Almost Done!

Our studio space is slowly but surely being transformed into an exhibit. Most everyone printed out their graphics on the brown paper in class today and started hanging them up. Over the weekend everyone is supposed to come in and help get the space cleaned up and organized and ready to go on Monday morning for critiques.

Stage Two Complete

Last night Jami finished painting the canvas to complete the second stage of her exhibit design. She decided to do an abstract composition which pulled shapes from the existing structure and repeated them in different colors to create a design.

Busy Week

This week everyone is really busy working in the shop trying to finish their models and chairs.

Time for a break

Everyone continued to work on their models and chairs on Monday. A few of us have metal components to our chairs, so we attended an orientation at the foundry with John so that we could use the facility to construct our chairs. There is so much equipment and so much you can do over there, it is kind of a shame that our department doesn't take advantage of it more often. Anyway, everything seems to be running smoothly in the shop so far, and while it's kind of a bad time to take five, that is just what we are going to do, five days that is! Hopefully Thanksgiving break will give everyone some time to relax and reflect so we can come back well rested and ready to finish out the semester on a good note!

Stage One Complete

On Friday, while everyone was working in the shop, Jami finished the first part of the exhibit. The three sculptural walls are assembled, standing and ready for the next stage to be added on.

We got wood!!!

The wood that we ordered finally got delivered today! Everyone who is building their chair at full scale for the competition has been anxiously awaiting the arrival of our materials so that we could begin construction. It feels good to be back in the shop working again. Although, I think the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty hectic!

Black or brown? Color or black and white?

We spent more time today talking about the exhibit posters. The discussion focused on whether to use brown or black paper or if the images should be in black and white or in color. Also, it was decided that the band at the top which unites all of the posters will now be an abstract collage of images having to do with chairs instead of four specific images pertaining to each topic. So, which one do you think looks best?

What if we do this...or this...or this?

There continues to be much discussion in both studios about how the final exhibit is going to look. Renee and Maurshell have come up with some great designs for the graphics so that they will all look cohesive. However, everyone has their own ideas about how each detail should be and we have spent a lot of time discussing and debating as a class. Today we spent a long time figuring out which font looked best, after talking about it for a while I think the majority of the class was in agreement.

Construction begins!

Jami brought in the materials for the first stage of the exhibit today and we began putting the walls together. We got the back wall up in just a couple of hours and then Jami stayed the rest of the day and got the side wall together and cut down the pieces for the front wall.

Exhibit Design Continues...

Renee and Maurshell have come up with a layout of the exhibit in our studio space. Everyone who is planning on building a full scale version of the chair made a scale footprint of their chair to go on the plan. Everything seems to be going well with the exhibit design, I can't wait to see it all come together in the end!

Exhibit Proposal

While Jami and I have been working on the Living Collaborative Exhibition Studio, Renee and Maurshell have been working on the exhibit design and discussing their ideas with the rest of the class. Based on a sketch done by Sara Zales, they have come up with the idea of having a band of pictures which will unite all the posters into one cohesive exhibit. The idea is that each subject will have a different color band as the background for the images that the group decides to display.

Living Collaborative Exhibition Studio

Jami and I began constructing the walls of the exhibit today. The back wall will be made of metal, while the side and front walls are made of wood and acrylic. The framed walls are acting as the first stage of the exhibit, which is supposed to have been constructed by a sculptor. The back, metal wall will have a rectangular frame with scraps of metal crossed at different angles inside of it. The side wall is a wooden frame with plywood insets. The plywood pieces are scraps from Brayton furniture. The front wall is also a wooden frame, but has a large piece of clear acrylic set in it.

The walls are going to be used as the frame work for the next two people to display their work and add on to the exhibit. We are going to use the back wall of metal to attach canvas to be painted on. The paintings will then serve as a back drop for the chair that will be exhibited as the final stage. The acrylic that will be in front of the chair will be an interactive piece to the exhibit which people can draw on. Also, as part of the final stage, we will be strategically placing my process work for the chair on the side wall of the exhibit.

Exhibit topics

Today, each pair signed up for the topic that they wanted to represent in the exhibit.

