Final Chair Pics

First Chair Pics

Seating in Context Project Summary

I must say that after finishing this project, I may never want to see cardboard ever again. However, despite my hate for cardboard, I was pleased with my outcome of this project. It was definitely challenging to figure out how to support your own weight and not use tape or anything of the sort. At first the idea of accomplishing a supportable chair was really overwhelming and stressful. If we were to do this project again, I would have gotten started sooner. I should have started playing with cardboard right after it was assigned. I figured out what I wanted to do through my hands-on experimentation. I sat around and thought about ideas for too long and that really held me back and put me behind. Once I figured out how the cardboard could support me, I then could figure out a plan for execution and then everything seemed to fall into place. The project became a lot less stressful and a lot more enjoyable. I learned a lot about cardboard, that is for sure. How it folds, cuts, tears, bends, rips, and ultimately, paper-cuts. Even through the battle wounds, I enjoyed this project and I am very pleased with my "anchored" chair.

Kendall Buster's Reflection

To start off, right after opening the page to see Kendall Buster's work, I was immediately impressed. Her work is so eye-catching and weightless. A common theme within her work are these large forms that appear to be swollen. They look almost blown up or morphed- like they are not supposed to look the way they do, but in a good way. Another thing that she seems to enjoy is to hang them the forms on aircraft vessels. This reminds me much of the paper-lantern phase that many of my friends went through. Now I have grown out of it and kind of dislike them, Buster's work is an incredible and refreshing twist and I love it. I picture the smells to be like paper and dusty. I picture it feeling like tissue paper, however, I am sure that is probably not the case. The feeling is rather striking and breathtaking when viewing her art because it is big and beautiful. She does a beautiful job. The materials she uses is very interesting. It looks like tissue paper from far away and in other situations it look like glass or some other material. Overall, I really enjoyed her work.

Martin Puryear Reflection

After visiting Martin Puryear's website, I had very mixed ideas of his work. They seemed to be pretty abstract. Some of the titles of his pieces were self-explanatory but others had names like, "believer" or "desire." I feel his work communicates the natural world. Most of his work are natural elements. I think the majority of his art are various pieces made from wood. I feel like I would not be able to understand a lot of these works without being able to hear from the artist himself. Being able to hear the artist's take on their own work makes a world of a difference when viewing it. I feel that is the best way to understand. My reaction without knowing much about the background would be that they are earthy and symbolic. Some I can tell what they are symbolic for or what they are representing by their shape and title, others, not so much. One particular piece that I enjoyed was the ladder piece titled, "Ladder for Booker T. Washington." Without knowing much about this work, I was still very visually attracted to the piece. I loved the curves of the ladder and how dramatic the angle was of the picture taken. The ladder seemed to go on forever, and it gave a somewhat eerie feeling. Although it is a little eerie, I still think it is pleasant. As for the smell and textures of his work, I imagine the smells to be earthy as well- as if you were walking through a forest. I picture the textures to be completely different. I picture them smooth too touch as if they were very nicely made.

Second Chair Project Description

For the second half of the "Seating in Context" project, we were instructed to look up the means of the word, "duality." After reading about duality and getting a better understanding of the word, we then wrote a one-page paper over our duality relationship with another person in our life, not knowing we would later be making our chair about this person. For my duality essay, I wrote about my friend who just left for the US Navy. He is tall, strong, and protective. One quality that brings him and I together, which I did not mention in my essay but I incorporated in my chair, was the symbol of the anchor. I am in Delta Gamma sorority and with him being in the Navy, we both share the anchor. When we started hanging out, we both seemed to have this symbol on everything. 
Like the first chair, we could not use any type of adhesive to hold the chair together. We had to maintain the idea of using folds and slots and other various methods. Instead of having to unfold into a 4x4' sheet, however, we could use all the cardboard we wanted and could cut away parts as desired. This gave me a lot more ideas and opened up more room for experimentation. Starting with paper models and orthogonal sketches, I finally started playing with cardboard to make different connections for my final chair. After much critique, I came up with my final 5'4" chair.

First Seat Project Description

For the first half of the "Seating in Context" project, we were instructed to create a chair out of cardboard, alone. We could use only one 4x4' sheet of cardboard and it had to be able to hold our own weight. Being able to hold our own weight was an idea that was already challenging enough on it's own. On top of that, we could not use glue, tape, or any adhesive. We also could not cut away parts of the cardboard, for it also had to be able to unfold into it's original 4x4' sheet. This was extremely frustrating at first, but after playing with cardboard and simply testing how it bent, folded, tore, cut, supported, etc., I was able to come up with some cool ideas. At first I thought that having to be able to unfold it into it's original shape was a big deal, but then I realized since the original sheet of cardboard is already small as it is, it was probably to our advantage that we use the whole sheet. My first chair ended up looking like a geometric stool. I really liked it and how weird and different it was. Unfortunately, I did not know until after I had started that we could not use tape on the first chair so I ended up using some tape to keep it together. I cheated slightly, but to be fair, I did not have the intention of cheating. Although the first chair was challenging and had a little bit of a time crunch, it was good experimentation experience for my final chair.