Registration of a drawing

drawing. registration of intersection, edges of the paper...lines how they intersect, how they combine to create spatial dimensions.

Recalling what was

drawings - dailys (sort of)

New dailys

end of the daily wax studies - further iterations will occur but on a non-daily basis. have commenced a new routine of daily drawings on 7" x 10" sheet. lines, markings, smudges and the hand...scanned images will be up in a bit.

Pat Steir

exhibit on pat steir at the risd chase center. there is also an amazing drawing work (colloborative with risd students) at the outside gallery space outside her show. range of scales and lines.

drawn to the above piece called "inner lhamo water", 1992. process-oriented - pat steir takes the behavior of dripping paint on canvas and utilizes it into the representation of what it *is* or *could* be - a waterfall.

Drawing - an iteration of the aufeis drawing.

RIVER PROJECT PART 4 of 4

The thin glass skin atop of the prints of the river slab. I am actually glad that the mold failed in the kiln - the fact of the glass as a skin has more potential and possibilities than an actual glass object with surfaces from the river slab. It's a thought.

RIVER PROJECT PART 3 of 4

The mold making process for the river slab. I wanted to capture most of the surfaces possible so I decided to place the slab in the middle of the mold so that the glass would form around the slab.

I started the mold-making process by pouring a large slab of plaster+silica, then I cut them to form the sides of the mold, around the river slab. Note that the river slab is red due to the printmaking ink. The clay was used as a place-holder to create a contained space for the glass since the plaster sides were uneven and jagged. Placeholder for the additional hand-built layers of plaster+silica and grog+fiber glass modifier. These additional layers serve to provide strength to the mold inside the kiln at 1590 degrees. My instructor and I decided that in alignment with the stress of the mold by the river/water, we could also stress the mold within the kiln with fire, by holding the temperature of 1590 at 48 hours (24 hours more than necessary).

So after a week, this is what I found in the kiln:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The mold had cracked from the stress. There was a small hole at the bottom corner so all the glass spilled out onto the floor of the kiln.

However, not all the glass went to the bottom of the kiln, there is a thin skin of glass over the entire mold.

Removal of the mold from the kiln.

The glass actually formed around the bricks that I had used to prop up the table for my mold. funny, it is now a site-specific piece, the site being the kiln...

RIVER PROJECT PART 2 of 4

3 days after I had thrown the slab into the river, I fished the smaller slab out of the river. The river currents over 3 days did not really make a very visible different on the slab itself so I'm planning on leaving the larger slab in the river for a good month. As well, I was too energetic in my throw since it appears that even in low tide, I shall have to don large boots to retrieve that slab.

There is a layer of chicken coop wire in the middle of the plaster slab and I had attached a plastic tie to that chicken wire to create a hold for the fishing wire. The piece was relatively lightweight so I could merely pull on the line to bring in the slab. I was careful to not pull too hard on the line so that I would not mark the slab on the river rocks.


Detailed shots of the slab.



I had decided that prior to turning this slab into part of the mold for glass casting, I would print each side of the slab as way to capture the fine imprints of the river.

Daily Wax Studies: Feb 2 - Feb 7, 2010

Feb 7: Had chicken coop wire left over from the river project so decided to *reinforced* the wax. Several pours of wax since the wax overflowed the clay barrier.

Feb 6: Wax sandwich with plaster in the middle. Several steps. poured a wax sheet first (toast), then i set the plaster on it for the wax to set around the plaster (cheese). re-melted the extraneous wax and then poured another sheet. note the clay was used as barrier to control the flow of the wax. placed the wax + plaster onto the 2nd sheet of wax. with extra wax leftover, i created another side (toast) for the sandwich. pyramid-like.

Feb 5: Molded the wax sheet to follow the grip of my right hand. i liked the images where my hand was not present - the curved form, the way it sits on the table.

Feb 4: Brown wax is the softer wax so i was able to carve at a sheet of wax, using a clay carving tool. the tool created interesting ridges as well as these curlicues. When I held the sheet up to the light, the thinness of the sheet allowed for light to filter through.

Feb 3: On a similar vein, the absorption of 1/4lb wax in a sponge. the sponge was quite dirty, found it in the trash after being used to clean up some liquid rubber. the sponge soaked up the first couple pours of molten wax but as it reached its capacity, the wax started to flow over the sponge as if it were another inert (non porous) object. Repeated the process by re-melting the wax that flowed down the sides of the sponge.

