The end- almost

I had to pack up two years worth of stuff in my studio space today because our program is painting/remodeling the space. I didn’t want to have to do this until the actual end of my stay here, but I guess I should really start adjusting to the fact that even though I will be in Doha for roughly six more months I’m really just in a place of transition.. wrapping up the space helped me identify some of the more meaningful things I have collected during my stay. I was even pleasantly surprised when the flowers I pressed more than a year ago fell out of one of the textbooks I was packing into a box.. I pressed them because they are the same blossoms I grew up with in Kuwait.

I know most people don’t need tangible manifestations of their experiences with people and places to retain a sense of them, but I do.. and its incredibly important to me to hold onto these things as witnesses of my life narrative, or something like that 😉

peace, love, and cupcakes,

LM

Design Crossing

 

Clearly I haven’t kept up with my 60 days sketch project; I got really sucked into reading on my topic.. Oh well..

Our semester started yesterday, and I can tell that with all the work ahead its going to fly by (thankfully). We started our first design project today (during orientation!), which is a group proposal for the Tasmeem design conference. Working in groups is extremely difficult, but it seemed so much easier with the guidance of our new associate director. We brainstormed for a while, put all our ideas on a board and then as a group we clustered those ideas into meaningful proposals. I was the only one to break out and put my own cluster together, and it was accepted. So tomorrow we are taking our four new directions and “exploding them” as Paolo likes to say. I’m supper excited because that means I have a one in four chance of having my idea being chosen by the group as our proposal.. But even if it doesnt get chosen I’ll be just as happy to exhibit work in the conference within the scope of the other proposals since they are all looking really interesting at the moment.

M&M + Design Studio Two

As part of the second half of my Design Studio Two future design prototype project I redesigned a familiar childhood toy. I don’t want to say anything else about it because I should have filmed people interacting with it before spring break, but I ran out of time.. and I don’t want to give away the main idea before I’ve asked people to play with it. Luckily Tom Modeen saved the day by letting my take stills of him interacting with it so I could have something to use in my presentation to the class. I think Paolo wants to kill me because I keep producing some pretty neat ideas, but then by the time I’m done working them out and putting them together my presentations suck.. I have one last chance to redeem myself in his class.. This time all the other classes will be put on hold for his class because I am super excited to get this idea worked out so I can finally see what people think about it.

For the Materials and Methods class we had to use paper pulp and an LED light to create anything we wanted. I actually got really stuck on this project, I found the paper to be extremely uninspiring for some reason. Their critique was that I was the only student who didn’t show off the qualities of paper and how it can interact with light.. I totally agree.. at least they said it had great balance as a piece.. I’m thinking of taking Ban’s sculpture class if he is offering it next year..

Ego by Takashi Murakami

My sister is out of school for a week so I decided to take her to the Murakami exhibit at AlRiwaq art space, in front of the Museum of Islamic Art. I didnt think anything would be able to top Cai Guo-Qaing‘s fireworks show for at least a while, but I was wrong; this exhibit was fantastic. In one room there was this huge circus tent, with flower cushions on the floor and we sat on them and watched anime for half an hour.. I felt like I was in a completely different universe.. All I could think about during the whole experience was Bruce Sterling’s talk about “suspending disbelief”.. today was the first time I suspended my disbelief.. it was an amazing feeling.

On the way out the lady at the front desk handed my sister and I this build it yourself paper doll.. we enjoyed putting it together ourself 🙂

M&M: The Birds Nest

In our materials and methods (M&M) class we started the semester learning about natural materials. For our lab portion of the class, we were given two weeks to learn our way around the woodshop and build a container. I decided to build a birds nest. I used pine, I cut it into strips, sanded it, stained it with charcoal, and finally waxed it. For a person who cried twice while working in the woodshop, I think I did just fine.

During critique we discussed changing up the attachment method.. by either using a ton more string, or none at all. When I get a free minute I’ll see what I can do.