This post is to mark 2 returns (I hope).
One: the return of this blog to some sort of electronic sketchbook in which I try to work out what’s going on in LA classes, especially studio. Even though there’s not going to be the feedback there used to be, I think it’s particularly helpful to be able to see my own thoughts as I try to organize them. (And I sure need some of that organization right now!)
Two: the return of my studio project to something that makes sense (or at least pretends to…?).
So, down to business. The studio project started out with the selection of a tool – preferably something a bit older for character and nice metal parts. We were to explore the tool, figure out how it works, what becomes of whatever is acted upon, how the action is made (force), and what is significant about the tool or the material it acts upon. From that, make a device that works in the landscape using natural forces.
As posted before, my lovely device is an apple peeler/corer/slicer. After diagraming and dreaming about apples for nights on end, somehow the corer/slicer part made me think of volcanoes. It was also probably the fact that I was trying to think of what force the land exerts… Anyway, from this I went to geothermal energy – steam rising out of the reservoirs around the edges of continental plates – and like the real geothermal plants, the device collects the steam which turns a turbine and produces energy. The leftover from the steam is excess water which is usually returned back to the reservoir to be used again. However in my case, it may or may not return… and there might be time between the return (heh) which produces some effect on the land.
Ho-kay. So.
I selected the North American Plate as a base (some base!) and supposed that the device was situated at various locations along the plate. I selected regions that are particularily different than each other such as the Siberian Tundra, Black Rock Desert in Nevada, and the foothills of Xalapa (to name 3 of the 13). Supposing that the device has been placed there and left over an amount of time, what effects does this produce on those landscapes? And, as a designer, what could I do with these places?
The intention was to model some stage of each of the 13 landscapes, creating a series that speaks of the device. Before the models could happen though, I would have to sketch out a series of drawings for each of the landforms. Somewhere in there I got stuck. How to sketch out each of these steps without knowing a whole lot about the area… Ugh. Anyway, so after stalling out on that part, I decided that perhaps if I had something in my hands that I could mold, the drawing would come. So I made little clay models of all the landforms and took pictures of them (“drawing”) to make marks on.
The marks weren’t making themselves and I wasn’t helping, so I started playing with transparencies and trying see what it would look like if there was a lake in the middle of the desert. Needless to say, this brought me to the thought that each of these landforms goes through a change that makes it more like one of the other ones. Kind of cyclic.
Experimenting with resin, I decided to layer pieces of each topography together, which seemed to create a series of “drawings” about the layering of landscapes and about water and fluidity. So very abstract in other words. (expressive… )
So here I am, trying to find my way back to the device, trying to tie all these things together into some coherent (and presentable) whole. And I still haven’t done the 13 series(es?) about how the landforms change. And I still haven’t done the 13 representative models. And I have a bunch of empty boxes.
Stupid apple peeler/corer/slicer.
