User:Isagaastra

Isa Gaastra - Isagaastra96@gmail.com

7-2

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.

17-2

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.

18-2

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.

21-2

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.

22-2

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.

23-2

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.

4-3

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.