Ceramic Project

 

This project was to be our most intensive with a time frame of 6 weeks and was to be the equivalent of our studio project at RMIT. The course was designed for the 2nd year post graduate class and even though we lacked all of the pre requisites components and skills required by the other students, we were assured that would be given lots of help for the technical components.

The initial task was concept development and we were divided into groups under separate headings mine being ‘Humans and Environment’, and asked to prepare a presentation. We prepared a slide show that depicted evolution of the universe, planet, homo sapiens and their continual development, progress and interaction with the environment. This exercise then developed into a group brainstorming session before each student was asked to select a few words and continue their individual brainstorming.

I chose to explore the concept of ‘relationship’ and developed numerous mind maps under that heading before continuing to explore the concept by defining ‘Relationship – Cause and Effect’ and ‘Relationship to Objects’. It was at this point that I started to get a little frustrated as we were not given any more direction for development, instead the faculty member and other students seemed content to dedicate an entire week to this brainstorming task. tbc

One of my Plaster Moulds

 

 My Final Pieces in Terrocotta

  

 

Madhubani Painting

A Craftsman and his Painting

Film and Video

 

Before we left Australia I invested in a HDV video camera. I have really enjoyed making short films for subjects at RMIT and I thought this was too good an opportunity to pass up for collecting some fantastic footage. However I made one big mistake when I took the advise of a few people and downloaded the editing program Sony Vegas instead of Avid Pro which I am familiar with. I’m sure its not too hard to work out, but I am not the most patient person when it comes to these things and so far I haven’t dedicated enough effort to working it out.

Three weeks into our semester at NID we started our editing course with the 1st year post graduate group. The class was being taught by a visiting faculty member, a lovely film maker who commenced the course by showing us a couple of films that he had made. One was a particularly interesting documentary about tribal dance in the villages of Kerala. After this introduction the following few days were dedicated to viewing old black and white silent films with the focus on editing techniques. This was enjoyable up to a point however, we were disappointed to learn that the focus of the course would not be technical as we had hoped, but rather a theoretical study of forms of editing used in the history of film making. This course was also our first introduction to the ‘Indian pace’ and Fiona, the teacher and I, were often left waiting for over an hour each morning for the other students to arrive.

A week into the class we decided that it would be more interesting for us to partake in a traditional painting workshop that was being run by the textile department. We said goodbye to the film department and went to buy some paints. Unfortunately I still haven’t mastered that editing program.

Colour and Form

NID has two course streams – the 4 year undergraduate which is a more intensive course or the 2 year post graduate where students arrive after completing an often unrelated degree elsewhere. We arrived in the 2nd week of a 4 week course with the 1st year post grad textile students. The professor of the class was a very famous graphic designer who had even taught Soumitri in his day, however we had the unfortunate problem of only being able to comprehend approximately 20% of what he said due to his heavy accent and, he later told us, bad smoking habit. The other students did the rest of the interpretation and we managed.

Our initial task was to draw elements from nature that we found around the campus such as leaves, bark etc. From this exercise we were to the take aspects of the image and develop the elements of texture into different studies. The next exercise was to create a frame and develop small windows of form from the larger drawing. These exercises continued and we were encouraged to push each exploration as far as we could to achieve the final motif. We then explored the same concept in colour and developed small images of abstract form.

By the end of the two weeks we had created a small portfolio that demonstrated the steps of taking a replica image from nature and developing it into an abstract form that could be used in block printing.

Development of Form from Nature Studies

 

 

Further Abstract Development of Form in Colour

Traditional Indian Two-Ply Braiding Workshop

Weaving a bag

We started our experience at NID in the luxury of an air-conditioned room. The temperature was in the 40′s and we had been brave moving into our non A/C Hostel on the second night, so a little cool air during the day was bliss. The other participants in the workshop were all women, some of whom had travelled from different cities especially for the workshop and were simply interested in learning the technique. A couple also worked in the textile industry and were looking to expand their skills.

Two and four – ply braiding is unique to India and Pakistan and was developed to created strong weight bearing structures, most commonly used as camel belts. In Rajasthan and certain desert areas there still exist expert craftsmen in the technique but as with so many of these extremely time consuming crafts it is a dying art. Our teacher Errol was a faculty member of the Textile Department and specialised solely in this technique. I believe the story goes that he was travelling in Rajasthan when he came across a master craftsman in braiding and 20 years later he has never looked back. Errol is quite a character, the tallest Indian I have come across with long grey hair worn in a pony tail, and even longer thumb nails. His ‘tools’ for easily manipulating the thread. It is a common sight to see him around the campus hunched over a belt in progress.

We spent each day learning new weaves and creating long belts and key chains, before moving onto the more complex structures of a bag and finally a vessel. The weaving required intense concentration as if a single mistake was made it was not automatically noticeable but was always apparent a few lines later. The type of activity created an almost meditative state and we were instructed to stand up and walk around every half an hour to avoid a bad back or neck. It was quite easy to loose track of time and weave row after row.

Errol carried the philosophy that he never gave any of his work away. Given his productivity we could only speculate on where he kept it all!

A Two-Ply Braided Dress that took a year to create.

The workshop was a wonderfully gentle introduction to NID, and we produced a short film documenting the week. The Institute provided us with a certificate of participation as well as a CD of photographs. That weekend Errol invited us to accompany him on a visit to a friend’s house adjancient to a slum dwelling. These people had set up a school for the slum children teaching them all manner of things and Errol taught braiding once a week. The children were over the moon to have Fiona and I helping and they adored the video camera which I could play back and show them on film. A little later in the afternoon they took us into the slum where we played pied piper to a huge crowd of children all eager to shake our had or be in front of the camera. The dwellings were built on the banks of the river and underneath the bridge men were working on these huge spinning wheels that was recycling denim thread from a near by factory into balls of yarn. It was our first experience in a slum and we felt quite overwhelmed by the attention that we generated. Fortunately the braiding kids kept the others in check and my camera made it out alive.

Braiding with Slum Children

Different Braiding Weaves and Techniques

Braided Bag, Vessel and Necklaces

NID Curriculum

We had arrived at NID with no idea about the particular classes we would be attending, only that we needed to create some kind of timetable that would pass for our usual Studio, Technology and Studies courses back at RMIT.  Industrial Design at NID is a school, much like Architecture and Design at RMIT, with different courses falling under the I.D umbrella. I am not particularly interested in traditional Product Design, so following the Product Design curriculum, which involved a lot of automotive design, did not sound very appealing.

“No problem” was Soumitri’s response, and instead we approached our poor coordinator Praveen, armed with the entire curriculum of the Institute. NID’s classes are structured so that you attend one particular class every day (including Saturdays) until the conclusion of the course. This made it particularly easy for us to fill up our timetable as each class was in a block of 1-2 weeks or longer.

The Institute runs public workshops taught by experts in the field of different crafts and a week long traditional braiding workshop was coinciding with our first week, so we put our hand up to attend it. Then followed 2 weeks of colour and form studies with the textile students, 3 weeks of film, a few different theory courses and to conclude, a 6 week ceramic course with a post grad class.

I was so excited and eager to experience a new form of learning – Indian style!

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