The shoe in Assignment 2.

This is the shoe I have chosen to use for Assignment 2. It has been grown out of by my son and is therefore no longer needed by him. I am feeling a little guilty that I didnt donate the pair to charity but the creative process has begun. I have sketched the shoe from several angles. These are in black pastel on White paper.

The shoes is to be covered in teabags, paper mâché and oranges. I am going to cut the oranges in to tiny triangle segments and apply them like scales. The reason I have used tea bags is that I find their uniform shape and size very appealing. I like the fact that once they have been used for their intended purpose they are a different colour ( a different variety of colours!). The liquid that can be squeezed out if them can be used to stain or draw with. The tea bags them selves remind me of the pockets in an eiderdown. They make me want to sew them together like a little quilt!

This was my initial feeling when I struck on the idea to use them for this assignment. I have found them easy to dry but they do have a tendency to split and the tea goes everywhere. They sew together well on the machine and I am going to do some hand stitching with them for the next part. I am keen on the work of Janet Bolton who uses naive appliqué which is ( on the outside appearance) economical with her stitches and I am going to try and create thi in contrasting red stitches with the tea bags.

I have decided to use the dried oranges for three reasons. 1) they were shrivelled up and not very juicy in my fruit bowl and I would have thrown them away. 2) They are a lovely colour and can be cut into many different shapes. Also there are variety of ways they could have been used ( the peel, the flesh,) or as I have done, both! 3) They have a lovely smell which I always think is a wonderful addition if you can add an olfactory dimension to the work as well then that has to be a positive thing!!

I think the shape of sliced oranges is very pretty and considered using them whole in their slices however I thought they looked to obviously like oranges and so I decided to make them into tiny "scales".

I am a big user of paper mâché in my work I have created up to the point of starting this course and I am thinking about incorporating it into this piece as a base layer and as a way of changing the shape of the shoe. I am going to explore this further with sketches first. I like the idea of " the old woman whom lived in the shoe." and was wondering about making the shoe into a "house" although this does not tie in with the oranges as scales very well although the tea bags make great bricks!!

I am looking forward to getting on with putting it together over the next few days and will record the photos on here and sketches in my sketch book.