CONCEPT

My concept and theme for Bridge 4/Project 4 in Seminar and Studio is Japanese ceramic art. More specifically the impact of the Mingei movement on the aesthetic and purpose of Japanese tea ceremonies. As for my studio project’s final, I intend to create an interactive and contemporary booklet, which was inspired by traditional flip books.

Before settling on the final design, I’ve created a mind map of inspirations and concepts for my final piece. The mind map was helpful in terms of creating a cohesive concept along with my seminar essay, and helps me visualize my idea

PROCESS

In order to make the process clear and easier to understand, I will be breaking it into three major parts; making ceramic cups, designing the booklet, and producing the booklet.

Ceramic cups in making…

To start this project, I have to make and study the making of (hand-building) ceramic cups. I had to choose the most appropriate clay for hand-building cups, I’ve chosen 630 multi-use white clay (White Stoneware Clay: Ideal for all techniques such as wheel throwing and hand building. Cone 6 Shrinkage 13.0% Absorption 1.5%) as its the most appropriate clay for hand-building. the image below is a brief process of two methods I chose to hand-build my cups with.

Finally, I chose to use the slab building method because I prefer the finish and form better than the coil method.

DESIGNING THE BOOKLET

For the medium of this project, I intended to redesign traditional flip book. I got my inspiration our guest speaker, Yucheng and Kat Bawden. Initially, I was fascinated by interactive books that requires care, time, and creativity. Therefore I chose the size of my main page, and use Adobe Illustrator to render the pattern of my book. We also went to the image archive in the NYC public Library to gather some information for the cups.

I’ve made three different versions of the booklet, each of them are different in folding techniques and folding directions. After I’ve made my decision on which booklet style I wanted, I labeled the pages with two different colors. The black color represents the order of the pages when viewed from the front page (?), and blue indicates the page order based on the unfolding order.

After taking photos of the cups, I used Procreate to move and re-arrange the cups into the way I wanted it to.

PRODUCING THE BOOKLET

I used the plotter printer to print the booklet, I used a bone fold to create the crease for a cleaner fold.

FINAL PRODUCT

REFLECTION

As a reflection: if you had all the time, budget and support in the world, how could you see this project developing further?
– I would either mass produce this using traditional washi paper for that organic texture and sell it, or I would print this HUGE and make it an interactive art work.

Ideally where would you like it be installed, viewed, or shown (in a gallery, museum, public, bookstore, online, etc)?
-I would install this piece in public or museum. Ideally a zen garden with tatami to really submerge yourself into the tea ceremony environment.

What was the biggest “ah-ha” moment for you in your process? Perhaps this came to you through thinking or how your idea developed, or through your making process.

• When I started working on ceramics. It pulled out the “eager to learn more” side of me and it made me more interested in this topic. Also, when I started folding and assembling the booklet, things started to fall in place and that was comforting.