More Purty Pictures.

Okay, so this is an image-heavy post, because I’m doing enough writing as it is, between Art Theory essays and Honours Proposals…
Anyway, this is some more of the work in ‘Japan Series 1’ – the Gashapon/Capsule Toy work. They will be set up in these steel ‘chute’ devices coming out of the wall, evenly spaced. The chutes are yet to be painted – either black, gunmetal grey, or silver. Didn’t get them done in time to chrome them :(.

This one is a costume-themed hentai manga. Pretty much a ‘dirty bunny-girl comic’, haha. I made all these out of air drying clay, and hand painted every detail on the damned tiny things. For a size reference, each capsule is about 6-7cm in diameter, and maybe 8cm tall.

In these two there are some absolutely rad earphones with stars on them – we saw some pink versions of these on a very cute girl and a friend of mine picked some up as a souvenir – and there are also some sandwiches. Ham, cheese and lettuce with wasabi mayo on one, and an egg ‘salad’ for the other. With no crusts on.

And here is some sushi! Yay! And a slightly better view of the chute. My goodness this one was tiny.

And some more sushi! Yaaayy! These are actually a work continuing from my inflatables. Though instead of being inflated, these ones are stuffed with polyester filling. And comparatively, these are much smaller. For example, the ebi/prawn is about 20cm long, and the square one is about 15cm.. uh, square. These should turn out to be a series, less than 10 pieces, probably on plinths or something, haha.

There are some more details and afew more pictures of  all these things on my Flickr site.

-Lydia

My new work.

I talked in the last post about my new work, involving Gashapon. Well I’ve finished a couple of tiny tiny works, and I had to photograph them for the graduating catalogue, so here’s a quick looksee, and afterwards, a lot of Wikipedia articles to explain things, haha:

In the little capsules there are toilet slippers (at the Dohokan we had some of these exact slippers shown below, except they were red and blue!). There is a bucket from the Onsen, with a ‘modesty towel’. There is some Green Tea (Matcha) ice cream (picture below from Dining Bar Musashi in Sydney).

There’s a loaf of bread – which is now bizarre after looking at this post by Tokyo Times – you see, I now realise that my bread is completely the wrong shape. Memories are indeed funny, and selective – I remembered the ‘important thing’, being the number of slices (that being six), but I forgot about the shape, so I must have substituted my traditional ‘symbol for bread’ into my memory, haha (wow, I’ve been thinking too much about my theory class – ‘Memory’). Anyway, there are some navy blue Jika-tabi (two-toed workman/farmer shoes) off to the side. And lastly, you can just see the fingertips of some white gloves that all drivers – taxi, bus, shuttle bus, and train drivers – wear.

Soo, yeah. That is my current work. Next up, I believe, is a series of scenes – for example, inside a train, a road crossing, a shop, a temple, etc. – either set up in bigger versions of the capsules, like toys not put together, or set up in sushi/bento boxes, stacked on top of one another. And lastly, I think there will be an inflatable capsule, maybe with a chair inside? We’ll see eventually.

– Lydia

Japan! It happened!

I got back from my Japan trip one week ago. It’s amazing the habits you pick up in less than three weeks of being away from home. I’ve gotten used to my loo’s flush button again, as well as eating with a knife and fork. I haven’t stopped nodding my head when I thank people or excuse myself, and I have been feeling the need to take off my shoes indoors.

One good thing is that I’ve gotten ideas for my work back here. You know capsule toys, or Gashapon?

These are Gashapon machines. You stick your ~100-500 yen in, turn the knob, and out comes your capsule toy! I never saw this many in one place, but Cabel at Cabel’s Blog lol did. I wish I had!

This is what the capsules themselves look like (picture taken by mock-turtle on Flickr).
Anyway – the capsules – I loves them. I got a lot of them as presents – mostly Evangelion, Legend of Zelda, and Mario ones. Ok, a couple of Hello Kitty ones too.. So I ended up with quite a few of the actual capsules sitting around. Pretty much, I decided to make tiny things to put inside them. The objects will be things I noticed in Japan, that were either ‘different’, or just interesting. Like the loaves of bread, white gloves, parasols, and toilet slippers. I think another series will be scenes I remember – such as the trains, temples, and bathrooms.

