This week I have (sort of) reached the end of the BAMS project. I think overall I have enjoyed it although it has been tricky at times. I liked that there was a clear focus to it i.e. I know that at the end of it, I should have a medal but there was a enough freedom that I could choose what I did for my medal.
Whilst I really enjoyed designing my medal and figuring out how to make it all fit together, one of the things I found most valuable was my skills acquisition. I’ll be honest, last year I didn’t really enjoy myself and I had a whole bunch of inductions in order to learn how to do things during my first few weeks but then I never did them again. This of course led me to forget how to do most of it and so this BAMS project has been the most amazing opportunity for me to relearn how to do things and also how to do them better by taking things more seriously, making mistakes and practicing.
During this process I have become proficient at using the laser cutters on my own with the help of a friend which turned out to be vital for my design. I was able to try making a plaster mould again which admittedly didn’t go that well but I now have detailed notes on how to do it better next time so that I have a strong base to practice on. Another thing I did was revisit wax pouring which turned out to be very simple but I still took notes and poured over and over again to figure out how to get the best casts from my mould. These were all things that I didn’t really feel like doing last year but I now feel able and comfortable doing and I can now reap the benefits of all the workshops and it’s been really amazing!
However, all these things are old things that I was revisiting I also learned a crazy amount of new things. First off I learned how to make a silicon mould and by extension what the advantages of using it are over things like plaster but also about the situations in which it’s not as appropriate. I found that this was a really good choice for the wax casting because it can take the heat, retain high detail well (although fine detail is less of an issue with mine) and it’s also flexible so it’s easier to get the wax out of the mould. I then learned more wax skills by learning how to construct things using wax to create a tree that I could use to create a ceramic mould to pour some bronze into. This turned out to be really difficult just because things kept coming apart and it was hard to create sturdy joints because of the angles and also not trying to melt my medal pieces. After this we were shown how to make a ceramic shell for it using molochite. Another new thing I learned how to do was cast pewter by compressing oily sand into a pair of metal bangles. This turned out to be my main method of making my medal because I really wanted a pewter medal. Suffice to say, I have learned a lot!
That’s all about the process learning I’ve done but there is, of course, the actual design element as well. This was in some ways the trickiest part because most of the technical problems I encountered trying to make this medal were down to the design being too tricky.
The design is inspired by 40s-50s space age design which is all about space (obviously) but also atomic diagrams. I wanted there to be clean lines and very accurate geometry. This is why I had to use CAD in order to make my medal because I wanted it to be really accurate, more accurate than I know I can do by hand. One of my initial designs had text on it but it was too difficult to get it to laser cut because it was too fine. I think this was a blessing in disguise though because the design may have gotten too cluttered and confusing. However, even without the text the design still seems to do its job because I have shown my prototype to understood what it was and what it referenced so I’m happy with that.
In terms of how it works to BAMS brief, I’m not entirely sure how well it does. I know that it’s bigger than 10cm and it’s not made of bronze (although I will have some bronze). I’ve also heard that BAMS is quite traditional and I don’t know how well my medal fits with that. However I still stand by what I’ve done because it successfully conveys what it’s meant to and I have made it so both sides of the design interact with each other by using negative space and I have considered the edge by making into something that it fluid, the user can create shapes with the medal and therefor transform the edge and also the pattern driving home this idea of being in charge of your own destiny.
Overall I am really glad that I decided to do BAMS over the other briefs because it gave me some amazing opportunities to develop my skills and ideas.
heather bailey art and design 