Feb 2: Poured wax on artificial sweetener as a continuation of things that could melt under the heat of the molten wax. Stirred it up with a stick - found that the sugar actually prolonged the cooling time of the wax. i had to wait quite a bit longer for the wax to cool down so that i could move it off the mat.

The objects that we make

Hot-glass casting of a sweet potato wrapped in copper mesh. big crack running through the piece.


I had recently (recently being that it was a week ago and only now i'm catching up with some writing) watched the documentary "Objectified" which was about the industrial design field, how industrial design pervades almost every aspect of our lives - chair, computer mouse, remote control, etc. Heavy with interviews from various designers, less about the role of the consumer and only a fragment about the materiality of these objects. I was hoping for more insights into the manufacturing process of these objects and less about the actual design of these objects. the first clip showed a worker trimming the seam line from a plastic-formed chair, that seam line is the *residue* from the manufacturing process, revealing that the chair was formed from 2 or more pieces. I think of the pieces that i have made in my glass casting class this semester and i assess how these pieces can be more than just objects sitting on the desk. How do I learn from these things in front of me and direct/apply/relate/pertain (not sure about the exact word that i want) these learnings toward other applications (i don't want to use the word thesis here because thesis is not a goal, like this is research and that over there is the real thesis work)? there are always lessons that can be brought forward in another glass casting process but how do i translate/extrapolate what i am learning in "this medium" and bring that to "another medium/school of thought." So much of what draws me to glass is the transformative process, how we work from the liquid state to the solid state and i relate the process to how we transform/destroy the land to create architecture. but these are just words. how do i translate this intangible thinking into a physical tangible system? And i want to intertwine glass into my degree project work.

Something that was mentioned in my last advising session was the idea of working iteratively, that in every work there is the defined known portion and the indeterminate portion. I'm not sure about the lesson in that. But I think of my daily wax studies and how there are days when i repeat the same procedure to see if i could get something new/different out of it. and then what?

Drawing - drunken trees/permafrost

more later.

Daily Wax Studies: Jan 25 - Feb 1, 2010

Feb 1: Originally thought to make little beads from these wax drops but they reminded me of the landscape contours/plates.


Jan 31: Picked up a twine ball a few weeks back - inserted a wire through the ball for ease in handling. suspended the ball and brushed on the hot wax. the first photo on the left, shows how the wax dripped off to create those tendrils. In order to cover the entire ball, i would have to wait for the wax to fill up the interior hollow space of the twine ball and also brush on cooled-down wax. This study went over the 1/4 lb wax limit. I let the twine ball cool down for a bit and then dunked the ball into a pot of hot wax. This process smoothed out the wax cover and as the ball was twirling around, some of the wax that was covering the ball melted back into the pot - hence, only the top portion of the ball was eventually covered.


Jan 30: this runs along the vein of what material would melt under the temperature of the melted wax - sugar/lollipop. I swirled the lollipop in the hot wax (paper cup vessel) to see how the wax would adhere to the surface and deform the lollipop. After a few minutes, the lollipop curled up and was losing enough material that it was sliding along the white stick (thereby mimicking the consumption of a lollipop). A bit of the blue color was seeping into the wax itself, too.


Jan 29: I pulled the rubber mat so that it flopped over the edge of the table to create an uneven thickness to the wax. dropped in wood sticks (like rebars!), then as it was cooling down, poked holes into the wax with a screw. Lastly, I bent the wax sheet into four corners.


Jan 28: Wax melts at 200 deg Farenheit so what materials would deform under that temperature? I poured wax in two pours on a thin flimsy plastic tray from a box of chocolates. It was buckling, curling and twisting before it settled into a stable deformed state.


Jan 27: The red wax is much harder and holds greater detail than the white and brown microcrystalline wax. Using plastic eating utensils, i started to scratch into the surface of this harder wax. spoon and fork = no good but the knife made a substantial scratch, created a nice texture. I am thinking of making drawings on wax.


Jan 26: Ketchup cups! How many of these paper containers does 1/4lb of wax fill up? Three apparently. too bad i didn't have a french fry. i dropped in little wood sticks, at different lengths and at different times of the cooling/hardening process. they make little faces.


Jan 25: another stab at treating wax sheets like cardboard. constructing triangular forms - with an eye for possible aggregation. interior spaces defined by smaller leftover sheet pieces.