8.02.2004

table

nothing like defeating your own self-defeatist attitude. 17 credits in the summer...can you say exhaustion?!?!? this is week 7 of the 9 week furniture class that i literally was about 5 seconds from dropping today...as a matter of fact, i emailed my prof. to let him know. 'cause you know if you're going to go out like a sucker then i like to do it the non-confrontational way..by email! =)

he replied:

"...do not drop. now is the perfect time to go for broke....always better to take a big risk than to walk away .....the end result could be the same or it could be brilliant...have faith...i do...see you this afternoon..."

oh my. here i am being confronted with my own bs. maybe i shouldn't just take the easy route...maybe i should sweat it out for a change and at least finish with some dignity...

the basic assignment was to build a simple wood table (of course being offered by an architect/artist there were some caveats which i will spare):

me being the packrat that i am, i started with the idea for a simple entry table...which basically acted as a structural member, a honeycomb...with lots of voids/compartments for all my junk. somehow in critique it got pushed toward making the voids correspond with people in my household...hubby and son....in yet another critique it got pushed to something a lot more conceptual, yet compelling...a "time-table" both a functional piece for holding ish -perhaps memories-and a symbolic piece for marking the passage of time with my son's height. ummmmmmmmm yeah, as beautiful as that sounds, i got totally lost and off track with that idea. the form got all out of wack...and crashed and burned...multiple times. i finally resigned myself to spending every minute the shop would allow today, working on the piece. pumping out full scale mock up after mockup.

FINALLY...after some scrapes, some quizical looks from peers, and even some tears, i actually came up with something that looks like something, functions and means something to me. wow. what a great feeling. here's to sticking it out...challenging myself i'll have to try that more often.

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