Brum Brum =[

Oh deary me indeed! My poor wee car Shobby! I have ran the brakes right through the brake pads AND the back brakes fluid was leaking! Oh yeah and the handbrake was buggered aswell, bad times indeed. Pretty glad mum and dad were down this weekend to pay for it =D

Cut that Soapstone

The sculpture department was kind enough to let Jen and I try our hand sculpting some soapstone. As you can see I'm getting into the swing of things, I'm cutting a wee slither off for the outer part of my ring. Which i then cracked and broke . . . opps! It can be fixed though thankfully!

Plans Plans Plans

Here are a couple of pages from my sketchbook for our current project.

My design is a four fingered ring (not too sure if this is legal) with a little box set on top of it and then a sectioned part off with sapphire stones set into the lid, with a little bit of grass growing from the other side of the ring. THEN have some sort of stone (soapstone is looking promising) around the box. I have been playing with the idea lately, changing the grass with other growing plants, like cress?!

For the structure of the ring (knuckleduster) its going to be more practical if I make it hollow. 'The Ring Book' contains a good method of making hollow rings that I was looking at.

Ring-a-Ling

So our current project is about religious and spiritual connections that are linked to gemstones. Here are two of my samples so far. The one to the left is a CZ in a tube setting on a silver band, and the one on the right is a square moonstone in a square box setting on a silver band as well. Not bad for my first rings huh? Sorry about the poor effort of photography on my behalf!

Question Time

Our fourth assignment asked us to interact with ordinary people in the form of interviews. We were to choose a topic from about a dozen differing topics then conduct a survey. Jonathan Baldwin (our lecturer) gave us a lot of little rules that we had to obey to so we had to take that into consideration when we were conducting our surveys. Then discuss our findings in a group to see what we had concluded. So the question I chose to investigate into was ‘How do people accumulate “stuff”?’

Obviously when I was conducting these surveys I couldn’t just ask the question straight, I had to work around the question as people wouldn’t be able to give a very constructive answer. I came up with 6 different questions that I thought worked around the topic well. They were:

(1) How would you describe your living space?

(2) What sort of objects do you keep out in your room?

(3) Have you inherited anything?

(4) What objects do you have that hold fond memories?

(5) Do you hold on to these objects purely for the memories?

(6) Have you ever/do you collect items?

I found when I was conducting these questionnaires I was using these questions semi-structurally and then working around and adding to them.

The first interviewee was a female medicine student, 23 who lived with her parents. I gathered that she was quite a sentimental person as she kept pretty much everything and said she found it hard to through away things. Her home has cabinets in the living room that were purely for display and not functional use. A shelf in the kitchen had a small collection of china animals that had been collected by her mother. But she was unsure where and when they had been collected from. . Displayed in her bedroom are collaborations of photos given to her a birthday present by her closest friend. She kept a memory box underneath her bed, which contained letters/valentines cards/birthday cards. The objects from her room that she shared information with me about had memories and stories attached on to them. A model car that was given to her by her boyfriend as she had wanted a beetle but couldn’t drive yet, a leprechaun from a trip to Ireland that had been placed in the car to look as though it was driving, ornaments from when she was younger reminding her of her childhood, stuffed toys that she had obtained from growing up. She didn’t seem to place importance in money status objects but in the thought of them instead. She tended to collect memories in objects and not making memories for them

The second interviewee was an art student living in a student flat, 19. She didn’t seem as sentimental as my first subject. Her bedroom walls had a large collection of posters taken from magazines that reflected upon her personality, ones that her other art student friends had made her and ones she had purchased. A large amount of make up/perfume and lotions were placed on her dressing table that had either been bought for her by her mother and friends or she had bought herself Flowers that had been given to her by her boyfriend. She inherited a box full of jewellery from her grandfather but had said she would “never wear any of it but doesn’t want to through it away or sell it as it was her grandfathers”. She had a large collection of TY Beanie Babies that had mostly been given to her as birthday presents/Christmas presents when she was younger. Her room seemed to be quite minimalistic and just have the basics, which was interesting.

And thirdly I interviewed a female primary education student living in a student flat, 20. Her room is clutter free, everything was in neat piles or hidden in drawers. A set of three cats sits on her window ledge that was a present from her mother. A huge display of photos of friends and family are tacked up on her wall, which had obviously been collected over the years. She had a small collection of models that she explained had taken from home for comfort reasons. Used to collect key rings when she was younger that she had in a box at home from when she was on holiday at 13.

