No Models sketches and early editions
(From Summer 2015): As an industrial/ceramic designer I’m interested in the relationship between contemporary digital designing and fabrication methods, and handcrafting processes. The sub-generation I belong to exists on the cross-roads between analog and digital practices in design, being trained at RISD with paper sketching and cardboard modeling, and then entering into the professional world of CAD and rapid prototyping.
No Models is an ongoing project which explores a unique method of casting ceramics into cardboard molds. The cardboard molds (or models really) are planned on "Google Sketchup", a free CAD program whose limited set of tools create simple volumes which are very honest to the technology they are created with. Colored engobes are printed onto the cardboard, and the 3d shapes are transferred to cardboard using laser cutting. The slip is cast into the mold, and being an expert at imitating other materials, copies the textures and details of the folded cardboard perfectly. A very particular esthetic emerges, on the one hand rough and imperfect, and on the other delicate and precise. Patterns on the surface of the objects are created by laser etching and silk screening on the cardboard, before it is folded into a mold. The shapes, textures and surface patterns are a direct result of this unique combination of methods I have been exploring over the last year, and that we are continuing to develop still. More and more I am able to accurately express the methods of designing and fabricating the object - in the object itself.
