Bio-Mimicry: Crown-Mask

                                               

The final assignment of our bio-mimicry project was to create a piece inspired by our natural object that would interact with the human body. I took many inspiration from the artichoke both metaphorically and physically. I originally wanted to do a crown that would mimic the circular patterns of the artichoke leaves. However, after studying the artichoke more, I was inspired to make a crown that would hide the face. The purpose of a crown is to indicate the high status of an individual while at the same time drawing attention to them. I wanted to take the opposite approach by removing the person's face from the piece. An artichoke is actually just a developing flower. It creates a thick layer of petals that protects the flower inside and give it time to develop. I wanted to take this concept of hiding the beauty until it's ready. I accomplished this by creating a crown with a mask that covers the person's face. The mask portion of the crown is made of silver wires wrapped with a plastic cover. To connect the wires together I used a weaving technique using smaller and more flexible wires to wrap the larger ones together and stacking them on top of one another. The back portion of the crown is meant to represent the hidden flower. The back portion is made up of thin gold wires looped around and tied together at a single point. The thin wires were chosen specifically to make the patterns hard to see, hiding it from plain sight like the flower of the artichoke.  I also wanted to take this concept of a "hidden gem" further by elaborating the back portion more. I added more loops going downward to hide it behind the person's back while the viewers are focused on the mask. I wanted to create a peacock like effect with varying sizes of the loops. I wanted to add a little weight and delicacy to the crown to imitate the delicacy and weight of the flower. The rings added to the loop and elongate is suppose to make the wearer aware of the swaying movement out of their control going on behind them. The circles were inspired by the the various pattern from the top view of the artichoke when cut in half. The exposed neck felt empty, therefore I created a necklace to fill that space. The necklace used the same material and techniques to create the mask, however instead of weaving the middle portion of the necklace I wrapped it in gold to draw attention to the necklace. the gold helps the necklace stands out more when competing for attention with the mask.