User:Isagaastra

Isa Gaastra - Isagaastra96@gmail.com

Logboek

February 7th

We had a very nice first meeting with the (con)fusing group. We got very very deep into the subject, to the point of where the entire universe was actually created by fusing. Fusing is Life. But we had to focus on one point, so we decided to first define Craft. When we did this, the better we could find out wat fusing could be. We decided to all give an historical example of Fusing in craft that we find interesting ourselves.

February 17th

I have been reading several books about the subject craft, and i get inspired and confused at the same time. I think im too much contemplating about what Fusing means to me that it keeps me from making stuff.

February 18th

I’ve been doing research on historical ways of fusing. Welding is something i find interesting, because it’s something I've never been in touch with before. I would really like to make something with steel, something big and heavy because i love the way how this material automatically gives a work a rough and indestructible feeling. So I was searching for artists who work with this principle, and with whom I might be able to get in touch with. I remembered the big insect artwork of steel in my parents garden and got in touch with the artist which they bought it from. Johan Lossie was very kind and really wanted to help me. I explained my assignment and we talked a bit about the different possibilities and he talked to me about “klinken”, the technique where the Eiffel Tower is made of. We decided to go in that direction and made an appointment for an entire Saturday to work on a piece. His workplace is on a big farm and I got a big list of things I need to bring so I am very curious.

Wikipedia page about Welding Wikipedia page about 'Klinken"

February 20th

We had a group meeting today to think about our shared example. We, again, had new insights and visions on fusing. We thought about creating different kinds of paper and combining those into one book or poster, but we thought that would be a bit too simple. We also came up with the idea of all creating a square in the way we look at fusing, and then combining them in a cube. Same as with the paper: a bit too simple. We thought it would be better if we would think of something where we really have to work together, something we could not make on our own. So we came up with the idea of creating tiles. Putting different kinds of materials with different qualities in a mould, let it harden and later cut them into slices and create tilles which we can put on a wall. We thought it was important to recycle the materials so we went to the shop “Scrap” and bought all kinds of glass, plastics, fabrics and other materials.

February 22nd

I tried to motivate myself to just stop thinking too much and just start somewhere. So i started off experimenting with the materials we had laying around in our home and tried to fuse them in one way or another. I worked with Glue, feathers, candles, threads and beads. I wanted to see if i could change the softness of the feather without changing its looks. That worked out pretty well. I also got the idea of fusing colors with clay. I bought five colors of FIMO clay and started rolling small snakes of different colours. I created an intricate design and rolled it out smaller and smaller. I moulded it around a glass bowl and baked it in the over. It turned out really nice in my opinion. This would be something I would like to experiment with further.

example of clay caning

February 23rd

today we started the shared example with our group. Max and I made round plastic moulds for the tiles. We made cement with powder and water and mixed it with different materials like foam, paint, glass, plastic, cinnamon powder, nail polish, etc. We made 20 different tiles and planned to make at least another round of 20 after the break. When they're dried we’re going to polish and glaze them and create a wall or floor with our own created tiles.

March 4th

Today I had the workshop with the steel artist. We met up at his house at 10 and then drove to his workplace at a cow farm. It was nothing more then an old dirty barn, but that made me feel tough at forehand. He started telling me about his work and how he found his passion in working with steel. He told me it would be good to start with just forging and welding a bit to get the feeling, before I made a really thought through piece. It was a lot harder then I thought it would be; I still had to use a lot of strength to forge the material in the way I wanted to. Eventhough I'm not really used to work in 3d, I really enjoyed it. When I started to get the hang of it I started thinking about an art piece. I found a really beautiful piece of woord outside the barn, the farmer had cut the trees for firewood and left some of the pieces. I immediately liked the idea of fusing wood and steel together in some kind of way. So we started working on that idea. There were some small branches coming out of the wood and I wanted to try to make the steel look like it did too. I had to forge the steel in a natural flow of curls, to make it look realistic and light. Once I made the steel branches we hammered them as far in the wood as we could, making it impossible to ever take them out again. I really like how the piece turned out. In the end I realized i actually made two different examples of fusing: I fused steel and wood together, but I also made a box entirely out of steel by welding different pieces together. It was a very long and intensive but very productive day. I really learned a lot, and I got really positive feedback from the artist.

March 9th

This week we had a drawing bootcamp at Gorssel with the Illustration department so I could not make it to the class. I feel a bit out of the flow because we also had holiday the week before. I cannot really think of other fusing experiments I really want to do. I do have a lot of thoughts on the Manifesto. At illustration we also get the question, 'Why do you make?' a lot. The borders of the Illustration field are pushed further then ever, so it's very important to know what you're doing, and more important to know why you're doing it. If you know where your intrinsic motivation on making comes from, you can explore and develop that in a more professional direction. I always say that my main reason of making, is to make people happy. It might be simple, cliché or naive, but that's really how I feel about it. (to be continued)

