User:Isagaastra
Isa Gaastra - Isagaastra96@gmail.com
Contents
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.
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 bought the ingredients to make puffy slime which I played with as a kid. 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 use this experiment for my example of taking a material to the limit. I want to make a very big batch of slime, and taking it to the limit by creating a disturbing video with it.
