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.