March 16th

Today we met up again with the fusing group. We collected the cement tiles we made before the holiday to experiment some more with them. They had dried up completely, but some of them were very fragile. I think that was because we combined the cement with different fluids like paint and chocolate ice-cream which changed the structure. Also we didn't really measure the ratio water and cement which made it more fragile then it was supposed to be. We managed to get almost all of the tiles out of our moulds, just two of them broke. Then we went to the ceramic station to polish the tiles. The different materials we used reacted very different to the polishing proces. The foam for example, got really dirty and polluted by the cement, while the tiles combined with glass were really dirty before polishing, and became beautifully see-through after. The effect was really different then I first expected, I thought it would be quite easy to polish them really smooth but that was not possible because they were really thin. I do like the way we did all of these experiments, and some of the materials turned out quiet interesting when combined. But still I wasn't really inspired by the experiments, at least not in a way where I could use it in my craft. It did not really trigger my interest, so I am not sure if I want to use them any further in our project.

March 21st

Today I tried to think about my manifesto on the question why I make. I have so much thought on this subject, It almost feels impossible to explain all the perspectives an feelings around this question. When I have a strong opinion on something, or if the subject really touches me, I can speak like a river, a never-ending flow of words that most of the time don't make sense. I sometimes confuse myself so much with this amount of statements I make and sentences I create, that I get totally lost. What I then need is structure, so thats what I'm trying to create for myself for this assignment. So I tried to create 1 sentence on every thought I had on the subject so I would get a summary of my prespective that I could use when I'm writing the manifesto.

I make because I enjoy making things

I make because I want to make myself happy.

I make because I want to make other people happy.

I make because when I do I feel good about myself.

I make because it organizes my thought processes

I make because I’m constantly changing and I want to be aware of that change

I make because I want to teach people a positive mindset.

I make because making is the only attachment my inside world and imagination has with reality.

I make because I want to express myself and that inside world.

I make because my ego tells me I want to express myself.

I make because my ego tells me I need to express myself in order to be recognized by others.

I make because it proves my existence, whether valuable or not.

I make because I think I can bring change to the world.

I make because it makes me aware of my individuality

I make because I look up to other makers

I make because to me making is a natural basic instinct

March 23rd

I'm trying to think about my artifact based on my manifesto. During my thought process on the subject I was working on a self initiated project. I'm embroidering a picture I made of my body. It has a lot of depth and meaning for me, It stands for the self love and acceptance I am trying to find. I used an almost nude selfie of myself because I think it takes a lot of self-assurance to make and expose a picture like that to others. I chose to embroider because the origin of my struggle comes from an eating disorder, which I am struggling with for almost five years now. Embroidering is a very slow an repetitive process, It takes a lot of time and effort to see a result. That fits very well with how I feel/how I felt in my battle against my eating disorder. One of the reasons why I really enjoy embroidery is because it feels a bit stupid to put so much time and effort in creating one image. Thats a bit in conflict with the way our fast and economic society works. That being said, makes embroidery a really interesting medium which without thinking about the image already carries a lot of information and depth. Another interesting aspect I'm amazed by over and over again, is the B-side. That's what I find the most interesting in embroidery. You are continuously focussing on the front, creating the image you have in mind, and without even knowing you are creating an abstracted and way more interesting image on the back. The images on both sides consist of the same thread and you can not create just one of the sides. This to me is again a parallel to life: Both bad and good, beauty and ugliness, are always connected and could not exist without the other.

So I was thinking about all these very interesting aspects and findings I did and suddenly realized it would be perfect to use for my artifact. It stands for so much things that have to do with my artistic vision. It is a personal thing, it has to do with processing my emotions, but it also sends a message to people. It is an esthetically interesting image as well as a strong conceptual base. The craft and material fit perfectly in the concept and really add more value and depth to the artwork. Although I feel like embroidery is not REALLY fusing, I still decided to use it. It just felt as the right thing to do in this stage. It really is the part of craft-spectrum I'm super interested in and fascinated by and I will just try to make it work. It would be nice if I could put it in an epoxy cube which then makes it fusing, but time-wise that would not be feasible. Also because it's a project which stand so close to my heart and because I put all my blood sweat and tears in it, I don't want to bungle and alter its value.

March 27th

I wanted to make another example for taking a material to the limit. I chose 'mixing glue'. As a child I love to make 'glue balls'. We made them during class by rubbing glue all over and between our hands. The glue would then dry and become a squishy ball we would play with all day. Now this similar concept is becoming an internet hype. The fluffy slime videos are all over the internet an gaining more and more followers. I think that is a very strange and weird development, the videos of female hands needing, stroking and piercing the colorful slime are almost erotic. That creates an interesting tension to me: it's almost like they're sexualizing childhood toys. I want to make a very big batch of slime with glue, and taking it to the limit by creating a disturbing video with it.

March 28th

Today I did a lot of experiments with glue and other ingredients to make slime. It was a very interesting and funny material to experiment with, to create different textures and substances with different kinds of glue. It is a very weird chemical reaction and different kind of glues reacted differently to the detergent which was very interesting. I used water-based school glue, aceton based glue and wallpaper glue. Other ingretients were hand soap, detergent, shaving cream, glitter and lotion.

