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?