I found that after conducting this interview with these three females living in different housing arrangements and then discussing my findings with a group from the same course as me that people are more likely to keep objects that either have sentimental value to them or remind them of home if they are living away from home at a younger age. . There is a noticeable difference in a student living at home compared to a student in rented accommodation as at home there is memories from there whole lives but I found that when a student moves into a flat of there own they tend to just bring memories from the past 2-4 years with them. They don’t tend to keep things if it brings back bad memories, obviously, but like to surround themselves with mainly funny memories to them. The larger majority of objects in bedrooms have been bought for them, decorations; very little the subjects had actually bought for themselves. Photographs were in all rooms in differing quantities reflecting on the personality

Looking Back

So in our seminar at the start of the week we started discussing about if we were to redo our last assignment what would we do differently. I decided to go to costas as you can see on my last post, but I think I defiantly could have gone somewhere more interesting looking back on the assignment. One of the girls in our seminar group went to the gym for her observation challenge, I am currently trying to track her blog down so that I can read it! She explained that it was very interesting to see just how self conscience everybody is and that there are a few very distinct groups that normally attend the gym that she has a membership at, the old men who sweat buckets and just don't care, the girls who come in and don't put much effort into their workout and don't sweat at all, and then the regulars that glare at you when a new comer come in. I have only ever been to the gym once I have to admit, but I can imagine what it would be like as my mum used to go to the gym quite regularly.

I think if I could go back I would go to the same sort of environment as the gym, it would be very interesting to see people at their most vulnerable states.

Creeping in Costas

When I read the brief for this assignment I was pretty excited as there has been many times when myself and either my friend or my mum sit in a café or are out for lunch and have a good gaze at people in the place or out the window so this assignment fitted right into my comfort zone!

So like most of us, I went to a coffee shop but instead of choosing Starbucks I went for its competitor Costas inside Waterstones. So I didn’t think it wasn’t going to be too busy as its just out of the way of the main shopping area so I would be able to focus more on individuals, little did I know it was actually almost full!

The first thing I noticed when I walked in was that Costas itself was above the book shop floor and our of the way but designed in open plan so it still felt very much part of the shop and continued the relaxed atmosphere all around. As soon as we got to the counter (as you buy your coffee etc before you sit down, incase you haven’t been before) there was an absolutely adorable baby girl who I think looked about 9 months old, when I looked around at the other customers, including my friends whom I had come with, I noticed that almost everybody was lifted by the presence of this little girl, smiling at her and I could tell secretly trying to get her attention, I thought that this was quite a common behaviour and I’m not sure why but having a baby or younger child in the room always attracts friendly gestures towards the family of the infant. For example you wouldn’t go up to a family with teenaged children and compliment the looks of them that would come across as a bit strange I would think. But when it is a baby it seems alright to go up and talk to the parents as a older woman quite happily did in the queue when she was waiting for the woman to make her latte with a piece of millionaire shortbread. (Yes I listened into her order aswell)

When we sat down my friends made sure that we had a good table that I was able to creep from while they chatted. The atmosphere had changed compared to the area where you ordered and collected your teas and coffees, I felt suddenly that each table where on an island of there own and even eye contact with another table seemed to be unheard of when we entered the seating area. When I was looking around and observing I noticed that if I did catch anybodies eye that they would quickly turn away or dart their eyes in a different direction. As you can see from the poorly taken photograph the layout is pretty much a square balcony over the book store letting you look down at the books as you consume whatever you have bought (Probably a marketing design to encourage people who have just come for a coffee to purchase books) I noted down that the balcony directly ahead of where I was sitting mainly had business type persons sitting on their own often with a newspaper, and strangely enough sitting facing the same direction that would be towards the front of the shop. Also the same table areas were usually occupied by the same era of people aswell, for example the older generation tended to go for the tables situated closest to the entrance and tables that seemed to be out of the way (there is another section of the café that is not shown in this photo as it is behind the ordering desk) , the younger groups of friends tended to go for the corners of the square lay-out including myself. The furthest away corner from me had the same style of younger people sitting at the table one after the other twice, the sort of punk rock group. People that had come in with there children went for the table that were on the inner square, I thought that this was maybe to encourage them into looking down at the books and maybe spotting something of interest as the children and sports books are situated in the area below the café.

Once I had evaluated the customers I then went onto look at the waitresses that were about, although they had very little contact with customers after they had collected there tea and coffee. I only really noticed the same waitress that was going around the square balcony clearing away the empty tables mugs plates and napkins that were pretty much all left in a mess. However she only cleared the tables she didn’t wipe them down afterward but I didn’t know whether that was because she didn’t have time or as soon as she had cleared the tables somebody else would sit on them before she got a chance to go back to them which I noticed happened at least twice. I also noticed that tables were left for about 5 to 10 minutes before being attended to, which was done in one big sweep, the waitress I saw cleared about 2-3 tables in one go. Maybe this was the method many of the waitress use in coffee shops as I have noticed this being the preferred method in Starbucks as they come out with a tray/tub things and gather all the plates in a one go.

Although I didn’t get round to discussing this assignment with anybody in person I have just read a few of the blogs that I am following that already have posted there assignments and seen that they have noticed similar patterns in coffee shops and café that I have also noted, so whether this is just the unwritten rule of such environments or just habit im not too sure.