February 29, 2012

Everything went really well yesterday during the crit. Our guest crit definitely helped to get me to look at my creations in a way that would allow me to expand on them and bring my process into the addition to the Igualada Cemetery. Here are some images of the finished drawdel, drawing, dibujo sin papel, and plaster cast.

Based on the comments that were made during yesterdays crit I think I am going to try and redo or remake my wire drawings and casts and incorporate more light. Originally I mapped the protrusions in terms of how the material created and changed the spaces and the light but I think I need to do it from a more lighting perspective. The idea of translucent concrete is amazing. I definitely want to see if there is a way I can create that in a cast or maybe put it into my project. I'm definitely going to make the main focus of my design, light; letting it in, blocking it, emphasizing it, dispersing it . . .

My three ideas for Friday are going to be

1. Based on or extracted from my "creations"
2. Based on different conditions of light
3. Tied back to or connected to the chapel itself 

February 24, 2012

First Mold!!!!!!!

I think I am going to have a few problems with the width of some of the pieces. The wall should be ok because they are indents and not being filled but I am worried about the slanted portions and the little box-like protrusions. I stuck to the scale of the plan but I think it might be a good idea thicken some of the members. But we shall have to wait and see . . .

Well as you can see my first casting was a bit of a failure. To make a long story short we tried casting in a few different places and each time we got yelled at to cast somewhere else. So we chose to go outside and cast because that was one of our options and as I was mixing mine we got yelled at again and my plaster cured before I could pour it. So this is the end result. But in a way it was helpful because I got to experiment with plaster and make a mold to see exactly how the layout would be. So overall not a total failure.

February 21, 2012

Today was a very productive day. I think I have finally gotten over second guessing myself and I can move on. So here are a few attempts today that helped me figure out the best way to create my drawdel and dibujo sin papel.

This first image is a very diagrammatic sketch of what my wire model will look like. This was extremely helpful in figuring out how I wanted to lay out the dibujo sin papel. It is not as involved as others so I was having a hard time figuring out how I wanted to lay it out on a "piece of paper" and and connect it and orient it to fill the page and make it a more dynamic composition. The second image is one of my attempts at bending wire in a more abstract way but that still holding true to the plan and nature of the protrusions.

Here is one of my more successful attempts at a drawdel. By printing it out I can look at the spatial relationships of all of the protrusions. It also helped we figure out how I want to fold the pieces and fit the protrusions into the space. I am still trying to figure out if I want to have all of the protrusions on one side of the paper or on both.

This image is a diagram showing how I am going to create positive space in the areas of the protrusions and negative space in the habitable and structural space. Hopefully my wax is cooperative and I can easily do this . . . 

Wish me luck!!!!!!!

February 20, 2012

Well, I'm still struggling. I moved away from the drawdel to explore the space of the chapel in a 3-d way in the the hopes that working in 3-d and with a new material would help me with my drawdel . . . but it's not. I mean it is, but I'm not sure if what I am coming up with and doing is actually what is being looked for and such. I am cutting out the areas that penetrate through the ground and folding them and trimming them to abstractly create the shape of the protrusions. I don't know, I may be over analyzing things but I feel like it is too much like the roof plan or ground plan. I feel like it's not abstract enough. I'm also struggling with the direction in which I fold. Some of the protrusion go into the ground and the chapel and some protrude up through the ground to the sky. If I fold them in the direction that they protrude there will not be a flat surface on either side, but at the same time if I fold them all the same way it will not be realistic. I'm stuck!!!!! But what else is new. I've also been thinking about the casting and I chose wax because it is easier to cast objects inside the wax and have them protrude out through the mold.  I keep second guessing myself, and I know I shouldn't because it will make me "get rid of Miami" again, but I can't help it.

February 13, 2012

I had hoped that the rigid and systematic approach to my carving would relate back to the title of my book, and it did. We all are taught to write in a very rigid systematic way. There are certain steps that need to be followed in order to compose a well-written paper, book, etc. I wanted to try and show that in my carving. When writing you start out with one thing then move to the next, then the next, then the next, until you have a complete work and arrive at the final step or finished product. I chose to depict a scene where writing occurs; a quite area with a desk surrounded by books. This was my first step, to show the scene. When you flip through the book you get from one plane or step to the next and the next until you arrive at the final plane which is the window. This window houses what in my opinion was the best advice this book could give to writers; "Get The Right Word". Without the right word you have a paper that doesn't work. Without the right word you could say something different than what was intended or not give the scene the proper emotion or description. Without the right word, you have nothing.

February 13, 2012

Sorry, I sort of fell behind with my blog for a while but I'm back so have no fear. So after I figure out what I wanted to carve into my book I experimented with a few different cutting techniques. I initially wanted to carve into this book in a perspectival way. In other words have each page a little longer than the previous one so that the edges of the pages together create a receding plane in space. Unfortunately that was way too difficult with my skill level. Instead I chose to cut the book in flat planes and layer them on top of each other to create depth.  Here is my first attempt with just some folded sheets of paper to create a book.  Each sheet of paper represents one plane.

February 5, 2012

So it is Sunday February 5 at 4:42 pm and I finally feel comfortable enough and confident enough to start cutting my book. I spent the past couple of days reading through my literature book to find the phrase or word I want to highlight, cutting and laying out the templates of each level, and dividing the book into the different thicknesses I want for each level. The only thing that I have left to figure out is if I want that one phrase to be seen through the back cover, and if I want to glue the pages together to increase integrity. I'm soooo nervous about making the first cut because all of my previous cuts have been pretty messy and uneven. They have gotten better but it's still extremely hard to make a clean cut through multiple pages. I've played around with cutting the binding and actually removing the sections for each level and clamping the pages of that section together and cutting through them that way but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the book back together well enough and cleanly. I am going to try and clamp each section together tight enough so that when I open up the book the binding does not pull the pages and create uneven edges. Well, I will be making my first cuts within the next couple of minutes soooooo wish me luck!

February 1, 2012

During studio on Wednesday, we were given a poem that we had read and were asked to do the same thing that we are doing with our books. I'm not very good with poems like this one. I tend to get lost or focus on one particular part of the poem. That was it! No matter how many times I read that poem I always read it as a poem about destiny, fate, and chance, and the rest of the ideas, meanings, and words were lost to me. I chose to use my knife to scrape away the words that I could not grasp to reveal a new poem with the words that I did not blur.

A Throw of the Dice

Will Never
Even When Launched in Eternal Circumstances

Fall Back From

A Destiny

   

Probability

The Sign 

If

It
Were It To Exist
Chance

Will Have Taken Place

Before Coming To
A Throw of the Dice

January 29, 2012

Well, I meant to post this this weekend after doing some research on book carving techniques. I was on the phone with my parents when my mom said that she had recently received an e-mail about a person in Sweden who makes sculptures out of books and leaves them in places around Edinburgh. The sculptures are amazing and I thought it could get us to look at our books and designs in a different way sooooooooo here's the link ...

http://thisiscentralstation.com/featured/mysterious-paper-sculptures/

Enjoy!!!