In the final stages of this piece, I also decided to let light play a key part in how I would display this piece. As how light is casted on this piece made the web look bigger or smaller. This added to the narrative element of this piece because how much certain thoughts affect us is dependant on purely how much important we give to them.

How I would display this piece would be as an installation with the pages from my notebook showing the tallies from every time I had an anxious thought. Invoking both the performance aspect, as well as the installation aspect.

(All Above) Photo depicting how I would depict the final piece

I started experimenting and testing how I would approach building this sculpture/installation by cutting up smaller pieces of tights and building a small structure by my window underneath the actual spider web. Cutting the tights horizontally into little loops then cutting them into a triangular shape and stretching them out. This worked nicely as you can stack them easily on top of each other to mimic a spiderweb.

(Above) Horizontally cutting the tights

(Above) Small experimental structure

After experimenting with the initial design. I carried out the actual project.

(Above) My tally system of tracking anxious thoughts

I tracked my anxious thoughts throughout the week in a tally system in my notebook that I carry with me around Edinburgh. If they occurred in my room, I would immediately add a strand to the growing structure in my room. If they occurred whilst I was out, I used the tally system to keep track of how many I’ve had so when I do get back to my room, I would be able to add the exact amount of strand to the installation.

Whilst going through this process I research the artist Tracy Emin and her installation piece – My Bed – a piece depicting a turbulent time in her life. The installation itself featured her unmade bed, condom wrappers, used drug containers. This piece represented the accumulation of her self destructive actions during that period in her life. Some mornings when I wake up and I glance over at the growing pieces of the “web”, I think to myself, what is it if not an accumulation of my failing faith in myself  and the choices I make. In making that connection, I decided that this piece is not a sculpture, is an installation/performance piece, where the found object I’m working with is as much the socks as my anxious thoughts.

My Bed 1998 Tracey Emin born 1963 Lent by The Duerckheim Collection 2015 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/L03662

In the project, working with found objects, I opted to work with the spiderwebs in my room when I first moved into my accommodation in Edinburgh. I found it interesting how although I was moving into a space that I haven’t seen before there was already a little resident in my space. I started associating my initial doubt and fears regarding university with the slowly growing spiderweb. An invasive presence in my room, a piece of decoration that I haven’t placed myself, infesting my safe space. It was too good of a metaphor for my increasing doubt and anxiety to not utilise for this project.

I wanted to make a sculpture/installation for this first project, my own web, where I would actively add a new piece of strand every time I had an anxious thought in university.

To further this idea, I went to visit the Fruitmarket gallery where I witness the work of the Scottish artist Karla Black. An artist who worked exclusively with found objects and explore their material potential beyond their intended use.

(Above) Karla Black’s exhibit at the Fruitmarket. Source –  https://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/karla-black/

There was a piece there that had stood out to me more than any of the other experimental and beautiful work on display – a pair of outstretched tights, decorated with blobs of dried oil paint. That was my lightbulb moment, the outstretched tights, due to the synthetic nature of the material of them, it looked exactly like the way the spiderweb reflected light in the corner of my window. That’s when I decided to create the installation/sculpture with tights as the building material. In seeing this piece, it inspired me to not only explore the narrative element of this piece but as well as experiment with the material of the found object, to, just like Karla Black and her quirky, beautiful pieces, explore the potential of my found objects.

(Above) The tight piece that inspired me to use tights as my found objects along with the spiderwebs