Bed Box Part 3: Notching out with circular saw and jig saw, speed square as a guide, tracing!5/18/2020 The thumbnail on this video is decidedly misleading--this is not the video about assembly. We're still cutting. I tried to add Kate Bush's "Waking the Witch" as background music and decided it was just too cool for this video. Maybe it's cursed now that I removed it?
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Jess' Bed Box Part 2: Saw horses, measuring/marking, circular saw, speed square, clamps, guides5/18/2020 We, your faithful shop techs, have missed seeing you all in the shop working. We have also missed having our unofficial shop craft nights. Those of you unfamiliar with this, on spontaneous evenings in the shop we bring our little bits and bobs and sit around gossiping, listening to 80s pop and making jewelry, knitting or sewing. So to feed that need we are missing. Here are a series of videos on basic jewelry making techniques. These techniques can be used to make something pretty for yourself or someone you love. Which we need pretty things that bring us joy right now. You can also scale them up to larger sculpture or furniture making projects. Here are the links referenced in the videos: Public Domain 3D Scans for Cultural Heritage (the rat netsuke and piggy bank) sketchfab.com/blogs/community/sketchfab-launches-public-domain-dedication-for-3d-cultural-heritage/ Ammonite 3D laser scan www.thingiverse.com/thing:88025 Knitting and Crochet Stitch Markers www.thingiverse.com/thing:3928137 If you checked out the earlier post about UMN students' Screen building projects, this will be familiar. I wanted to get a little deeper into this particular project and show you some research and process shots. Rachel was interested in how light impacts visability or "screenness". She consider various lighting strategies, colors, materials, fragmentation, and reflection to build something that changes, shifts as the light (world) shifts. The piece had me thinking a lot about dialectics--seemingly contradictory elements that are in fact, parts of a whole (yin and yang). It has a "yes and..." quality to it--both a bit melancholy and cheerful, low materials (saran wrap and canola oil) with "high" materials (glass). I think about the layering that happens in reflections in glass, how "to conceal" and "to display" have more in common than we might think.
Whew, tangent. I could go on. But! What I really wanted to look at here was just these great process shots---find the saran wrap and parchment and old party decorations and take them outside and look at them, then take them to the basement and look again. What the f*&ck is the canola oil for?! Look at things. Mash things together. Pull them apart. put them back together. Take notes. Experiment. Try to think with your hands and not with your head for a bit. I'm giving myself a task to try out my own advice this coming week. We'll see what happens. As it is, these process shots for Mansun's poetic, complex, dense, and tidy sculpture, are providing me with some good inspiration for at home making. You too, perhaps. -Jess There are a lot of different experiences of "stay at home" orders. Some folks are trapped at home with jerks, some folks are uncertain of where to be at all, some are cheerfully enjoying the strangeness of being one of 4 people in an entire dormitory building, some are sleeping on a friend's couch mourning privacy, some are at home desperately longing for contact. I recently got to talk with University of Minnesota students about their recent "Screen" projects for a Design course. Many of the students spoke about how much this project changed for them, not just logistically, but thematically, with the stay at home orders. While building their privacy screens, these students were craving contact. It's a very different thing critiquing in one's living space. As professor, Tom Oliphant, pointed out, we are seeing the work in frame with the artist. Rarely does an artist stand in front of their work in critique; it gives a different context to see, not only the object, but the maker, their living space, and the space in which the object was conceived and created. This sort of universe mash-up changes how we do analysis. I'll consider that more deeply later. For now, I'd like to share these really beautiful, often mournful, "Privacy Screens" that these students built in their homes. These works dealt with emotional barriers, formal barriers, pleasure in practice, material explorations, distance, social critiques, and practical creative problem solving. How is your experience of privacy changing during this time? What is different about isolation now? What are you surprised, hurt, and/or inspired by in these changes? Endless thanks to Tom Oliphant, for inviting me to join these reviews; to fellow reviewer and artist, Anna Van Voorhis; To Charlie Kuok, Mikayla Feil, Charlie Rauls, Rachel Mansun, and Emma Haukom for sharing these images for Marked Makers; and to all the students present in the review for your incredible work and generous critical insights.
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