Body Mask: Show & Review

I received a lot of compliments on my mask and how beautiful it was, but once I put the whole ensemble together it became sort of creepy; I was okay with this. In the bible, whenever an angel presents themselves to mankind, the first thing they say is "fear not", basically telling the person don't be afraid. I don't believe that the bible distinctively describes what an angel looks like, but because they have to say this every time they come in contact with humans we assume that the appear very frightening at first. This is the same concept that I wanted with my character, and I think I achieved it. Even though people were frightened or creeped out at first, the beauty in this body mask was mesmerizing and you couldn't help but stare. 

Overall I think my body mask was a success! What I gathered from this experience and how it ties into interior architecture and design is learning to go through a process from creation, to brainstorming and sketching, to making decisions on what materials work best, and eventually to a final result. Understanding your limitations and what skills you have that will help you to accomplish what you have set out to do all play a major part in designing. I think that this was an interesting and fun way help us to understand that process on a different level and in a different atmosphere or genre.

Body Mask: First Iteration

My creation story was about The Muse and how she is responsible for blessing people with their individual talents. Here is a posting of the story in detail below.

"Long ago before mankind was created the gods were present. They had a deep understanding of the entire universe and how it worked. One of the things that the gods loved the most was the knowledge of the arts. No one knows where they learned what they knew, but for thousands of years the gods found amusement in entertaining each other with the arts of singing, dancing, painting, sculpting, writing, instrument playing, and many more. Because some of the gods were better in certain areas than others they decided to call them “talents” and each god had their own that they were good at. Soon the gods got bored with each other and decided that they should have someone or something outside of themselves to entertain them. So it was decided to create a world submissive to theirs and fill it with lesser beings called humans. At first it was interesting to watch the humans toil the land on earth and try to figure out how to survive and flourish in the land. The gods found how sad and dull a world was with no love or hate, laughter or crying, or sadness or happiness in it; basically void of real life. It was then decided that they would share their talents with the humans to bring this life to the world. So the gods a part of each of their spirits and created a “pnévma” and called it a “muse”. They made the muse responsible for blessing each human child at birth with a talent.  She is described as being enchanting to look at, but also frightening because of her expressionless face. This is because the muse cannot speak and she is blind so that her judgment on what talent to give someone is not jaded. She is draped in gold and white silk with golden jewelry adorned about her neck. Each part of her body that is gold represents where a talent is housed. She had gold on the crown of her head because that’s where all talents are cultivated and knowledge developed. Her hands are golden because they are used in the talent of painting, drawing, sculpting, and more. Her feet are golden because they are used in the talent of dance. Lastly her neck is golden because that is where the talent of singing and speech come from. Today people believe that your talent is something that you are just born with, but there are a few who still believe that the muse is who gives us our talents."

My design process started out with a more fairy or nymph like make up. Here are my first sketches:

But then I realized that we had to actually make the garment we wore so that changed my approach. I still wanted something that draped, but I didn't want to have to actually sew an entire dress. After doing some research online I came across the saree which is a style of dress and fabric draping within the Indian culture. I found this art of draping very elegant and beautiful. A saree is basically one piece of continuous fabric about 5 yards long. I used Youtube to find some instructional videos. It was here that I decided to make my own sari using some fabric and trim. Another element that affected my process was that in the story, the muse is blind. Because of this I decided to just make an elaborate mask. I felt that the element of being blind would translate better this way. I also came across a makeup palate that I absolutely fell in love with. The design pattern and colors for my mask were inspired by that. Here are a few pictures of what inspired the final product and pictures of the actual final piece.

Monticello and Falling Water Part 2

For our final installation of the field trip to Monticello and Falling Water was to make a booklet of our drawings, renderings, and any other pictures we took. I have posted a few of the pictures from that booklet to show my drawings and renderings below. Enjoy!

All being said I really enjoyed this trip! It was very interesting listening to the tour guides talk about the design of each building and the designers Thomas Jefferson and Frank Lloyd Wright. I was able to understand and really appreciate the design process and thoughtfulness put in by each designer because of what I have learned in class and through my own design process in school. I would definitely go on the field trip again and would even take the time to visit these places on my own with family and friends.

Monticello and Falling Water

This weekend we took a class trip to Charlottesville, VA  and up to western Pennsylvania to see Monticello and Falling water. Both homes were beautiful, but I must say that I enjoyed Falling water the best. Monticello was designed by Thomas Jefferson, the second president of the united states. The home sits on about 3,000 acres of land. The construction of Monticello began in 1768. The home took 40 years to build and Jefferson considered it his "essay in architecture". A lot of Jefferson's designs were French inspired from furnishings to the architectural build of the home and even the gardens surrounding the land. I enjoyed seeing all of the historical artifacts in the museum. I find it surreal to see tools and intricate objects that someone over 200 years ago held in their very hands and walk in halls that someone so long ago use to walk in. Below are some pictures and sketches that I did in the home.

