Sunny-side up

Aug 23 2021

Part 2 our our summer project at Perth UHI was to create work in response to a household item that was redundant in lockdown.

Idea

I didn't go anywhere that required "real" clothes during lockdown, so had no need for an iron! I thought about an alternative use for the iron's heatplate and creating a work based on this idea.

Inspiration

​I watched a documentary about Yayoi Kasuma and realised I too have a great love of polka dots! This helped feed into the work.

Development

So, using an old cardboard box – I taped it up, painted it (took a few coats) and cut a hole in the top for the inverted iron to sit in and cut a hole at the left side for the plug/cable.

To cook the fried egg without completely ruining the iron I attempted to make an iron shaped “pan” to sit on top of the iron using a tinfoil container which wasn’t very successful. However, cutting an iron shape from the centre of a container was much more successful as it looked like a heatplate.

I added tiny yellow dots to the iron to tie both elements together and placed the iron in the cutout and then positioned the foil cover/heatplate

The iron could now be plugged in to heat up and cook the egg. However, there was a slight design flaw in that if I cracked the egg it would run over the sides! In hindsight I could have simply flipped the cover so that it had shallow sides! I had to cheat and cooked the egg in a frying pan and laid it on top of the iron to create the desired result.

I had a little photoshoot trying out different backgrounds for the final image of the work. I liked the polka dot tablecloth but wanted to see how the work looked on light and dark backgrounds.

I opted for the dark one as I think the work stands out better.

Sunny Side Up (2021)

Cardboard, paint, iron, fried egg

40 x 28 x 26 cm