Skye Wilson

Material Matters

Class of: 2023

Major: Fashion Design BFA

Medium: Sculpture, Wire

Faculty: Sam Bennett

Prompt: For this project, I was required to reexamine my previously studied object (a book) and explore different materials to represent and to recreate this object. This project examines the relationship between materiality and function and lets us explore the question: how can a change in the material create a new function or change the perception of an object?

For my Material Matters project, I chose to remake the book Milk and Honey using only wire. Making Milk and Honey out of wire changed the meaning of my object quite a bit. The main purpose of a book is to read it, making it out of wire takes away the ability to do so. It basically made the object go from something you use to something you observe. My favorite part about making this book was weaving the whole thing together. Although it was beyond time-consuming, there was something about it I almost found relaxing. The only challenge that I ran into while working with wire, is after a while, no matter how thin your wire is, it starts to really hurt your fingers. I overcame this, however, by using different tools as my fingers. I was initially winding the wire together with my bare hands until I decided to try winding it with a power drill. I also used a pair of pliers to weave and bend the wire as much as I could. If I were to do this all over again I would figure out how to weave the wire even tighter and closer together making the book completely solid, as well as add more pages. A project I saw that really inspired me was Charlotte’s plush watch. I just loved seeing how different it turned out compared to her original watch. I want to make pillows inspired by all my favorite objects now.