taking it to the streets

it was getting down to crunch time with this bad boy. classrooms and buildings are beginning to get cleared out for the senior show, and any work stored in the station building pretty much has to be removed this weekend. in my head, i had this vision of recruiting the roomies and wheeling the 300 pound monstrosity back to my dorm. needless to say, we didn't get very far. today, with the help of some generous classmates, we drove around the city looking for a home for it. (or as kwok-pan put it, a place to abandon my baby.)

the class is called "concrete culture: city as text" so it was important to me from the start that what i made would live out in baltimore somewhere. documentation wise, i never intended pictures to only be taken in the classroom. working with the city wide open as a canvas, i had honed in on the slivers of vacant lots among rows and rows of homes in baltimore. there was just something so intriguing about the stark change from presence to absence (even though the homes around are often abandoned and un-occupied as well.) the stretch of houses that we found (20th between gilford and barclay) was entirely boarded up/sealed with cinder block on the left side of the street. it's pretty unbelievable.

expect a slew of projects and posts in the next week in an attempt to wrap this semester up...

moment of truth

my chipboard form finally came off for friday's critique in concrete culture. i don't know if it was quite what i expected, but there was definitely a moment of parental pride when it was fully revealed. despite the struggles (figuring out how to get to home depot, schleping around 4 4x8 ft pieces of chipboard, grossly over-estimating my cement and sand order, having to learn how to really use a drill, taking 6 hours longer than i should have to mix and pour the concrete, which left my weak arms and legs sore for the next two days, etc., etc.) i think this might be my favorite class. it's something very different and very demanding. and, after so many dry discussions of type placement and color choice, it was nice to be back singing kumbayah during a critique. i do think that my next piece will be scaled down in size significantly, though...

ps. i think cathy is planning on posting pictures she took of everyone's pieces is the near future, so i'll link to them all asap.

concrete

clearly this photo wasn't taken recently. yes, i am back in baltimore. no, it isn't that much warmer than the mitten. (exposed toes would be a bad idea.) but i finally had to send my camera in for repairs (could take two weeks... could take six...) so i'm reaching into the iphoto "archives." and recently i've been thinking about the cities/sidewalks/text combo.

one class i'm totally pumped (surprisingly) to be taking is called "concrete culture: the city as text." it's a studio/seminar sculpture class, and a much needed departure from graphic design all the time. over the course of the semester, concrete will become my new best friend. it seems foreign to be focusing so much on material. indesign and illustrator don't count. this is about science and experimenting. i have no idea what concrete is capable of, much less what i could capable of doing with it. one of the sculpture majors in the class asked how easily it could be made to erode. another responded by pointing out that we've been watching concrete erode our whole lives, without giving it second thought, when we walk on sidewalks.

our syllabus read: "concrete is the second most consumed substance on the planet after water." (mark kingwell, concrete reveries: consciousness and the city.)

part of the excitement for me about the class (besides it being another take on cities) is seeing how far i can push design when i take it out of the typical context of computers and throw it out into the streets. (stefan sagmeister style.) now i'm interested in words activating a space/stumbling across a message in the morning and how that changes the way you go throughout the day.

it should be an interesting one... we'll see. (as soon as i get my concrete gloves.)

connect in context: sculpture

this was my response to a "serial abstraction" assignment for sculpture. the point was to grow or dilate sculptural form by combining materials (pvc pipes) in succession, with emphasis on attachment (drilling and dowels).


i didn't realize until i was way over my head with it the night before how big a role connecting played. the intensity of rushing to get it done, and not sure if it was actually possible, reminded me of this line from a post last week.