Our second destination, Falling Water, was my favorite. It was designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright for the  Edgar Kaufmann and his family in 1935. The house was a vacation home for the Kaufmann's and took 2 years to complete. In 1939 the guest house was built behind the main house. Falling Water is built over the water fall and the water actually runs underneath the house. I liked Wright's attention to lines and the cleanliness of the lines. One thing that I learned about him that I didn't know before was how much creative license Wright would take with his designs and constructions. I don't know if I would've been able to work with someone who had such a huge sense of entitlement regarding their work. For example the Kaufmann's were under the impression that the home would be built below the water fall as opposed to right over it so that the water ran under it. Mr. Kaufmann felt that this was impractical, but Wright begged to differ and built the home in the location it is in today because he felt that from a artistic stand point it made more sense. Mr. Wright looked at his architectural designs as art work and often did not like his clients to cover up his work with paintings and furniture that he did not choose. The most interesting fact that I actually thought was funny was how Wright would often "gift"his clients with paintings, furniture, or other decorative pieces only to send them a bill for it later! Below is my rendered drawing and some pictures that I took while touring the home and grounds.

Unity Temple

Below is a poché of the Unity Temple in positive and negative. This image was adopted from our design textbook by Ching.

Novem Mason Symposium on Community-Engaged Design

On April 3, 2014 I attended the IARc Scholarship in the Gatewood Building at UNCG. It was a compilation of several different presentations that were delivered by faculty, student, ad staff in the Interior Architecture program. The presentations were about their scholarly and creative work in design and community engagement.

The first presentation I went to was by Tina Sarawgi. Her presentation was about daylight in interiors.  Ms. Sarawgi talks about the importance of understanding daylight and how it affects a space. In her teachings she has students make daylight models to show how light affects a space and the forms within that space. Her teachings also include sun angles. For example how the northern hemisphere differs from the southern hemisphere and how light from the north, south, east, and west affect a space. She also discussed terms that describe how to affect light such as bouncing, height, and geometry. Ms. Sarawgi also has her students to approach light in a particular order of different phases. Phase one is to observe what light does at different times. Phase two has the students to study other artists light work. The last phase has the students to experiment with light by changing the interior condition. I found her presentation very interesting and informative. I always consider natural lighting when ever I'm working on and interior space and agree with Ms. Sarawgi that understanding daylight or natural light is important for a designer.

The second presentation I went to was by Travis Hicks and some of the 4th year students. Their presentations talked about several different projects with in the community that they each were working on. The first project was for habitat for humanity. They very quickly went through their process of site analysis, design, and how they worked with contractors and other auxiliaries to actually build and make their installations into the home. The second project was called "Small Houses" and worked with finding homes for the homeless. They showed pictures that had a very basic design and a home that would have all the basic needs for a person to live. The next project was basically the same as the second one, only I believe the design was for a bigger house to provide shelter for more than one person. The second and third projects really focused on helping the homeless in Greensboro, NC and finding them safe shelters. The last project I found the most interesting. It was the idea of having a garden stand on UNCG campus to make fresh fruits and vegetables available to students. It thought this was a great idea because even outside of campus foods that are unhealthy for us are always easily available and cheaper. Foods that we should eat more of and are healthier are usually not attainable if you don't have transportation to get out to a more rural area or place that sales fresh fruits and vegetables; not to mention its more expensive.

The third presentation was by Stoel Burrowes and he discussed chairs, sustainability, and design. I learned that Stoel is a chair maker and he brought in one of the chairs that he made. The chair was a design that was inspired by the Windsor Chair which is a style of chair that came about around the 18th century. It is an inexpensive chair to make namely because the legs and the spokes in the back of the chair are duplicates. Stoel's idea was to originally to try and make the chair without any electricity and using only his tools. Eventually he did have to use some power tools to create the chair. To incorporate the idea of sustainability, one of the things discussed by him was to consider the ability to reuse the materials used to make a chair. He showed us a plastic chair with what appeared to be maybe steel tubing or some type of metal for the legs. It was pointed out that if you were to break this chair down you should understand that the plastic part of the chair is not easily disposable. If left in a land field it would probably be there one hundred years from now. Whereas the metal portion of the chair would rust and rot away in a matter of a few years.

The fourth and last presentation I went to was by Beth McGee. She talked about the Green Materials Library. The library opened in 2008 and a lot of the books and fixtures were donated by Novem Mason. The furniture in the library was donated by Natuzzi. I learned that the library has developed a very long way from where it started. Everything in the library is sustainable and green materials. They have a worksheet to make sure that what comes in is truly considered sustainable material. The books and other resources are organized under that Jackson system. They also have samples from different design vendors. On the library website you can also find these vendors and links to order samples from them. All of the resources in the library are updated every 5 years, which is great because your research and any samples you order from vendors will be current. I spoke with other students who have some experience with other design schools resource libraries and they all stated the library at IARc is truly one of the best. It was good to know that all of this information and materials are literarily at my fingertips.