March 29th

Today is the last day before the exhibition. I tried to get as far as I could with my embroidery work. My patience was really tested, I was confronted by how slow the process of embroidery is, especially when you work on a big piece like this. I also thought of a way to make it really work together with my statement. So I created a frame with a mirror so you can see the front and the back of the work at the same time.

March 30th

Today we had the group exhibition with the digital craft class. It was very interesting to see and hear about what everyone made. A lot of people had original approaches to the subject which resulted in a diverse combination of experiments. I was really impressed by the robots someone made from the carving group. I also loved the silkscreen printed animation by Thijs. In my opinion this form of presenting wasn’t really inspiring. It was a chaos, and I would have preferred to just create a corner with your group and inside the group see what connections you can make. Then we could have time to walk around and present in a more stimulating way. I had a feeling that the attention wasn’t really well divided per person or per object.

Manifesto

In my opinion, all humans start making when they are conceived in their mothers womb. Staying alive, and therefore ‘making’ ideas, strategies and things to do so, is our most basic instinct. It’s not any different then the way I drew when I first touched a pencil. I didn't draw with any conceptual thought beforehand, and I wasn’t influenced by anything in the world but my own imagination. Driven by an instinct deep within that told me to do it the way I did, and nothing else mattered.

Now I am still driven by my instinct to make. I feel like I need to make, an urge that I can not hold back. My making processes changed a lot over time, I make different choices because I am much more aware of who, where, what and why I am. And that on itself is a beautiful thing: life never stands still and neither do I, and by making things constantly during my life and thus my changes, I get a complete overview of who I am. Even the most irrelevant pencil scribbles and scratches tell me a lot about my process. I can reflect on everything because I make. When I make, I get lost in the process and I can dissociate ‘Me’ from ‘Myself’. That creates an interesting environment for creativity to flow and flourish without being stuck in a subjective perspective. By making things I am making and organizing thoughts.

I like to make things that tell stories, that’s why I chose illustration. Not because I am that much in to drawing, but more because I want to tell stories and communicate with people through my work. Stories about me, things I feel and things I have done. Stories about the past, stories about the future. Stories that will never happen or stories that don’t make any sense. Telling stories is a very powerful medium to trigger people to think, or to feel. These stories can be presented in many different forms, drawings, writings, poems, songs, performances of other works of craft. The perfect work for me would be something with a very thought through and interesting concept, made with a certain craftsmanship, which tells a clear and interesting story and, if possible, is still esthetically appealing. That of course, is something that would exist in a perfect world, but these things are important to me.

I love to lose myself in the process of making, to the point where I totally forget where I am and what day and time it is and I am fully focussed on what I am making. This is what happens mostly on times when I feel like imploding with stress and worries. Just now I am realizing that the things I am making on those moments are the things I need to use for my projects. After all that was the reason I started art school in the first place: making is my basic instinct and it makes me calm and happy.

Craft is very important to me. In the perfect world my work would be seen as craftsmanship and art at the same time, but if I had to choose between the two, (conceptual) craftsmanship will always be my main goal. I think that’s what makes you stand out as an artist, as an image maker. Seeing the hand of the artist, being able to recognize the choices made during the process and see the thoughts you had in the direction of lines/threads/fingerprints/etc. That is something I was really intrigued by when I first saw some sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Seeing the rawness of the material and therefor the craftsmanship put in it to create the sculpture felt so real. Different then the polished perfect marble sculptures I had seen before.

That’s Also why I am always so fascinated by the B-side of things. While you are crafting something, you are continuously focussing on the thing your making (think of wood, fabric, claying) or the side you’re working on (drawing, painting, embroidering, printing), creating the image you have in mind, and without even knowing you are creating an abstracted and, sometimes, way more interesting image on the other side. This is why I am now really fascinated by embroidery. I’m experimenting with this craft and trying to make it into my own. The B-side of embroidery says so much about my thoughts and feelings during the process. The threads on the back are sometimes very neat, in logically placed rows but sometimes there are small mistakes. I was distracted by something or lost in thought and made a stitch far away from the spot I was working on, creating a long line on the back. But no one will see that when they see the image, just like a person you cannot see the confusion or insecurity that is within. The images on both sides of the cotton consist of the same thread and you can not create just one of the sides. This to me is again a parallel to life: Both bad and good, beauty and ugliness, are always connected and could not exist without the other.

This is an example of my thought and research process. I love thinking about material, tools, colors and crafts in this way. What does it mean? What does it represent? How can I extract the characteristics of this certain craft or material? How can I use these characteristics to create more depth in my artwork?

I make because I want to change, and because I want to be aware of my changes. I make because I want to be aware of myself. I make because I want people to be aware of themselves.

I make to reveal the hidden.

historical example

Welding

comparative example

wood working combined with forging

new skill example

Welding and forging, clay caning

shared example

Cement tiles

Material to the limit example

glue and slime + video

Combination with two other students

We combined our works because of the amount of colour. Our works were the most colorful in the room. Also the fluidity of the slime fitted very well with Dalid's wave.