Ivette Bechara
z3217026
Painting Selected:
‘Nighthawks’ – Edward Hopper (1942).
This painting portrays people sitting down in a downtown dinner late at night.
Emotive qualities of painting:
- Isolation – urban street empty outside
- Modern life as empty and lonely
- Enclosure, confinement, entrapment
- Chosen character: Lonely man drinking. Contrast between the light falling on his back – half shadow half light conveys a contrast.
PROGRAM/NARRATIVE:
'An earth bound cellar for a depressed man with an addiction to alcohol. '
Traumatised by the eerie ghosts of night, a lonely man escapes his fear of darkness. Sitting in the light, he takes refuge in his only companion – alcohol.
Central idea:
The copper pipes modelled in the cellar represent storage pipes for alcohol. Once filled, light is blocked, but as the lonely man pulls each bottle to drink, the pipes are opened up and light enters the cellar in an indirect way, leaving subtle scattered reflections off the sandstone wall. Once the bottles are consumed they are collected on the shelf opposite. The man is then forced to turn around and walk back through the tunnel where a chair and desk provides him a place to sit and rest – simply to be alone. Once again indirect light is provided through pipes similar to those for the alcohol.
SITE
Situated within a hill in a secluded area of Bicentenial park. Street lamp on the site.
DESIGN:
The space is designed in response to the ambience of the painting:
- Narrow cellar (2.5m wide) with a low opening forcing the alcoholic to bend to walk in.
- Form - consists of two geometrical compositions: Straight angles revealing isolation and rigidity and a curved wall/roof forming a comfortable container for the alcoholic.
- Light - Skylight above drapes light down the tunnel highlighting the vertical axis and reflecting off the thick wall surface. So as the alcoholic man sits, he is in darkness, with the light behind him. Purposely no typical windows’ were part of the design, as to keep the cellar dark – not only for practical reasons, but to provide an eerie space through scattered reflected and indirect light. The character feels lonely and confined in this space, unable to make visual contact with the outside world.
MATERIALS
The model was constructed from:
- Balsa to represent Stone walls
- Cracked glass tiles to represent the warm glow i wanted to achieve within the space. The uneven sized pieces of tile depict the rough nature of sandstone and allow for interesting reflections and shadows within the space.
- Copper pipes represent the technological idea of wine bottle storage.
FINAL POCHE DRAWINGS
On this plan i decided to render the internal light and shade using the rough texture of the paper to convey the dense gloomy nature of the space.
This section conveys the light that enters the pipes and reflects off the internal wall leaving 'blotches' of light in the cellar.
FINAL MODEL IMAGES
MODEL PROGRESS IMAGES
FIRST TRIAL/EXPERIMENT
My first attempt at modelling my design was by using toffee. This failed in that i wasn't able to achieve precise walls.
Another attempt revealing a cracked piece of wall.
Trialing the arrangement of copper piped within the wall.
MOULDS for the toffee walls
PROCESS DIARY
