Talking about my ideas

Ahh I’m a bit dazed after that tutorial, so I’m just going to type everything I’ve discussed with Natasha and hope that helps (It did. After half an hour of typing).

It’s quite difficult exploring instead of jumping to a conclusion…I’m forcing myself to experiment and to not hone in on one idea, so my ideas develop and evolve; a lot further than if I choose to create a certain vessel and stick to it.

According to what I’ve just discussed with Natasha I’m using clay to document and record the movement and ideas of comfort.

This stemmed from my own research I did over Summer for our Collections project. I wandered around the Pitt Rivers Museum (it’s one of my favourite things to do) and I came across an intriguing display of headrests. This sparked a memory of watching The Tribe, a fly-on-the-wall documentary of a tribe in Africa… I had noticed that the men always had a headrest with them and also used it as a stool. I just found it so intriguing how an object so structural could be used for comfort.

This brings me to The Ken Stradling Collection; although I haven’t had a chance to visit yet, I have been looking at a book describing his collection and the chairs exhibited there. This brings back to the idea of comfort again how, essentially it is an object designed for one to sit on. And one’s body fits to the shape of the object/furniture, much like the Pitt Rivers headrests. But what if I flip that idea around? Make it about the body shaping an object.

Comfort is a key concept to me. I want to capture the essence of comfort in unassuming, natural positions. That could be my housemate Ella relaxing on the sofa and the postition her legs or hands are. I record this through either pressing clay against their body or positioning it under her body, so her own weight is pushing on the clay.

Both Natasha and Pete (my lecturers) have suggesting I look at Bonnie Kempske’s work and also Shizue Kato’s. Keepsake has made ‘huggable’ pieces and Kato has captured a hand gestures/finger prints in large cubes of clay.

It’s been a while…

I can’t think when my last blog post was, though it was many many months ago. It’s been a difficult start to Second Year. First of all, I was actually in second year last year but I wasn’t very well; so I didn’t go into uni much. And I decided along with my lecturers to start second year again (wow I’ve said ‘years’ a lot!). I wanted to start uni on the right foot this time, but I had an infection on my leg after an op on one of my veins (I have a medical condition which effects my right leg) so I started on the wrong foot haha! I have to make  joke of it, I try and see the positive side of things; otherwise I just wouldn’t cope! Literally I went in to uni on the first day of term and came back home with my leg hurting so much, and after a few days sitting on the sofa not being able to do anything I decided to go home-home where my mum and dogs could look after me.

Fast forward to today and I’ve been at back at uni now for just over week. Yay! Things are looking up.