A Meaningful Dream

For our final project in Space Studio we were assigned to construct and design a kite. Of course with step-by-step directions. 

Knowing that Wayne State is sometimes a wind tunnel, I needed to make sure I picked a kite that could handle high winds. I picked the Dowel Rokkaku Kite. It was large, intriguing and could handle high winds. Although, I wish I would have looked at the directions a bit more before making a final decision. 

I'm not quite sure where I got the idea but I wanted to infuse feathers between two pieces of plastic sheeting for my design. My professor suggested I use an iron to fuse the two pieces together. Thing is, I don't own an iron and didn't feel like spending money on it. I resorted to my hair dryer. I knew it would work the same way and I felt that I would have more control with it. I never dry my hair (because it's really bad for your hair) and haven't in over a year. Finally I had a reason to use my hair dryer!

I traced the design using a thick black sharpie onto the plastic sheeting and laid it flat on the table. I didn't realize how large four feet was...

I wanted to include a variety of colored feathers in my design. I played with the feathers moving them around trying to find a proper place for them. I picked through the bags searching for the best and fluffiest feathers. I literally spent two hours doing this. I wasn't pleased with the variety of colors. If I would've had green, black and orange I feel that I could've made it work. 

When I was playing around with my feathers, the blues and reds that really intrigued me. Even when I was plucking through the bag of feathers. The blue especially caught my eye and I couldn't take my eye off of it. Lately I've been digging royal blue and red together...

A classmate of mine who always happens to come in whenever I'm in suggested to put a break in the pattern by adding pink. Funny thing is, I did that before she even came. Reason why I didn't like it then was because I had teal feathers in the pattern too. I liked how it turned out. 

Sadly I was unable to get any photos of me attempting to fly my kite. One of the dowels snapped in half within a few seconds of air time. I was pretty bummed actually. I spent A LOT of time building this kite. I didn't even mention the second day I came in to finish my kite...let's just say it was very frustrating. And of course when we arrived on the field my professor took a look at my kite and told me I put the string in the wrong places. Great I thought. I spent a good time in the freezing cold fixing the strings so it had a better chance of flying. As mentioned before, I did get it to fly...for a little bit. There was a lot of taping and mending the kite on the field. Luckily David showed up and helped me out with it. I didn't want to give up, I was going to make it fly one more time. Which I did, but only for a few seconds before it plumaged to the ground. Even after re-taping the dowels, re-doing the strings and readjusting the fly-line it wouldn't fly. My professor knew it was cold and we had already been out there for a long time and he told us that we could go. If he hadn't of told me to go I probably would have been out there FOREVER trying to make the damn thing fly. I know if I had built it better, it would have flown.

Here you can see exactly where the dowels snapped. 

Fortunately this kite wasn't being graded. It was more of a end-of-the-year-fun-project sort of thing. I had fun, but I also hated building this stupid thing. I should have picked a different kite to build to be honest. I probably would have had more fun if it were a smaller and easier kite to construct. But I didn't completely hate the project, it was fun for the most part and a nice way to end Space Studio. 

Remember that horrendous straw structure that I made not too long ago? Yeah, that ugly looking thing. After we created the straw structure we were assigned to re-create it with 1/4 inch thick wood. But this time we had to make it related to a three foot pedestal. Since I hated it so much I decided to change the entire design. 

I went into this assignment with an open mind and was rather excited. With this assignment we had the privilege to work in the wood-shop. I've never worked with wood or "dangerous" tools (sander and bandsaw) before. The supplies given for this project were: five pieces of 1/4 inch thick wood that were six feet long and rice paper to create planes later on in the project. The first day I spent sketching. I felt that I needed to redeem myself from the last project. When I showed my professor my drawings he told me it was too complicated and only having a limited supply of wood, it would be impossible. He mentioned to try and make it more simple. To be honest I never did anything simple because in my mind, simple wasn't good enough. But it was what I needed to do. So I went for it.  

I ran out of time and didn't get to do everything I wanted to do. I wanted to have the piece start from the ground, lay on top of the pedestal, have some of the wood hang off and attach that wood to the pedestal giving it the effect of the piece going inside the pedestal. My work broke while I was putting it away, which made things worse for me...at the time. I needed to come back on my own time to glue everything back together. The pedestal wasn't in class. I had to glue everything from memory, in hopes that it was done correctly. I also had to attach rice paper using homemade rice glue in places I felt necessary. 

I used strips of rice paper instead of large squares or triangles. I knew that if I had used larger pieces my form would lose the effect. I also wanted to create different shapes with the strips. As mentioned earlier, I was gluing from memory and without the pedestal. Of course, I glued the bottom piece the wrong way, giving it a whole new look to the piece. Which ended up working out extremely well...

I missed the actual critique for personal reasons. The next class my professor and I took the time to look at what I made. As we were walking around my project we noticed that when looking at eye level and sometimes squinting it would create shapes and forms. It was rather cool to be honest. It ended up being the best part of my project. At least I think so. I'm sure my professor would agree. 

To see the structure change form you have to physically walk around it. I tried to capture those odd shapes in the pictures below. 

During the building process a piece of the wood broke in half. Instead of redo-ing it I decided to embrace it. Sadly, it didn't work the way I wanted to. The splint would have been much better if I had sanded the ends of the wood and placed the other pieces differently. Perhaps having the pieces decrease in size. This was a last minute finish as you could probably tell. 

In the photo above you can clearly see how viewing my project from different angles creates more shapes. 

Look to the bottom left, you can see one shape transformed into many shapes here too.

Overall, I was pretty happy about my piece. I wish I could have made it to critique to hear what the rest of my classmates would have said. What I learned from this project was to handle my project with more care to avoid damage, embrace accidents and hope for the best. 

Behold, my final project for my Photoshop class. Is it the coolest thing I've done? No, I don't think so. I like my self portraits much better. For our final we're supposed to create an extended image. I didn't want to do another self portrait because I wanted to do something different. I did take the concept from my Luna self portrait and used it with this work. I used the idea of using more than one vibrant color and making it one photo. I won't lie, the color sequence I picked throw me off a bit...but that's why I like it. Thoughts?