In the beginning, there was a confused and un-expecting me. i prefer not to expect anything from a course so that i can fully appreciate the course for it's difference, after all, every facilitator has a different way of going about things. it's only once you figure out how to work in their course that you can truly enjoy the course rather than compare it to another and crib the entire time.
i have to admit that this course was not 'my kind' of course. i prefer planning and perfecting... i'm not fond of group work at all - mostly because i'm sort of a workaholic and i don't appreciate it when people don't take the work as seriously as i do. yet for all the projects we did in the course as a group, i didn't feel extremely irritable... for once, i worked at my team mates pace. i didn't plan... just went with the flow.
So, the first task I was a part of as a group was this - a wall mural made from fabric and clay.
The amount of fabric we had at first was very less... i then remembered that my mom who has a design studio often commented that she had a lot of waste cloth and was unsure what to do with it, since there are certain standards and measures one must take to dispose of fabric.
As soon as i realized that we needed a whole lot of fabric, i requested that she give it to us to use.
So... we had a LOT of fabric... it was fun rolling around in it i have to admit, comfy... soft...
More to the point... we put this fabric to the best use we could and i'll show you step by step what we did with it.
Obviously, our wall mural was going to be big, so we had sorted the fabric by color, though later on it didn't seem to make much of a difference and separated into smaller groups so that we could work on certain parts of the wall mural.
This was what my group did:
As a whole it looked like this:
This was when we first started and were a bit unsure as to what exactly we were trying to achieve...
However, once we got the flow, it was quite simple - prepare the glue mixture (industrial glue with a little bit of water so it didn't dry as fast), prepare the cloth necessary, stick the cloth on and trim as necessary for the shape, repeat.
Though i make it sound simple, i have to admit, we faced a few hurdles - color selection mostly and then how it looked as a whole.
Since we had divided ourselves into small groups and were working that way, we soon realized that we were making our parts complete pieces separate from the whole.
With a bit of guidance from our facilitator however, we managed to fix that and gave it a back ground too... it took us a duration of 5 days (just about) to complete it.
It's pretty spectacular for that amount of time i believe, though if i were to go by what our facilitator told us - that professionals would be able to complete this in a day... we were well... quite slow.
Despite all that however, i believe that we made good time considering we were a total of 10 - 12 people and just students.
Ah, i forgot to mention, the class had divided into 2 groups - one to work on the wall mural and the other to work with some bottles. This is the other groups' work:
So, one might ask the 'point' of this exercise. An excellent question i'll admit and i answer with a "I have no clue, even now".
I mean, yes, i get that we're up-cycling (difference between up-cycling and recycling is that in up-cycling you're reusing those materials for a different purpose than their original use while recycling if where you're taking the same materials and expending energy to bring them back to their original shape or a different shape from the original, but with a similar use. Plus, up-cycling uses lesser amount of energy) and that up-cycling is this amazing thing, but what else are we doing with it?
Sure, we made show pieces, and they look pretty good, but then i have to ask, then what? After some time, the wall mural will be taken down and painted over, the bottles will be brought down and thrown out, so what was the point of that?
I mean i'm not saying that i didn't have fun while doing it and i'm not saying that i didn't like the finished piece, but i do wonder if we made a difference. a difference in the whole question of energy use for recycling and so on and so forth and i guess that the only answer i can give and be satisfied from would be quoting this man from a film called 'Wasteland' (a definite must watch) who said "99 is not a 100" in reference to the amount of 'garbage' they receive, out of which they said that about 50% was reusable.
Moving on from heavy topics, let's get back on track. On the 4th or 5th day while we were working on the wall mural, we were also set to work on making one big piece as a group - a sculpture sort of thing i guess, using waste pipes (i meant reusable... these pipes had been used by one of our seniors to create a musical instrument sort of thing... it was really cool) and whatever else we needed.
So, we set to work - we had bamboo, pipes, cloth, a new kind of pa pier ma she that was made with clay as a substitute for glue.
This was how we had begun our piece - we decided on a dragon...
