Back to the ants

Going back to the ants.. I made a couple of ants out of wire and other materials as a prototype to my plan of building a giant ant out of metal ,I plan on going to the scrap heap back home for the piecses.

While waiting for that to happen I found that focusing on one lone ant was rather boring and didn't open up many new roads for me to wander down and explore. SO I began looking at large numbers of ants together and the interesting patterns they make.

A picture I drew of the negative image of ants that were constructing a bridge from one leaf to another sparked some excitement on making an abstract 3D piece based on the shapes formed by the ants' bodies when combined as one .

bacteria!!

I got thinking about over population and what damages this does to the planet. Here were my thoughts.. Looking at the earth as one living organism, we humans are no more than an over-evolved super bacteria that builds up and makes the earth ill. Like a cancerous growth on earth, thats what i imagine the unnatural city lights and built up constructions looking like from outer space. I might explore the concept that when there are natural disatsers it is like the earths attempt at defeating the cancer, like our bodies natural antibodies would try to do.

I think this could definatly be an interesting thought to play with. I will contrast modern society with bacteria, rot , disease and mold..

messing with ideas

Im still waiting on the ants to arrive, I've been doing research on other artists who have experimented with and insects and have found some pretty cool thinsg by Rivane Neuenschwander,Chris Trueman, Van Moth and Mike Libby.

I drew some more doodles and drawings , one of an overhead view of a city ,so the roof tops of tall buildings and the roads dividing through the land. I made the picture so as when viewed from upright the roads lead to ants hills from the opposite perspective. Like the city is underground and human civilisations are the ones tunneling around the ant farm-like city.

lots of ants

At this point i mainly just have some doodles done. I likes the idea of using thousands of tiny things to make up one big thing so I carved a little and into a rubber and used it as a stamp to press down with paint over and over again until the little ants made up the shape of a big queen ants face. This was to do with my idea that it is us people that allow governments exist and hold power. I plan to experiment by creating big pictures of war vehicless, guns and a huge city scape made up of these little and stamps or perhaps using a human shaped stamp.

Using an ink pen i started on a picture of a black cityscape silhouette, at sides of some of the buildings and corners the black bursts into a big flow of ants entering and becoming a part of the cityscape and at other parts exiting,leaving and dispersing away from the cityscape silhouette. This is again playing with the idea of lots of tiny things making up something monumental such as humans and the earth.