Guiding Spirits

Our concept is based off the Chinese lanterns and their use as a way to guide spirits to the supernatural world. We primarily used spherical forms to represent lanterns. We wanted to find an environment that related to the Chinese myth. We placed the forms near rivers to purvey that the spheres were travelling or guiding spirits. In the photographs, the spheres appear to be wispy balls of mass floating to a mysterious destination. The white yarn contrasts with the surrounding environment; making it appear as though it were glowing spherical orbs of energy.

We decided to use yarn because it was eco-friendly and an inexpensive raw material. We chose to use yarn because it was an easy material to work with. The steps we took to make the spheres were: One we blew up the balloons to various sizes. Next, we slathered petroleum jelly to prevent the yarn from sticking to the balloons. The following step, we dipped yarn into a mixture of glue and water. After rinsing out the excess glue we started to wrap the balloons but still conscious to leave negative spaces. After wrapping the balloons we let the glue harden for 24 hours. Once the glue was dry we popped the balloons and pulled them out and placed them into their new environment.

For this project, we used line and form. By using pieces of yarn it created various spherical forms and by only using one color of yarn it created unity. When we placed the forms into the environment, each form was placed in proximity of each other. We also juxtapose the forms together to cause the viewer’s eye to transition to one sphere to the next.

The strengths can be seen in the photographs. We created interesting compositions using simple elements and principles. Also, our craftsmanship was well rendered and we felt that our concept is interesting and well thought. The only weakness we can think of is that our larger balloons deflated before the glue could harden, therefore we didn’t have a wider range of variety amongst the forms.