Hello all, it's been a while, hasn't it? My DA accounts are neglected and backlogged, and I'm sorry; please don't feel ignored, you're not. But there's really nothing I can do about this right now since I'm in the architecture school. And you may not know it, it may not seem it, but architecture classes, particularly the studio work, takes up pretty much all your time. Sometimes I don't even have time to sleep.

If you want to see what I've been doing, here are the two final models from our first project that just ended last week:

Here's the basic gist of this project:
1. We were assigned classical music pieces (I was given Sonata in A Minor by Franz Schubert; really quite lovely, you should check it out) and told to explore our emotions the song invoked and imagine a space and story to go along with it.
2. Paint that imagined space and those feelings with Japanese ink, and make several iterations to really understand that story and visually translating abstract ideas.
3. Develop a series of bas relief models from Bristol paper based on your paintings.
4. Develop your ideas further by creating 3D study models by layering cardboard.
5. Refine the ideas you discovered in your study model and use the band saw machine (REALLY FREAKIN' TERRIFYING FOR ME TO USE THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE THEY TOLD US A WHOLE BUNCH OF HORROR STORIES OF LOST FINGERS AND HANDS AND AHHHHHHHHH!) to carve away at a 4"x6"x8" block of MDF wood board.
8. Really understand your wood model by taking a series of 8 section cuts in one direction and 8 in another and painting those with Japanese ink.
7. Take the voids in that wood model and explore it by making computer models and paper study models.
8. Cast your final idea you found in your computer/paper studies by making a formwork out of basswood and casting with Rockite.
9. Oh, and also make a slide-show of individual photos of all your work to be played in a cool sequence with your assigned song to really tie everything all together.

I've only posted my final 2 models (steps 5 and 7) and I don't know if I'll post my work leading up to those. I guess it would put it more in perspective...maybe later.
There's really a lot more to that project that I've summarized, but that's all the technical stuff. And to give you an idea of the time it takes and put it into perspective, it took 8 hours to make that basswood formwork. Really tedious stuff since most of it was waiting for glue to dry and sanding it when it did, because we are on a tight time schedule and to fuck up your cast model with a bad formwork would mean you have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN...which would take more time and..yeah...better to just get it all perfect the first time around.

Anyway, I'm happy with what I created. And also, they really loved it at the mid and final reviews (which is quite good since they're very harsh and deal out a lot of tough-love to get you to learn at my school)!
This probably did not mean anything to you guys and I doubt anyone was very curious about what I've been up to, but if you were wondering, that's about it. That added with the rest of my time-consuming architecture classes leaves little energy and life. BUT I am taking one non-arch. course: ROCKET SCIENCE!!! It sounds all mighty and impressive, but it's really just a 3-credit course about rocket history and other space and fun stuff, like asteroids and teleportation devices!

Anyway, we started our second project on Tuesday and I'm not entirely sure what we're doing yet (it's always really abstract and intangible at first) but I'm really excited! We're working in groups of 3 this time, and I'd love to tell you guys more but I feel like I'm starting to ramble........ So you can leave comments if you're really interested, which I'll try to answer, but (as what this journal was trying to tell you) I'M REALLY DAMN BUSY AND IT COULD TAKE SOME TIME!