Sea of Eyes
Year: 2019
Medium: Metal / Welding
Dimension: 9 x 3 x 48 in.
What does it mean to have eyes on you? Does the sense of attention make you prideful or anxious? This sculpture targeted my fear of all eyes on me, the fear of public speaking.
Planning
Creating a concept for my sculpture became hard, I was having full artist block and I did not know what direction I wanted to go in that semester. It was not until I dug into the scrape bin where I found two C shape pieces of thin metal and one small circle. I began to play with the shapes and created the famous eye you see in my completed piece.
Concept Development / Digital Sketch
When I created the initial shape of my sculpture the concept developed quickly after. When I saw this eye shape, I knew I wanted to make multiples of them giving the illusion of the piece starring back at you. This connected to me deeply, I for one hate it when people stare at me. It makes me extremely nervous, especially in the instance of public speaking.
After my concept developed, I took to my computer to make a digital sketch of what I wanted my piece to look like. In the beginning stages of this project, I initially wanted it to be free standing, giving people the opportunity to walk around the entire piece. This later changed because I thought the negative space of the wall created a subtle way to bring out the “pupils” of the eyes.
Process
The process of this sculpture really tested me. I had to cut and shape each individual piece by hand, so each half circle you see in this sculpture I rolled out one by one. This took days using our rolling machine we have in the studio. Taking breaks in between I had to cut out the pupils for each eye and unlike the half circles I had fun doing this task. The pipe I used to cut out my mini circles was rusted completely and when I cut into it, it was like brand new. You could see the shine come back into the metal almost making a rainbow-like reflection, which I enjoyed.
Connection / Final Execution
After creating all the individual parts of my sculpture, I had to figure out how I was going to connect them. I was going to easily weld them together, but I did not want the weld to be as noticeable. This was when my professor suggested to connect them by “button welds.” A button weld is when you drill a hole into two pieces of metal and connect them by welding only into the hole you’ve created. This became the ideal way of welding for me because it is discreet and has a clean outcome. Once I welded all my pieces together the final product came to life!
