The professors came around this morning and I laid out a carpet for them to try the stools on. Roland thoroughly enjoyed the experience of sitting on both stools, but then let forth a slurry of suggestions and ideas. "You should have made twenty of these, it would be great to make all of the seating for the exhibition"; "I really wish you hadn't used this plywood, it is such low quality. You need European plywood {WHICH, by the way, is $128 a sheet as opposed to the $50 a sheet I spent}"; You need to do something in the middle of the form, for the sharp, hard edges don't work formally and will hurt people that try to pick them up" (and so on and so forth). John pointed out that I don't have the time to make major changes like making more stools. I talked about my want to put cushions on top of them, which none of them liked, especially because that would be an extra form on top of the already existing ones (like a cherry on top, or combining weird flavors of soup). John then asked me if I had a car and if I had it here. When I said that my car was at home, he told me to go get it and drive him to his studio where he has a material that might solve my issues. So, I ran (literally) home, a 45 minute walk which took 20 minutes to run. In his studio, John had some super stretchy fabric and some structural mesh left over from the Menotme project. He told me to test it out and try to completely cloak the stools in the material, which would turn it into a solid form, could make the cushion on top part of the form, and hide the interior problems that Roland sees.
SO, I pinned the fabric around the small stool a couple of different ways, but no matter how I did it, I really hated the shape it made. Because it could not keep the implied curves between the struts, it made the form into a hexagon. An ugly, almost transparent hexagon with a plywood stool inside. Nancy, the fiber studios coordinator suggested an opaque knit fabric, but I'm not sure I like the idea of disguising the shape anymore.
THEN, Camilla came by to tell me that she thinks I shouldn't do something just because John and Roland are suggesting I do it. She thinks that the fabric doesn't look good, and she thinks I should keep the stools as they are and not worry too much about the aesthetics of them."This is about play," she said, "put the stools on the gallery floor, put out a bucket of the goo, make it an environment that gets people to actually play." This would, in effect, make my postcard actually coincide with my project (which would be pretty good). And I agree about the looks of the stools as they are.
Therefore, I need to figure out what to do. In the mean time, I started adding the finish to the stools (which means no more sanding, filling, etc. (yay!) {OH NO} [who cares].
Alright, so now I'm letting the bottoms of the stools soak in the stuff and will wipe that off in an hour. It's looking good, and everyone that walks into the studio compliments the stools (which could be common courtesy).
Anyway, the question is: do I shroud the stools and then put a cushion on top so that the form is solid? Or, do I leave the stools as they are and set up the gallery as I please (John doesn't like the carpet idea because Slusser gallery is huge and the carpet will close off the area into a tiny section)?
Pros of shroud:
- Hides all imperfections, filler marks, inaccurate filing, router marks, and the interior geometry (as much as Roland dislikes it).
- Unifies the form if there is a cushion (the cushion would be beneath the shroud).
1. Creates a weird solid shape that's hexagonal, doesn't let the eye fill in the curves of the frame.
2. Completely blocks the woodgrain and the portions of filler that look nice, like kintsugi.
3. This adds an extra block of time spent working...
4. ... with a material that I am unfamiliar with in order to make something production-grade in under a
week.
5. Not to mention the research into different knits and meshes that might be more opaque and better
suited for the job, as well as research into the best way to cloak the shapes, get the material on, the right seam techniques, etc.
Hmm. Well. That kind of puts things in a perspective that I didn't have before. Yes, the shroud would be covering the problems, but it would also be covering the good things. It may be crazy, but I agree with Camilla's notion of making the exhibition piece more about play and less about the craft. Hell, these stools won't be on pedestals, and I have plenty of time in the rest of my life to experiment with shrouded figures. I think that's what I'll do then.
Checklist
Days left until gallery opening: 16.
Accomplished:
Hopefully a notion (yet again) of what I'm doing and what I'm not doing.
Stools sanded (in my opinion not sufficiently, which is probably a huge mistake)
A coat of finish applied
Working on:
More finishing
Thinking about how to present goo in the gallery
Making the work done during all of IP accessible to gallery patrons (because there is a massive amount that has been done, just not directly with the stools)
To do:
Gallery submitting
Gallery set up
Documentation
Blurbs for the tags, titles, presentation stuff
Thesis writing.