Essence Model: Broken Buildings, Fragile Minds

Following on from my visit to Preston's Hanover Mill, where I've since found out burnt down in 2010 after housing several businesses factories, I tried to capture the essence and emotion I felt from the site.

Firstly I loved drawing the holes in the brick wall, while sketching I noticed every single brick precariously balanced in place and I felt as if one brick moved, the whole structure would fall.

Fascinated with the balance of the bricks, I made a model trying to show a freeze frame moment of when the bricks would fall.

Further thoughts

That is when my thoughts of comparing weak structures and people started. A brick wall for example, that was once very strong but has been weathered, under stress for years, parts of it chipped away, will develop a breaking point and where one part breaking could be the catalyst to the entire wall crumbling. The parallel being when people portray themselves as strong and often are for a long time, but keeping up that image while actually under constant stress will also lead to a breaking point and again, if one part of someones life breaks down it can effect everything with a knock on effect, shattering a strong mind.

I made this essence model to reflect my thoughts

How my essence model was made

I created this model out of clear resin and broken pieces of glass. To achieve the brick like shape I had a cast made for me to pour the liquid resin into to set, quickly after pouring the resin in the cast, I places carefully broken glass shards into the resin, attempting to balance some to stand on an edge or layering some on top of one another so that not all the glass was laying flat on the bottom on the cast. I had to leave the resin to dry solid for 24 hours, and so the following day I removed the cast from around it and sanded down some rough edges and corners.

Final thoughts

This essence model was suppose to show how solid and strong things can often be broken and fragile on the inside and that every structure and every person has a potential breaking point.

I think I have succeeded in showing my thoughts in this model, I am disappointed that the glass shards are almost invisible unless the are caught in the light, although it can be argued it adds to my model by suggesting that weaknesses can stay hidden until you shine light on the subject.