the last couple of weeks I have visited a number of different galleries in Leicestershire, England, including Embrace Arts, New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Silver Arcade, 2 Queens Gallery, LCB Depot’s The New Incunable Print Shop, LCB Depot’s print show P2P 2014, Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre and PACE at De Montfort University. My favourite of the gallery visits was LCB Depot’s The New Incunable Print Shop, where I did a quick drawing of my hand which was 3D printed in front of me! I applied printing ink over the surface of the 3D printed hand and printed it onto paper. The 3D print will be used by The New Incunable Print Shop in posters. Photos of the original drawing, the drawing being 3D printed, the final 3D print, and the ink print that I did are shown above. I have also been working on my project on the heart by casting a red heart in resin using a vinyl/ rubber mould that I made a few weeks ago. Photos of the front and back of the resin heart are shown below. I have also started to make my own concertina style book, which I will upload photos of once completed.

Priley Riley, Face casting, October- November 2014

I had my face cast for the first time last Friday. In preparation for it, I covered my face in baby oil and put my hair into a cap out of the way. My tutor then started applying alginate to my face, shown in the first two photos. Once the alginate had set, a layer of plaster was applied over the alginate to make it stronger (see the 3^rd photo). Once the plaster had set, I was able to pull the alginate and plaster layers off in one go. As you may be able to see from the 4^th photo, however, the alginate cast you take off curves inwards instead of outwards, so I continued to work on it on Friday by applying plaster to the inside of the alginate cast. Today, as the plaster that I had laid inside had set, I was able to carefully separate the final plaster cast, shown in the final 3 photos, from the alginate one.

Priley Riley, Developed cast and storage desk, 24th- 26th October 2014

Last Friday I made a plaster cast of my hand holding the plaster heart that I made the previous week (so the two works are now joined together, which I think makes the heart cast look much better). Photos of the developed cast are shown above, from different angles. I then spent my weekend working in a team with 3 other students to build a storage desk which will be used by Loughborough University. The workshop was lead by artist Maria Pask and craftsman Peter Leadbeater, although we constructed it with minimal help, using an idea I had from a book, and from planks of old pieces of found wood. We then finished by carving our names into the desk. I've included a few photos of the event and final storage desk below- I’m in the black trousers with red stripes.

Priley Riley, An update on my work on the heart, October 2014

A quick summary of my work over the past few weeks!; I have made 3 A3 size canvases to use for more portrait paintings, modelled a life-size clay heart that I intend on having fired in a kiln (see the top photo), made a plaster cast of a heart using a real lamb’s heart (the 2^nd photo shows a stage of me making it, the 3^rd shows the final outcome), made a vinyl/ rubber mould from the plaster cast (the 4^th photo shows a stage of me making it, the 5^th and 6^th show the two halves that make up the final mould), and have used the rubber mould to cast 2 hearts in wax (the ^7th photo shows the front of one of the wax hearts, the ^8th shows the back of the same piece). I have also made a cardboard cut-out of the heart and the word heart combined (see the 9^th photo) as well as a few quick pieces in plaster (such as the piece in the final photo, where I carved a drawing of a heart into plaster).  I have been researching the heart using British Heart Foundation resources and am developing science based ideas for my art work as a result of this research. I have also been working on written assignments for my course.

Priley Riley, Acrylic self portrait 2, September 2014

This acrylic self portrait was painted onto A4 acrylic paper. I am happy with the resemblance, although I intend on painting onto a larger surface in future so that I can get more detail into a single area- for example, the hair would appear finer if I were to use the same very thin paintbrush for a much larger painting.

Priley Riley, "I only have one...", 30th May 2014

I have been helping to set up the degree show for students in their final year at university this week and as such I have not had time to focus on my own work. Walking home from this today, however, I began thinking about how grateful I am for different things in my life, especially for the things that I only have one of (e.g. one mum) as having only one makes it all the more valuable and special. This thought has inspired me to use one of the sketchbooks that I made to do a project called “I only have one…” where I draw the single things that I am grateful for. I started off with the ink drawing and watercolour painting “I only have one heart” as I am grateful for the one heart keeping me alive and the subject of the heart leads on well from my last work.

Priley Riley, The heart (continued), 21st- 25th May 2014

Since my last post I have been thinking about incorporating text into my work on the heart. I started off doing quick watercolour paintings of the heart from memory and I wondered if I could paint the heart using the word heart itself, shown in the top photo. I painted different words in the shape of a heart but I found that the word heart worked best as the outside shape looked most like that of a heart and I liked how the diagonal part of the letter ‘A’ looked like the coronary blood vessels that go across the heart. I decided to develop this in my next piece by painting a hand around the heart with a contrasting green background, shown in the second photo. I then thought about adding writing that is more meaningful, and so I thought about how the image of the heart typically represents love. I sewed the word love over work on the heart, such as the piece shown in the third photo, which I also used drawing ink and watercolour paint for. I then thought back to the dissected hearts and how this image could represent the heart being broken, which inspired me to do the piece shown in the final photo. I kept the art fairly simple to emphasize the writing.