Unit X - Topic 1 - Research

As a group for our unit x project we were all interested in the environmental side of current world issues. We decided to focus on forest fires, and its impact on deforestation. Within researching this topic, I have found it interesting learning about the major causes and even the spreading of forest fires. Around 80% of forest fires is caused by human activity for example, dropping a lit cigarette, not properly putting out a campfire or even arson. One of the most recent and devastating forest fires has occurred in Chile. Chile is facing one of the worst forest fires it has ever seen, with more than 600sq miles of land destroyed and thousands of people having to be evacuated from their homes.(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/25/chile-fire-firefighting-international-help  ). With me not even hearing about it until I researched into current forest fires and the fact that I have really struggled to find artists that have related to this subject, made me realise that stories like this never make the headlines and that its almost swept under the carpet which has made me glad that we have chosen this subject to hopefully help raise a bit more of an awareness of the devastation that so many people and animals face.

One interesting thing that I discovered is that certain forest fires can actually enhance their habitat. They can clean out debris that has accumulated below the trees. This helps enrich the soil and make room for new trees to grow. And that controlled forest fires are a regular occurrence and happen all over the world to make way for fresh new life to grow.

To help us decide which fabrics we would use, we decided to do a burn test to see how certain fabrics reacted to a flame. This turned out to be a fun experiment which in some cases got a little out of hand and some fabrics burning away completely. It was interesting how some fabrics would take up in flames instantly, others that would just melt away and some that hardly took at all. This led me into thinking more about possibly burning away at my samples and my final collection.  

 I have also been looking into printing with leaves. I thought this would be a fun and quirky way to incorporate nature and even parts of a forest into my work. Even though I have briefly sampled it, and also tried hammering the leaves into a fabric it is something that I’m not sure will work in cooperation to this topic but I won’t know until I’ve officially sampled it as a piece. Looking into the texture of bark is something I’m working on also, I have found that I am definitely leaning towards the textures side in this unit rather than individual motifs. I am struggling to come up with objects as such that I could draw, whereas the textures side there is many different options in which you could lead it with.