I’m going to have to write a few entries to make up for not writing while I was away. We stayed at Kyoto Seika University’s International ‘dorm’ called the Dohokan. The computer there was almost a dinosaur – technically not from this century/millennium anyway. It couldn’t deal with wordpress, facebook, ipods or most cameras. So my photo-contingency plan of offloading them onto something else didn’t work. And my blog-post-every-few-days plan didn’t work either. Oh well. Soon enough I will have lovely photos to talk about. But here’s a video I found of rain, from a view at the Dohokan (taken by a previous student staying there – Nick, aka Kiloburn). I think my room was the one directly upstairs. I remember that view, and stairs! How nostalgic for me!

Will be backtracking, and writing more posts about the Japan trip in the near future.

– Lydia

Lollies!

So, last year I had my first Independent Work Proposal, and (without the fear of needing to make something amazing and, um, permanent) came up with this lolly art. I got an iron, a toaster, a pot, a teapot, and a beater, and replaced parts of them with repilcas made from toffee. For the iron I made the metal part, there was lolly bread for the toaster, lolly tea in the cup and teapot, and handles for the pot and beater. I used rubber, metal, and plaster molds, as well as just pouring and hand molding the lollipop mixture (that being sugar, glucose syrup, water, vinegar and food colouring). Sometimes I used hundreds and thousands or sugar to reference the material.

Anyway, a friend of mine was telling me about this rapid prototyper that uses sugar as its medium!
(Note: a rapid prototyper is like a 3D printer – it takes a 3D model from a program, and makes it out of plastic, by laying down melted plastic strings, and moving back and forth, eventually making many, many, many layers.)
So this rapid prototyper is called the CandyFab, and is created by the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratory. And it makes things out of sugar!!! Look at it go!

Instead of laying down melted sugar itself, it starts off with a layer of sugar, and a small nozzle blasts heat that melts the sugar below. Then more sugar is sprinkled in a layer, and then more layers are melted. The end product of caramelised, solid sugar, is fished out of the rest of the sugar I suppose, and there it is!
I know it’s not the same kind of effect – for them it’s a question of affordability, and also a bit of novelty – but I really love the idea of making things out of sugar. If only I could use this to make completely awesome sugar cubes!

And speaking of lollies (and Japan being only afew days away) – in Japan i want to visit this lolly/dessert shop called Toraya. It sells traditional confectionery called Wagashi, and has done for centuries! How beautiful are they? I wonder if they taste as good as they look… I guess I’ll find out soon.

-Lydia

So what am I doing now?

Currently in Sculpture I am working on a piece to do with my upcoming trip to Japan. It’s inflatable, and it’s cute. I shall explain:

At the beginning of the year I went on a trip to Melbourne with a friend to visit my brother. We went to a dress up birthday party one night (Wrestle-mania themed, but we dressed up as a pirate band – of course!). We played our instruments (a recorder, drum, and accordion), danced and got tipsy, then started contemplating the serious questions (as you do at a dress up party).
What did we really want to make at school this year?

Turns out I really wanted to make giant inflatable sushi. Yes. Inflatable Sushi.

Well, that didn’t really explain much, so here goes:
I originally saw some very very cute things like this crochet sushi (by NeedleNoodles on Etsy), and sushi pillows on the web.

And so I thought I needed my own soft sushi to cuddle. I mostly wanted to make cushions or pillows from fabric because I can’t crochet. Then I suppose I thought about it developing into art, and about scale, and materials. At first it was going to be cardboard sushi houses – to live in for a couple of days as ‘performance’. Then I thought inflatable would be much more fun. Hmm, I’ll go into some more of that thinking process in another post.

So, with the inflatable sushi, first off I had to see if my idea was viable. I tend to think of things that just aren’t practical. It was a great relief when I found this awesome site called AKAirways. It documents many inflatable projects from designs and ideas through to making, completion and display. It doesn’t expressly show you how to make ‘bubbles’ from start to finish, but there are some handy diagrams, short explanations, as well as informative process pictures and videos.

Bubble Head by AKAirways.

And I found it is true that you can make an inflatable with just some garbage bags, an iron, wax paper, and a fan. But now I have moved on to clear polyethylene scrap sheeting and a soldering iron. Soon enough I’ll get some new sheeting, and maybe even have a go with shower curtains. I will need to get some substantial things done in the next week, because I have a crit next Wednesday – eep!

I will take some process pictures between now and then, and post them to show you what on earth I’m on about.

-Lydia