Faculty of Design

Industrial Design

Octavian Liviu Gherghe

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Students in the Intro to Mould Making course were instructed to use skills learnt throughout the semester to create an artwork using forms casted in molds. There is a big focus on body casting.I decided I wanted to base my project around molds of my arms and hands. I was interested in experimenting with unique hand positions and interactions with objects through molding & casting.

“Initially I wanted to recreate the "Creation of Adam" within a tensegrity sculpture. Tensegrity refers to the principle of a structure that is held together by continuous tension in such a way that it appears to be floating. This creation was quite hard for me to make, and so once I had cast one of my arms, I realized I could do something a lot simpler but still be able to work with my 'hands'. So I shifted towards creating a sculpture of my hands imitating the act of lighting a cigarette.It was interesting to work with a new materials like Aqua Resin and Alginate, having to experiment while moving forward with my project. I used empty waterbottles to create large alginate molds for my forearms, but sadly had to break them apart to obtain my casts. I would have liked to work with other materials to create repeatable casts but that was outside the scope of my project. Aqua Resin was interesting as it behaves more like a plastic rather than plaster or sillicone, which was different from the materials we had been using up till this point. I learned a lot and hope to work with more moulds in the future. Areas to improve on for future moldmaking projects: cleaning up any glue / epoxy stains, working with different patinas on the body casts, and more precise planning on assembling the final piece.”