At first I struggled with this project: to design and build a structure forming a parabolic curve out of wooden strips, without using any glue. I was not highly experienced in the woodshop and hadn’t done math in a long time. But when I saw examples of parabolic designs during class I saw that there were many interesting directions to go in.

I wanted to plot my design on diamond-shaped axes and two normal axes forming a 90° angle to give the design a tail-shape. But once I got into manufacturing it, i decided it would be better to cut off the tail and just have the diamond axes to work off of. It formed a stretched spiral shape, and to make it more interesting I decided to sequentially raise the wood, hoisting them up with dowels. I used 1/4”-thick balsa wood and 3/16th-width dowels which I bought at Blick. I cut the balsa wood into 1/4 * 8” inch strips and began to lay them over my drawing to measure and mark exactly where I would need to drill holes through the strips in the woodshop. Then I cut the dowels based on the how much empty space there was in each drilled area of the construction. Once I put everything together, I decided that I wanted it to look more slick and rounded to evoke the movement of a curve, so I drew on the strips where I wanted to cut them diagonally at each tip with the bansaw. I spent about 2 days working in the woodshop and unmeasured time at home and in class to complete this project, and I bought around 3$ of material.

Looking at the project back, it looks like a modern monument, an artistic staircase, or even a coiled snake or dragon. I can see flaws in my execution of this project, such as faint traces of pencil stain, and two slightly unstable dowels, but overall I’m proud of the things I learned and the skills I developed through this. Most importantly, of branching out of my comfort zone.

The excerpt of 2 A.M. at the Cats Pajamas that we read was packed full of delusional fabulousness and signs of decay. I wanted to make a wallpaper and portrait that showed Madeleine’s unique character—a sassy jazz singer in the body of a little girl who is left in the wreckage of her mother’s death.

The pink flamingos mentioned in the story immediately jumped out at me because they spoke to Madeleine’s playfulness and flamboyance. When I read that the jazz club the story is centered around was a Cuban jazz club, I began researching Cuban interior design. I saw a lot of ornate wallpaper and old chipped plaster walls that created a beautiful texture. I decided to use this for my design because the old plaster represents decay, a tinge of sadness to reflect the story’s circumstances. The old-fashioned style also mirrors Madeleine’s character, as she acts like an older woman of a different era. To get the texture of the plaster in Illustrator, I appropriated actual plaster by importing a photo of it, lowering the opacity, and placing it over my blue background. I chose blue and white because they are the colors of snow and winter, where the story takes place, and snow “flurries” are frequently mentioned in the excerpt we read. The yellow background on the wallpaper pattern is modeled after the color of a cigarette, which Madeleine huffs on in the excerpt.

For the portrait, I decided to go with a film noir style. I wanted to portray Madeleine not as a little girl but as what she aspires to be: a jazz singer. After looking through a lot of old jazz portraits, I was struck by the way harsh light and shadows make smoke look white and delicate, and distort and enhance certain features of the face. I decided to make the smoke turn into musical notes to reinforce the jazz theme. Like with my wallpaper design, I drew this on Adobe Illustrator.

Source images and inspiration:

I want my project to explore themes of nature vs. city, living vs. dead, past vs. present, and big vs. small. I want it to show an interesting perspective and evoke a nostalgia about a story unknown to the viewer. My color palette will be lilac, olive-y green, orange-y/brown, almost black. I’m interested in showing the texture of plants up close juxtaposed with the cityscape.