Chelsea College of Art
Final Major Project
'Intelligent Creatures'
Intelligent Creatures is an exploration into what intelligent life might look like on other planets. When we look out into the nights sky is there anybody looking back at us? I believe there must be. I was fascinated by what lies beyond our small rock, out there in the vast starlight sky. The universe appears to stretch eternally in every direction and laws of physics that govern this space can appear inconceivable. The sheer magnitude of what lies beyond floods my brain with imagination and creativity in the same way that children express imagination and creativity when they begin to explore this planet. A child’s brain is not held back by preconceived notions and is more open to all the possibilities. Therefore I wanted to work with the same thirst for discovery without adult restrictions. I wanted to explore what these alien creatures would look like with a child like aesthetic.
Play doh is a media that I remember playing with as a small child and so I began to work with this. Manipulating it with my hands and with an extruder I was able to create different textures and surfaces, some mimicking the surfaces of earth creatures. I also found that if I manipulated it in a certain way it looked like lettering. This helped to make me think about how these intelligent creatures would communicate and the prominence of written narratives in childhood. I began to explore the idea of creating characters with the help of children’s book such as Dr.suess and the Moomins. I also started to combine elements of earth creatures to create hybrid creatures.
From this I created two creatures. The first is the Baeplush, which takes its influence from sea animals such as crabs, lobsters and fish. It lives underwater and is red and blue in colour. The second is the KingKiween, Which is a combination of a lion and a kiwi. It is a majestic creature and is king of the concrete jungle. These creatures then influenced the design of contemporary menswear pieces.