Made by Gunilla Bergendahl
This giraffe is 4 meters in height. It was used in an art performance to raise awareness of the 6th mass extinction.
It had to be in parts for transportation and storage, so it comes in 6 parts that can be fitted together.
I had huge help from ultimatepapermache in planning and executing this project.
From starting to plan and experiment to finished giraffe took us almost 2 months, working on evenings and weekends, but we had great fun doing it.
I think it turned out really well, although you always find things you would have liked to do a bit different.
What a huge undertaking but well worth it! Congrats!!
I can also add, that the neck and head became to front heavy and unstable, so we used gaffa tape to connect it. That’s the reason it’s having a scarf around the neck.
And from the body there are metal thread sticking out through the skin, tied to the internal skeleton that can be used to anchor the body. They are anchored to the plastic boxes next to it.
Why did you use to keep it from getting bad or moldy being outside?
Hi,
it’s not expected to be outside for longer periods of time. The varnish is water resistent but it will leak in through the connections.
Between use it’s stored indoors.
Like where the cracks between the body and legs are?
Yes. To get it stable we used a bamboo skeleton and some pipes so it wouldn’t move in horizontal direction. So these are sticking out from the respective parts, and I think it would be quite tricky to get that completely water tight.
Anyways, before starting the project I did some research, in particular on this site, and found that many had failed getting paper mache sculptures water proof. So from that I didn’t bother to put in the effort.
Since this is intended for performance, visualizing the extinction of species, and will only be outdoors for shorter (hours) periods of time, we argued that if it would be extremely wet weather, and it would start to sink down, that would be a part of the performance itself, and could be quite striking.
If I should make something intended to be outdoors, I think it’s better to make it as one piece if possible, or the connections between each piece would have to be added after sealing.