Ancestors I (William Wareham) Ashtray Set
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By Nick Saikley
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2021-12-16T10:41:17+00:00
ORIGINAL WORK
This work by William Wareham, titled Ancestors I, is a sculpture on display outside of Chapman’s moulton hall. Made in 1982, it is constructed of welded varnished steel which provides a very rigid and industrial look and feel.
This sculpture is a piece that I walk by nearly every day on my way to class, but something that I had never stopped and taken a moment to analyze before this project. However, once I began taking a closer look at it, both in person and at online pictures, I found myself feeling intrigued and somewhat nostalgic in some sense.
The rusted and worn appearance of the steel, set in front of a backdrop of brick and ivy, gives the sense that this piece has been a constant presence in an everchanging world for a long time, and it suggests that there is rich history and heritage emanating from this form.
This notion is what gives the piece its name, “Ancestors”. The recycled material and worn out metal, paired with the skewed form of the shape cutouts, tell a story of the connection between past and present and lateral movement between the two. It is meant to be in reference to the circular nature of life and time, and the connection between the past and present. It is a piece that works together with its surrounding environment, and encourages viewership from multiple angles and perspectives because it takes on an entirely different form depending on the angle it is viewed from.
The most fascinating aspect of this work to me is the subtle three dimensionality of the piece and the symbolism that this depth holds. When passing by and looking at the work from straight on, it appears more or less two dimensional. However, when you look at the work from the side, it takes on an entirely different form.
This aspect of the work encourages viewers to engage with it from multiple different viewpoints, which carries larger symbolism of the necessity to approach many different things from multiple viewpoints, not just assuming that your own singular viewpoint is absolute.
INSPIRED PRODUCT DESIGN
The multidimensionality of the Ancestors sculpture inspired me to think about the scale of this piece, and how changing different dimensions of the piece would transform the experience for the viewer. I decided I wanted to create a stationary product based on the sculpture to experiment with shrinking the scale of the form and shifting the vertically standing sculpture into a horizontally laying object. I was inspired by minimalist art and sculpture for this project, and the idea of manipulating scale to transform the experience that the audience has with the piece.
The product design that I came up with was an Ancestors sculpture inspired ashtray set. I felt that an ashtray would be a cheeky way to reference the artistic themes and messages that show through Wareham's sculpture. The sculpture highlights heritage, tradition, and the circular relationship between past and present. The habit of smoking has become somewhat taboo in recent history, but the ashtray references the heritage and impact that past generations continuously have on the present.
As far as the actual design of the product, I created a prototype model of the ashtray set and accompanying packaging for the product. The model was made from air dry clay. I decided that making it into a set of two free standing objects instead of one connected object would be more interesting because while their position in accordance with each other mimics the sculpture form when it is in the package, once someone opens it up they would be free to rearrange their relative positions which would transform the experience that the user has with the form and space of the object. For the packaging design, I wanted to maintain a minimalist approach to support the theme of the project, while including relevant information and graphics to help the viewer understand how they can properly experience interacting with the object. I chose to make the main color of the box the same color as the ashtray to capture the feeling that the actual sculpture in front of moulton gives off: becoming one with its surroundings. The bottom panel of the box displays a graphic of a hand holding a cigarette, with ash falling off in the shape of the sculpture at different sizes. This graphic references the manipulation of scale done through this project, and helps the viewer further understand the object. The text beneath is a quote from a description of the piece on Chapman's website, and is meant to invoke deeper thought about the ashtray object and how it is representative of the themes present in the original Ancestors piece.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Artnet. “William Wareham.” Artnet.com, http://www.artnet.com/artists/william-wareham/biography.
ModernArts. “William Wareham Painting and Sculpture.” ModernArts, https://www.modernsculpture.com/william-wareham.
Wareham, William. “About.” William Wareham, http://www.williamwareham.com/about.
Wogahn, Manon. “Ancestry and Empathy - William Wareham's Ancestors i.” Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University, Chapman University, 28 Mar. 2017, https://blogs.chapman.edu/collections/2017/03/28/ancestry-and-empathy/.
