handsome boy modelling school

last wednesday was a night full of arty type openings. i fully intended to pop into the RMIT architecture open studio, then head over to Pieces Of Eight in north fitzroy to check out the My Pet Rock show.
ambitious plan, to say the least. sorry to melanie and the gang for not making it - i'm sure it went off.

the open architecture studio, however, was amazing. blew my mind open, actually, because a whole bunch of stuff got me thinking. thinking about the hand/eye/brain aspect of model-making. thinking about design for the other 90%. thinking again about airports. thinking about what makes up a city. i have to post about all of them actually, but today maybe just a thing or two about modelling.

i always wanted to be a super model.

no, i jest, i'm talking about model making for design - architecture, interior design and landscape design. obviously it's about getting the form right. about transference from brain to hand to eye and back again. a pathway that only really works when you get out the balsa, or the veneer, or whatever you're using. and i think that pathway is matched only when one sketches. that physical manifestation of thinking. perhaps this is what they mean by craft.

there were so many amazing models in the place, it's kind of hard to know where to start, but one of the projects i was really interested in was one in which students made architectural designs using atypical modelling material: pencils, foil, plexiglass and ear buds [q-tips for you kids in NYC]. actually, the q-tip one got me thinking about the possibilities for taking architecture into areas/applications with no architectural design experience and being able pass on tools for 'shaping' easily (and with a little help from j&j).

they reminded me of the images of model-making with indigenous communities i saw at process a few months ago with martyn hook and peter.. peter, hmm, someone. anyway - they were using straws and blu-tak and cardboard to design appropriate housing for cape york and torres strait families.

anyway, it also reminded me that craft, model, make, design, develop, space and shape are all verbs, and that the process of making forms which reflect a space is equally as (if not more so, in some areas) important than the beautiful forms you see in other areas of the studio. don't get me wrong, some of the elaborate models were amazing, and i love a slick model, but this project in particular reiterated the joy and purpose, the process of creative discipline and spacial design.

sex and cash theory

pinched from hugh's site gapingvoid.com

i'm yet to read all of hugh 'gapingvoid' mcleod's How To Be Creative, but i discovered a great snippet of it on his blog yesterday, which referred to the sex and cash theory:

"The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended."

interesting.

well fancy that!

I’m the black sheep in my family: I swear too much, wear too much black, have a black sense of humour, cover my body in black ink and have a severly reduced sense of grace and tact. Plus I chose a career that is so far from being financially viable, it’s laughable. Thankfully, I somehow get to justify it all under the umbrella of being ‘creative’.

But I’ve often wondered where I get this 'creativity' business from: is it nature or nurture and if it’s a bit of both, where the fuck in my family did I get it from?

On the nurture side, my parents always encouraged my ‘art stuff’. Mum kept childhood drawings, allowed me to have a homework desk covered in tracing paper so that I could draw/paint all over it and morally supported my slightly wacky choices to throw in stable jobs for the sake of my art practice.

And as far as my short black genes go, I always though my right-brain thinking was from my fathers’ side - from my uncle Graeme, who used to draw beautifully, although he never pursued it as anything more than an enjoyable pastime. And even then, it didn't really seem to fit all that well.

That is until I moved back home and realise that i got most of this stuff from my own mother!! Soux chef by day… interior designer by night!!

These are pics of her sketch book that she keeps filling up, planning, designing and working away at evolving her home into an aesthetic living space.

She’s not so great on the perspective business, but just look at these plans! Look at that process – she’s even stuck paint samples in!









3 houses now, from dowdy to downright shambolic, have been transformed and resurrected into these amazing social spaces – all by a woman who learns all her stuff from Monument, Artichoke and Wallpaper* magazines.

How cool is that!