#studio400

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PILLOW TALK  Studio 400 // Winter 2014 Advisor: Prof. Karen Lange  Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 

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Tonight I was fortunate enough to have a glimpse into my future life and where I am working to get to in 3 years. (B.Arch is a five year program, so no, I won't have graduated from Cal Poly yet.) 

It's under multiple arrays of light, some installed as part of the building, some handcrafted and welded as recently as this past November. It's ordered chaos, small cities of materials and laptops and half-finished models snaking around crooked rows of tables. It smells like laser-cut materials, coffee, and the night breeze. 

If you're an architecture student, or if you've ever spent days and months working on one project, or even if you've just sanded a piece of wood, you will understand. Multiple pieces of 60 sandpaper on a block of MDF for my mentor's final model; the sandpaper grates at the MDF, the friction grates on my fingertips. It's mindless and I love it. 

I love it; sitting in this room where I might end up in exactly three years, grains of MDF flying all around me, landing on the table, in my hair, in my eyes, nose, and lungs. I know this to be true - you don't understand something until you have built it with your very own two hands - drawn it out, cut it, glued it, sanded it, bled on it, cried over it, yelled at it, slept next to it. But in the process of making something it becomes a part of you. And to be able to dream up something and know that you are able to make it and outline every step in your head and then to go about those steps with purpose and intention and the pursuit of good craft - it makes me happy. Running my hands along the smooth curve I have expended my energy into making over the last few hours, knowing that blisters may soon come to haunt these fingers - it is a beautiful thing. 

If my body never needed to sleep I would never stop making things. 

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Jan 22&23rd, 2013 | #ZIPstudio400 

This year's studio400 installation at the Berg Gallery. 250,000 zip ties, 19 pairs of hands, and 5 days. Studio400 is a fifth year thesis studio taught by Prof Karen Lange that designs an installation every year (you might remember last year's White Installation featured here or here) in order to showcase their books containing each individual's thesis proposal and research. 

Each zip tie was hand cut, zipped, and attached to form chains which were then suspended or draped from the ceiling and walls.

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My Studio 400 headshot... Thanks Brandon Sampson :]