Working with a Mentor

As a young and emerging artist I feel it is pretty important to establish a mentor relationship with someone who can support you through the duration of an art project. For the next six months I will be mentored by Wilma Van Boxtel, who operates her own industrial design business Desos Designs.

 Basically Wilma is my sounding board for ideas and she acts as my sustainability consciousness. Wilma has a strong ability to pear the wild art and design ideas back to the original design brief ensuring that the products fulfill the criteria of good eco design principles.

 Choosing the right mentor is really important. I have attempted this mentoring on many occasions, without a great deal of success. Finding someone that is genuinely keen to help out is always a bonus. Someone that you feel comfortable calling up for advice is a step in the right direction.

 Wilma and I work in different ways, Wilma is very much into working in 3D modeling programs from the conceptual stage right through to the final design. Whereas I loathe working in this manner, I like to work in hands on manner, working the material itself. Despite our differences in design practice, I feel its is important to expose myself to as many different design professionals to work out a suitable practice for myself which suits my skills, interest and abilities.

Wilma has a good knowledge of marketing I think this will be of great assistants for this specific design project. One of the personal aims I have for this project is to start to get some exposure to my work. For too long now my pieces have been lovely objects, which adorn my household, it is time for me to break out and show people my talents. As well as this there is always a sense of mystery to a designers work, and a general lack of understanding of what a day in the life of designer comprises of. Hopefully with a bit of assistants from Wilma I will be able to break into the Western Australian Design scene. Having a mentor is one step in the right direction, associating yourself and seeking out professional advice which can set your work and practice on its way. 

Green Drinks

Green Drinks

UWA University Club

Date: Tuesday 8 September
Time: 6pm - 8pm
Venue: Case Study Room and Club Cafe
Price: Free Event!

At this event I will be screening a short film called 'Coral Currency takes a Dive, Samoan Tourism in a warming world.' During my volunteer assignment in Samoa a group of volunteers including myself, embarked on a developing a small short film that explored the impact of Climate Change on Samoa's tourism. The film was screened at the Pacific Climate Change Film Festival in Fiji and at The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań. I thought I would take this opportunity at Green Drinks to share the film with a Western Australian audience, to enable them to gain a small insight into the impacts of Climate Change on our Pacific Island neighbors.

The Film Blurb-

 Pristine beaches, swaying coconut palms, turquoise waters: the images of Samoa that are conjured in the minds of people the world over. Samoa relies on it's natural beauty to attract visitors from overseas, and these visitors are vital to the country's economy. But climate change has the potential to greatly impact on the natural environment, the very thing that is so important to attracting tourists to the region. This documentary examine these potential impacts, and the effects they may have on the livelihoods of the Samoan people.

Come along to Green Drinks to view the film and have a small open forum discussion on the topic.

Please RSVP the UWA University club on +61 8 6488 8770. 

Trash catchers Robot

Over the past couple of months while I was waiting for the announcements of grants and arranging my studio space I started working on the Trash catchers project. Trashcatchers is a community arts short film project which is being run by the YMCA in Leederville. The film is going to communicate the messages of recycling, reducing and reusing in a 5 minute short film. Over the past 15 weeks a group of about 10 young people have been tinkering way at writing scripts, performing and designing costumes. My main role in the project was working out of REMIDA with Jen and Poppy to produce a Robot costume. The E-waste Robot, emerges out of the bin, and breaks out some funky dances moves in an attempt to encourage us to dispose of our e-waste responsibly.

 The E-Waste robot encourages us to recycle our e-waste responsibly, by taking your old electronics to a certified dumping zones. This ensures that all the heavy metals contained in the electronics don't end up in landfill, instead they can be dismantled and sorted into there different metals and plastics.

Thanks to Poppy Van Ord for her lovely pics of the E-Waste Robot

Material Reuse

For the past couple of weeks I have been tinkering around in my workshop space with lots of PET plastic straps that wrap around packs of bricks. I have developed an eagle eye for worksites and skip bins. There have been plenty of occasions lately when I am cruising the streets of Perth on my bike and I spot a special piece of material on a roadside chuck out, so I rig up a novel little contraption that enables to cart the material and make my way home. Findi

ng these roadside treasures fills me with a lot of inspiration, the endless possibilities of creative uses makes my

 mind tick..

 

I have also been visiting REMIDA a facility, which collects clean, light industrial waste for use in creative projects. REMIDA is based in West Perth, a little too close to my home. I feel like I am in material heaven at REMIDA. I am regularly scooting back to collect more treasures. I have had to gather some restraint, to prevent my studio space from overflowing from material. Slowly my studio space grows and grows with stacks of re-usable materials.

Siapo Making in Samoa

Today I visited Makulata a local Samoan Siapo maker. Makulata lives in a remote village named Siutu in Savaii. Through the help of Samoan socialite Steve Brown, I was able to track down a lesson on Siapo making. Siapo is a natural fabric or paper fiber made from mulberry bark. At the conclusion of a skillful two-hour session session of scrapping and beating the mulberry bark a surprisingly long length of fabric appeared approximately 1.5 meters by 5 meters.

Today Siapo is just used for decorative purposes, or as tourist souvenirs that travelers purchase. However, back before the missionaries arrived in Samoa, Samoans would dress in Siapo, completely natural and biodegradable clothing.

 

Once again another inspiring sustainable design experience. You really have to praise the work of cultural preservationists and historians who assist in documenting and preserving these traditional practices. It is traditional practices like Siapo making that I am attempting to learn from.

Seeking Samoan Inspiration

I don’t need to read glossy design magazines for my inspiration. Instead I would prefer to go more primitive and get amongst traditional cultures for inspiration to my design work. For the past three days I have been cycling Savaii, an island in Samoa. Savaii is 300km round trip covered in lush tropical landscape

, with pristine oceans surrounding it’s shores. I am back immersing myself in Samoa for a short holiday, ten months on from undertaking a long term volunteer placement here.

 

On this relatively small and isolated island you still see a lot of traditional Samoan culture practiced today. People source there food by practicing self substance farming, running small scale farms to provided the family home with fresh food. A lot of S

amoans live in fales, open grass hu

ts made from various hardwoods and coconut palms. Traditionally you eat from woven coconut leaf plates. Fruit and Vegetables are transported and are sold in hand woven coconut baskets.

These guys are living, breathing examples of Eco design and sustainable living. The Despite being colonised by Germany over one hundred years ago the Samoan lifestyle has not progressed or should I say regressed to full blown western consumerist culture, traditional life lives on. Samoans humbly plod away at their sustainable lifestyles without the hype at which we acclaim for adopting sustainable practices in our western lives.

 

So basically living in Samoa as a volunteer over the past year has had an enormous impact on how I practice as a designer. I spent a few months questioning the need for more designs and products in our world after returning home, when in Samoa things haven’t really progressed, the genius designs have been born from tradition and the primitiveness of the culture. But when you are born with a making gene it is just inherent and you can’t stop making things, it is the process and materials that I employ that I am attempting to alter to positive sustainable design solution.

 

It is through this design project that I want to try to express the impact this year has had on me, exploring Eco Design solutions, which re-use or recycle. So far it has been weaving plastic straps from the jungle of masonry that surrounds me in my home context.