We began by first shaping the pipe, though as we soon found later, we had to keep reshaping it because we kept bending it out of the shape we desired and so, it didn't retain the original bends we wanted.
For the wings of course, we decided to use bamboo, though i was unsure how it would go since the bamboo was quite thin. to insert the bamboo sticks we used a chisel to make holes where we desired the wings.
We were unsure how to make the head, so i kind of decided to 'wing it'. the end result i have to admit was pretty cool.
i used 2 pieces of bamboo around which i wrapped newspaper and then taped it up for the desired shape.
The bamboo sticks in the mouth were basically for support, so that it would hold the 'mouth' open.
Then i attached the 2 other small bamboo sticks as 'horns' or 'ears' as commonly seen in pictures people draw of dragons.
Ahem... i meant to say a 'cloth' dragon
The wings we made from canvas since we didn't have a cloth piece that was big enough to use for the wings. It caused the wings to sag quite a bit because of the weight, and the wings weren't really able to hold themselves up because of it, but i think considering the limits in terms of material, we did a pretty good job. it at least somewhat resembles a dragon.
This was the process for the pa pier ma she:
First, you rip paper to shreds.
The shreds should not be 'too big' or 'too small'
Then you add a bit of water.
Then... you add clay. and this picture looks really odd i agree, but we decided to get into the basket in which we were making it to 'squish' the clay.
this part was the hardest, since we didn't want any lumps in the mix. we then had to mash it up with our hands and so on... it was a pretty long process.
By the time we finished with this, we were then asked to buy wire (GI, about 2 mm think if i remember right) and make small sculptures using exactly 3 metres of wire.
This was individual. the first individual piece we got to do. i have to admit, she came out pretty well. let me introduce to you 'Princess No Face'
Not a very innovative name i agree, but i couldn't come up with anything more suitable under the short period that i had to name her.
But considering that i made her by just stuffing the empty gaps with newspaper and then taping it up and covering her with cloth, skipping over the clay mash, i guess i had no choice since i couldn't give her a face and hence the name stuck.
After this small project, we were told that we would be creating a space in which we would make a stop motion video. the stars could be our sculptures or someone else's sculpture, but we had to create that space and use the previous big sculptures that we made.
So, we began:
We first made some scaffolding onto which we would put up pipes to hang wires from, so that we could suspend stuff - like birds or something.
We also began placing our sculptures in:
On of the other groups had made this and they called it 'the magical bull'
We hung it up by the entrance as though signifying our space i guess.
Our cloth dragon finally got a face, and was placed as the opening of the entrance... he was breathing fire (cloth again) and i guess 'watched over' the entrance
This was a sculpture another group made - a bronze sculpture of a lady
The first big bug that appeared. It's supposed to be a mix of a spider, a caterpillar and a crocodile...
The second big bug... i... i have no idea what it was a mix of. (To be more precise, i don't remember)
Of course, for the backgrounds, we decided to use layers of newspaper stuck together and paint on it.
We made this by using cheap glue that we made - a mixture of hot water with flour. after we had about 3 layers, we put on 2 coats of distemper and painted on it using paints that we found in the 'restore room' (a room where people place excess things that they don't need so that someone else can use it) along with some of our paints.
This was one of the backgrounds we made, but was later used as a 'decoration' for a staff room.
We then made waves using bricks, covered with flex banner and then dumped clay over it, which we shaped.
It got a bit harder when the clay began hardening.
To get the blue, we used 'Robin' washing powder and some plaster as white paint.
Using a similar method, we made this volcano along with the path.
This is the background i was talking about earlier. the side was open and a lot of wind tends to blow. so in order to prevent the background from tearing apart, we made a support for it to lean on.
Mushrooms made from pipe and painted baskets, tied together with wire and held in place by the bricks at the bottom, decorated with bottles.
Well.... we couldn't just cover the floor with sand, so we started with clay paint over paper that we found in the restore room and then when it dried, covered it with sand.
Then of course... we made the stop motion!
