Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

Wearing the mask!

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

The beautiful bronze frame! The top image is exploring how I would affix the bricks.

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

I decided early on that I would like to have my work cast in bronze as the 3-d printed material didn't seem quite fitting for the theme of Gothic. The pieces were cast in a mold, the printed plastic melted out, and then bronze was poured in. The pieces then went to a jeweller to be filed and polished. He left the integrity of the layered 3-d printed surface.

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

Here is the stl. file (stereolithography) ready to be printed. Due to the fact that the print bed is a mere 14cm square, I had to print each half separately to be fused later on. I used a piece of twisted wire to get the correct shape initially, which was then taken into Rhino and traced. The finished product fits like a dream!

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

My first experiment with the 3-d printer. I started with a sketch from m book which was taken into Rhino and Grasshopper. Using a GH definition I was able to generate "bricks" (extruded curves) and put them onto a frame. In this case the frame of the mask and the brick surface are printed as one and are the same materiality. I later decided that I should revert back to the hand-making methods I had used for my original piece and opted to sew the new mask to the frame.

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

At this point I became concerned with the materiality of the mask and how I was to get my foam bricks to integrate with the portion of the mask that I was to have 3-d printed. This drawing is looking at various clipping and pinning methods as well as sewing the bricks onto a frame.

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

Conceptual Image of Mask

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

More initial sketches

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

Initial concept sketches for the form of my mask.

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

http://labricoleuse.livejournal.com/129692.html
I began by looking at corsetry in all its forms. It appears throughout history as a form of Armour, as a fashion garment, as a fetish garment, and has even been used in medical applications. See earlier blog posts for Velda Lauder's Corsetry and a link to her current website.

The corset informed an important aspect of my mask - since I had been heavily influenced by female repression/emancipation, it was only reasonable that Spiller (conveniently a man) should be squeezed and ever so slightly discomforted in the process of wearing the mask. Early on I decided that I would like to have a device which squeezed the temples' of the wearer.

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

Here are the first two pieces of jewellery.

Scale 1 - Mask for Neil Spiller

This is an illustration of my initial piece of 'poor-man's' jewellery, which was inspired by the facade of the Cork Gallery by Erich van Egeraat (see early blog posts). It became the starting point for my Jewellery for Neil Spiller, which became a mask.

I decided on a mask because of all the issues I had been reading about during my studies on Gothic literature. The feminine identity was heavily questioned during this period, with women dealing with issues of domesticity and control in a patriarchal society; freedom of expression through their writing; and the garment industry's consumer product the corset.

Since Spiller's architectural illustrations are beautiful but ambiguous, and serve to supplement his poetry and prose in the margins, it seemed to me that he was highly interested in the aesthetic function of the architectural drawing and less so the technical aspect. Much of his work remains unbuilt.

This superficial treatment of his subject matter, coupled with his references to characters such as Dorian Gray (with his issues of identity and his troubled psyche) all pointed in the direction of a mask.