Jami's honors project

There is still another piece to this project. Jami Southern is doing her senior honor's project this semester. Her project was also inspired by the Hatchery and she is going to be designing and building an exhibit. After much research and discussion she has come up with the idea of making a toolkit which would give the student the tools to create their own studio space/exhibit the way they see fit. The exhibit would then be added on to by the next student who came in to use it for their work and so on and so on. For the purpose of this project, the first person who would be using the toolkit would be a sculptor, the next a painter, and lastly me, an interior architecture student working on a chair design.

We talked a lot about it on Monday and generated some really cool ideas. We came up with ways that each of the stages could build off of the last one so that the end exhibit which will display my full scale chair will be cohesive and also very interesting and interactive. Also, her idea about the toolkit and the sort of modular exhibit has influenced my chair design as well. There will be much more to come about this soon!

Ok, so let's get this straight...

Both classes, the morning studio and our afternoon studio are put into pairs. One person in each pair will be building a full scale chair based off of the one they designed at the beginning of the semester for the Come Sit a Spell contest. The other person will be building a series of scale models based off of and evolving from the chair which they designed for the contest. Aside from that, each pair (mainly the person who is not building a full scale chair) will be in charge of creating a graphic about chair design based on a chapter of Galen Cranz's book The Chair. Got all that so far?

Ok, now that's not all. Two pairs from each studio will act as the liaison for the exhibit. Instead of making a graphic, these four people (Renee Chaput and Kelsey McCool from the afternoon studio and Ashley Andrews and Maurshel Stokes from the morning studio) will coordinate the layout of the exhibit in our studio space.

The Hatchery

Today, Ashley Boycher presented her work on the Hatchery project to our class so that we could get a general idea of the project. Basically, the idea is that it will be a space where students can exhibit and sell their work and meet with potential clients. The project had been on its way to actually being able to be built, but unfortunately funds dried up and right now it is at a bit of a stand still. However, it hasn't been completely given up on and there is hope that it will get more funding and come to life in the near future. Hopefully, the exhibit that we design as a class will help potential investors get a better idea of what types of exhibits may be in the space.

Come Sit a Spell continued...

During our work on the Salvation Army fixtures, we found out that the entries which were sent into the Come Sit a Spell contest, along with Stoel's morning studio, had all been accepted! They even made us our own category entitled UNCG. So, since our shop cannot accommodate 40+ students each building a chair, we had to figure out who would build theirs and who would not. Stoel's plan was to have us work in pairs, one person would be building their chair at full scale to be delivered and installed to the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in Charlotte, while the other person created a series of scale models of their chair. Also, the pair would be responsible for creating a graphic which represents one of the chapters in Galen Cranz's book.

As a class, in collaboration with the morning studio, we are going to be creating an exhibit which will display the chairs that are built at full scale and also the scale models. It will all be tied together by the graphic elements which inform the viewers of the exhibit about chair design based on the book The Chair. The idea for the exhibit was inspired by Ashley Boycher's Hatchery project. The hope is that the exhibit which we will create in our studio space will fuel some discussion about building the Hatchery in the near future.

The Chair

While working on the seemingly endless Salvation Army project, we also had the task of reading The Chair by Galen Cranz. The book is about, you guessed it, chairs! It discusses the history of the chair, its place in society and how it is viewed and used today. Also, it largely focuses on the health issues that arise from forcing our bodies to form to a 90 degree seated position throughout the entirety of our lives. Cranz also talks about different designers and ergonomic developments in seating throughout the history of the chair and in recent years. Reading this book made me think about chairs in a new way, which I'm sure was Stoel's intention when asking us to read it.

Not only did we read the book, but we also wrote found poems from our reading. For those who don't know, a found poem is a poem that uses words that are found in a reading. Most people in the class made a list of words that they found, some lists had words that all related in some way or another while others seemed more random. A few people wrote poems that rhymed, or printed their words on the paper to look like a chair. For the second part of the book we had to write a Haiku with words that we found. I think that the poems were a good way of getting everyone to be more familiar with and have a better understanding of the text.

Come Sit A Spell

submission for Come Sit a Spell by Kara Wolfe

This semester Stoel's product design studio began by spending a week working on submissions for a contest for the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in Charlotte. The contest required us to design a chair or bench for the gardens, which if accepted we would then have to build and install next March. To get us to start thinking about the project, Stoel had us bring in or sketch three things that we were inspired by. There was a wide variety of objects, from things found in nature to musical instruments to what some would consider trash. Just goes to show you that inspiration can be found anywhere.