Corry Mears Presents: Defining A Ritual

Okay so this is our first studio project we received and man it was a pretty damn long one for sure. What our objective was to do... we had to choose a object that we called a ritual and create two accessories for this ritual object. Now these two accessories had to relate we later learned and one of these items we made had to be crafted out of wood. And I'll say that was a bit of a fear to overcome for myself because I'd never worked with wood... besides balsa and I'm not even sure that counts. But the object I chose was a pen because everyone uses a pen but everyone does different things with that to make it their own. And I created both of my accessories to compliment the pen out of wood. One object was 8 stacks of 3/8" plywood and they basically had no sort of layout to them. The second accessory was a 3/4" wooden dowel that I hollowed out with a 1/2" drill bit and the dowels are mobile and can be taken out of the sort of stationary object. Now we had to write a ritual sort of paper describing this process and here was mine...

THE RITUAL

Seven days a week, that is how many days are in a week and as different as every day may be all of these days have one particular thing in common. A pen, it’s something I have realized I use every single day. Now I use to be more of a pencil guy before the IARc days, but ever since I started the program I’ve learned to use a pen really whenever and wherever I get the chance. Normally Monday through Friday I’m using a pen at school up at my cubicle. Whether it’s drawing out some ideas in my sketchbook or taking notes in some of my other classes. And with the weekends come work, and working at a pharmacy I have to use a pen a lot to take notes on a Rx or to write down other information. But regardless of the the day or place, you’ll find me with a pen somewhere around me and at some point I will use that pen.

and after that Stoel said we weren't having critiques because last week we didn't ever get around to presenting thanks to all the lovely snow. So we had to write basically a self critique of our whole design process and how we would grade ourselves I guess.

RITUAL: SELF CRITIQUE

Classes resumed from Christmas break January 19th and that is when we began our first studio project for the new semester of studio. Stoel assigned us a task we had not yet explored... well some hadn’t including myself. Wood would be the obstacle many of us would have to overcome. It began with choosing an object that we could call a ritual and we had to make two accessories to go hand-in-hand with our ritualistic object. These two objects though had to relate to one another as well; it couldn’t be two completely different accessories, they had to compliment to some extent. So the object I went with was a pen because it’s something really everyone uses at some point. But it’s what we choose to write down or do with this pen that gives us the freedom, and I loved that idea. Now I was a little flip flop about the whole idea, because originally I had chose a particular pen and it was one I had actually found. Stoel said he kind of wanted me to get away from the pen, and think more about a pen meaning really any pen. So once I was told that I basically went back to the drawing board in certain areas. I was eager to get into the wood shop for sure, but I was definitely nervous as well. But finally once I did, I really enjoyed it down there. Both of my accessories I chose to create were both wooden objects. One was sort of a stationary object and couldn’t really function without the other accessory which was a hollowed out wooden dowel. And you placed these four separate wooden dowels into one of the four holes I cut out within the 8 stacks of 3/4” plywood. Now towards the end of the project I got some feedback to possibly create hierarchy within the dowels by staggering them according to specific line weights. And so that’s what I did... for example the .01 Micron would sit the lowest in the stacks of wood and my .08 would rise to the very top and the others would fall somewhere in between that. I’m not sure that I ended up liking this project the way I wanted to, it was a great chance for me to experiment with a completely new material and to really make something awesome. But what I ended up making was a little mediocre to me and fell short of my expectations. I am proud of myself though and think I did a swell job at nearly every problem that stood in my way. There is certain things about the project I wish I could have embraced a little more and ran with different ideas in different areas. I’d say total I put roughly 15-18 hours into this first project, including sketching out ideas in the beginning to buying the wood, and then working with the wood, assembling the accessory I created and then writing all these fun papers about my work... One thing I saw people doing and considered was staining my project(s). A lot of people were using stains and some I really liked with it... and some I didn’t. I’m not sure if that would have taken mine to the next level or not; one deciding factor was where I sanded down the individual pieces of wood, they were burnt nearly all the way around and I liked that and decided to stick with that and use that throughout. So in the end of this long, much delayed project I am content with my final outcome and happy with the work I managed to accomplish and I think I dedicated the time and thought that this first assignment deserved. But needless to say... I think I’m ready to move on.

next we've got all my sketches I did which was quite a bit.