My intricate circles have now gained a new material - mirror. The mirrors have lead me to consider the use of them as not only a new material to break up the pattern but also as a 'portal'. This silvery material fragments the geometric plane as they interrupt the plane twisting between and underneath the fabric shapes with reflective pools between floral fabrics.

 

These works and the use of mirror stemmed from a tutorial at the beginning of the MFA course. I was told that 'the small, detailed geometric tondos look like portals, like ways into another world [Alice Through the Looking-Glass], or the windows in a ships cabin, the small circular ones.' This links to the petri dishes as they are microscopic world in themselves. So, for this project, I took some mirror paper and then painted/created the messy and chaotic materials around a pool of mirror. This process I found fascinating as I was deliberately leaving a piece out, this meant that the audience could see themselves reflected. However, it was not a perfect reflection the mirror paper meant that it was hazy and irregular and unless standing a certain distance from it you would only see parts reflected. I further did a geometric tessellation with the mirror paper leaving some sections out, this was far more successful as it had a clearer objective, there were deliberate pieces missing. Michelangelo Pistoletto smashes mirrors, and although he views them as a representation of interconnection, they still leave certain fragments behind creating a portal.

 

Even though the mirror paper created a reflection, it still was not a perfect reflection and so I started using acrylic mirror. This gave me the perfection reflection and because it was a mirror gave me the double reflection illusion. From this I started to think back to kaleidoscopes and the constant repeat, although in this case the constant reflect.

 

Using the real mirror, I did two more geometrics and a messy painting. The geometrics taught me that there need to be an order to the missing sections, especially if it was a smaller work. A bigger, more complicated work might get away with it. Also, that the messy chaotic painting, was not working as well as the geometrics, they were not as strong or visually rich [unless I could make them truly grotesque].

 

The mirror helped itself in the making of depth much like in the Shah Cheragh, a funerary mosque in Iran. This mosque's interior is entirely mirrors. Each small individual tile is engraved and creates this awe-inspiring mosaic. Death and mirrors seem to go hand in hand as Jean Cocteau uses mirrors as a portal to the underworld in Orphee and in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, the mirror is a portal to a completely mirrored world, death like.