Helen Kippax

Artist

Forms 1

A bent tube will form a natural curve that is dependent on the malleability of the material, its diameter and the thickness of the tube walling. In every case bending it back on itself to connect two pieces in parallel will result in it describing a beautiful teardrop shape.

Following many years of drawing, painting and collage work my art practice took a giant leap forward when I started to make 3D sculptural teardrops spirals and lemniscates by bending nylon tubing and anchoring the resultant forms with wire and tape before setting them with tissue and size and working them up with newspaper, modroc plaster bandage or modelling clay. Having the benefit of a small but well equipped engineering workshop allows me to continue to experiment with different plastics and different gauges of tubing.

My fascination with the process led to my wanting to personalise the forms that I was sculpting. I have always kept a collection of ‘items of significance’ mostly cards, notes and gift tags given to me by friends and acquaintances that signify an important event that connected me to the donor. I consequently chose to use the dimensions of that stock to determine incremental tube lengths that start the development of any new piece.

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Related Work

Forms 2

Forms 2

Forms 3

Forms 3

Forms Process

Forms Process

Mysterious Forms and the Movement of Light

Mysterious Forms and the Movement of Light

Seaweed

Seaweed