Scale

Following on from the fruit brief, we went on to our next topic - scale. It could be any sort of scale from the scales of justice to reptile scales, even to the Richter scale. I must admit that when I first heard the word scale, it brought a huge wave of panic, my first thought was of strong swear word.This however, was soon replaced by my second more rational thought 'How on Earth I am going to make something out of this!?' Yet, as it was explained to me, the ideas that arose from the panicked state of my mind started to put me at ease. There was the opportunity to create sculptures, spatial designs, costume design from the right topic. It was choosing said topic that was the problem. 

I am not in the habit of picking the most obvious choice - sometimes it's unintentional other times it's deliberate - so it was very difficult for me to find a subject matter that not only interested me, but inspired me. I do apologise for sounding like a broken record but I am a designer, namely a costume designer, trying to find a subject to match my expertise was impossible. Therefore, I settled with the next best thing, textiles - now only the topic remained. What was complex enough for me to look at and easy enough to understand in the restricted time? 

It struck me after watching a documentary of the Japanese Tohoku tsunami in 2011, and the word which had been plaguing my mind for days was attached to the event. The scale of disaster. For a time it was staring me in the face, we are often faced with these images from a day to day basis, but without ever really paying attention to them. So I endeavoured to create a variety of textile pieces based on the events that have caused the most cataclysmic effect on the world. 

Below are a list of the cheery topics:

• The Black Death (1348- 1350) - 1/3 of the world's population was wiped out by this plague
•  Hurricane Katrina (2005) -  One of the most expensive and deadliest hurricanes to hit the coast of America costing more than $81 billion.
• The Indian Floods (2013) - The heaviest monsoon experienced in over 80 years.
• Tohoku Tsunami Japan (2011) - The most powerful known earthquake to hit Japan

My time was limited so consequently my topics had to be too.