Here's the video:
All in all, i learnt a lot from this course... for one, that team work isn't always bad, that i shouldn't always plan since winging it isn't necessarily bad... and so on and so forth.
i have to admit that this course was not 'my kind' of course. i prefer planning and perfecting... i'm not fond of group work at all - mostly because i'm sort of a workaholic and i don't appreciate it when people don't take the work as seriously as i do. yet for all the projects we did in the course as a group, i didn't feel extremely irritable... for once, i worked at my team mates pace. i didn't plan... just went with the flow.
So, the first task I was a part of as a group was this - a wall mural made from fabric and clay.
The amount of fabric we had at first was very less... i then remembered that my mom who has a design studio often commented that she had a lot of waste cloth and was unsure what to do with it, since there are certain standards and measures one must take to dispose of fabric.
As soon as i realized that we needed a whole lot of fabric, i requested that she give it to us to use.
So... we had a LOT of fabric... it was fun rolling around in it i have to admit, comfy... soft...
More to the point... we put this fabric to the best use we could and i'll show you step by step what we did with it.
Obviously, our wall mural was going to be big, so we had sorted the fabric by color, though later on it didn't seem to make much of a difference and separated into smaller groups so that we could work on certain parts of the wall mural.
This was what my group did:
As a whole it looked like this:
This was when we first started and were a bit unsure as to what exactly we were trying to achieve...
However, once we got the flow, it was quite simple - prepare the glue mixture (industrial glue with a little bit of water so it didn't dry as fast), prepare the cloth necessary, stick the cloth on and trim as necessary for the shape, repeat.
Though i make it sound simple, i have to admit, we faced a few hurdles - color selection mostly and then how it looked as a whole.
Since we had divided ourselves into small groups and were working that way, we soon realized that we were making our parts complete pieces separate from the whole.
With a bit of guidance from our facilitator however, we managed to fix that and gave it a back ground too... it took us a duration of 5 days (just about) to complete it.
It's pretty spectacular for that amount of time i believe, though if i were to go by what our facilitator told us - that professionals would be able to complete this in a day... we were well... quite slow.
Despite all that however, i believe that we made good time considering we were a total of 10 - 12 people and just students.
Ah, i forgot to mention, the class had divided into 2 groups - one to work on the wall mural and the other to work with some bottles. This is the other groups' work:
So, one might ask the 'point' of this exercise. An excellent question i'll admit and i answer with a "I have no clue, even now".
I mean, yes, i get that we're up-cycling (difference between up-cycling and recycling is that in up-cycling you're reusing those materials for a different purpose than their original use while recycling if where you're taking the same materials and expending energy to bring them back to their original shape or a different shape from the original, but with a similar use. Plus, up-cycling uses lesser amount of energy) and that up-cycling is this amazing thing, but what else are we doing with it?
Sure, we made show pieces, and they look pretty good, but then i have to ask, then what? After some time, the wall mural will be taken down and painted over, the bottles will be brought down and thrown out, so what was the point of that?
I mean i'm not saying that i didn't have fun while doing it and i'm not saying that i didn't like the finished piece, but i do wonder if we made a difference. a difference in the whole question of energy use for recycling and so on and so forth and i guess that the only answer i can give and be satisfied from would be quoting this man from a film called 'Wasteland' (a definite must watch) who said "99 is not a 100" in reference to the amount of 'garbage' they receive, out of which they said that about 50% was reusable.
Moving on from heavy topics, let's get back on track. On the 4th or 5th day while we were working on the wall mural, we were also set to work on making one big piece as a group - a sculpture sort of thing i guess, using waste pipes (i meant reusable... these pipes had been used by one of our seniors to create a musical instrument sort of thing... it was really cool) and whatever else we needed.
So, we set to work - we had bamboo, pipes, cloth, a new kind of pa pier ma she that was made with clay as a substitute for glue.
This was how we had begun our piece - we decided on a dragon...
We began by first shaping the pipe, though as we soon found later, we had to keep reshaping it because we kept bending it out of the shape we desired and so, it didn't retain the original bends we wanted.
