Empty promises will now be fulfilled in a gush of blog posts to catch up on past busy months!
We have been a collective hive of activity, exhibition planning, fundraising doings, online exhibition masterclasses plus personal research, playing, exploring and making.
 |
 |
 |
Building on my interest in bamboo as a material, in June I signed up for a four week online model-making with bamboo course. The course is associated with an innovative architectural company called IBUKU working with Bamboo and based in Bali, so is focussed on building scale architectural models. I visited their Green School project in Bali back in the days of travel and was blown away by the beauty, grace and functionality of the soaring structures. The four modules were comprised of instructional videos, interactive zoom calls and personal feedback to projects, plus videos from experts including artists and designers alongside architects and craftspeople working with bamboo in innovative ways, it made for an inspiring and challenging month.
The Kubu design by BambooU, my first construction model build
My focus was to pick up technical tips and learn more about the properties of different kinds of bamboo, plus harvesting and sustainability. We often think of bamboo as invasive but its fast growth, strength and versatility make it a sustainable and smart choice when suitable varieties are grown and managed well. The course offered a generous breadth of knowledge including how to split bamboo to make curves, structural insights, designing and making scale models, curing and encouraged ways to use the intrinsic properties of the bamboo.
My star gazing cabin design and construction model, turns out curvy roofs are a challenge.
Having worked on larger scale collaborative works before in the collaborative Talisman Project, it was interesting to revisit ideas of scale, shelter and a different relationship between a structure and how the body might interact with it.
With my past year moving house, workshop and my ancestral family home respectively, it was interesting to think about the concept of a ‘home’. I started looking into the structure of buildings, considering might a ‘backbone’ look like or relate to the information I’m collecting in my daily diagrams. What might be the ‘backbone’ of my day life, sleep…creative play, basic needs? What do I want and need to carry with me?
My intention is to use bamboo to make three dimensional data visualisations from the daily diagrams, leading into wearable works. It seems apt to start with something that might be representative of a home in these transitional times.