For the wings of course, we decided to use bamboo, though i was unsure how it would go since the bamboo was quite thin. to insert the bamboo sticks we used a chisel to make holes where we desired the wings.
We were unsure how to make the head, so i kind of decided to 'wing it'. the end result i have to admit was pretty cool.
i used 2 pieces of bamboo around which i wrapped newspaper and then taped it up for the desired shape.
The bamboo sticks in the mouth were basically for support, so that it would hold the 'mouth' open.
Then i attached the 2 other small bamboo sticks as 'horns' or 'ears' as commonly seen in pictures people draw of dragons.
Ahem... i meant to say a 'cloth' dragon
The wings we made from canvas since we didn't have a cloth piece that was big enough to use for the wings. It caused the wings to sag quite a bit because of the weight, and the wings weren't really able to hold themselves up because of it, but i think considering the limits in terms of material, we did a pretty good job. it at least somewhat resembles a dragon.
This was the process for the pa pier ma she:
First, you rip paper to shreds.
The shreds should not be 'too big' or 'too small'
Then you add a bit of water.
Then... you add clay. and this picture looks really odd i agree, but we decided to get into the basket in which we were making it to 'squish' the clay.
this part was the hardest, since we didn't want any lumps in the mix. we then had to mash it up with our hands and so on... it was a pretty long process.
By the time we finished with this, we were then asked to buy wire (GI, about 2 mm think if i remember right) and make small sculptures using exactly 3 metres of wire.
This was individual. the first individual piece we got to do. i have to admit, she came out pretty well. let me introduce to you 'Princess No Face'
Not a very innovative name i agree, but i couldn't come up with anything more suitable under the short period that i had to name her.
But considering that i made her by just stuffing the empty gaps with newspaper and then taping it up and covering her with cloth, skipping over the clay mash, i guess i had no choice since i couldn't give her a face and hence the name stuck.
After this small project, we were told that we would be creating a space in which we would make a stop motion video. the stars could be our sculptures or someone else's sculpture, but we had to create that space and use the previous big sculptures that we made.
So, we began:
We first made some scaffolding onto which we would put up pipes to hang wires from, so that we could suspend stuff - like birds or something.
We also began placing our sculptures in:
On of the other groups had made this and they called it 'the magical bull'
We hung it up by the entrance as though signifying our space i guess.
Our cloth dragon finally got a face, and was placed as the opening of the entrance... he was breathing fire (cloth again) and i guess 'watched over' the entrance
This was a sculpture another group made - a bronze sculpture of a lady
The first big bug that appeared. It's supposed to be a mix of a spider, a caterpillar and a crocodile...
The second big bug... i... i have no idea what it was a mix of. (To be more precise, i don't remember)
Of course, for the backgrounds, we decided to use layers of newspaper stuck together and paint on it.
We made this by using cheap glue that we made - a mixture of hot water with flour. after we had about 3 layers, we put on 2 coats of distemper and painted on it using paints that we found in the 'restore room' (a room where people place excess things that they don't need so that someone else can use it) along with some of our paints.
This was one of the backgrounds we made, but was later used as a 'decoration' for a staff room.
We then made waves using bricks, covered with flex banner and then dumped clay over it, which we shaped.
It got a bit harder when the clay began hardening.
To get the blue, we used 'Robin' washing powder and some plaster as white paint.
Using a similar method, we made this volcano along with the path.
This is the background i was talking about earlier. the side was open and a lot of wind tends to blow. so in order to prevent the background from tearing apart, we made a support for it to lean on.
Mushrooms made from pipe and painted baskets, tied together with wire and held in place by the bricks at the bottom, decorated with bottles.
Well.... we couldn't just cover the floor with sand, so we started with clay paint over paper that we found in the restore room and then when it dried, covered it with sand.
Then of course... we made the stop motion!
Here's the video:
All in all, i learnt a lot from this course... for one, that team work isn't always bad, that i shouldn't always plan since winging it isn't necessarily bad... and so on and so forth.
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