adrienne santos

namamahay, 001

in transit is a phrase that has defined most of my life, and right now, it suddenly is no longer applicable. on the second of october i time-travelled 7 hours ahead of my personal timeline and thought it would solve all my problems and feelings of being in too many places at once. and then, with some kind of grand jetlag of the soul, nearly two months after arriving i finally realise that a lot of myself does not actually feel home, and i need to process this.

it worked when i was fresh and freezing in my first year in england. here's praying it works again.

namamahay means 'to live', in context of being home. its root word is bahay, which means house. the term is also used to describe what is homesick in english. 

(click through this first photo)

soft

an exercise in thoughtful movement, and intentional movement.

responds to touch and manipulation

thinking through hands

creates a manifestation of an idea quickly

allows you to do the same thing as many times as you wish

malleable

an exercise in knowing when to stop

clay has memory! there is a need to be careful with it at a certain stage.

attentiveness to how the clay body is responding to pressure, and adjusting movement and manipulation accordingly.

brittle

an exercise in care(ful handling)

when clay is completely dry, it is at its most fragile. it can snap in two like a biscuit.

ceramic

an exercise in thinking about material value

once clay has been fired and becomes ceramic, it will exist forever - the tiniest form being very fine sand. reaching this stage in the making process means i have considered its existence as an object, taking up space in the world, and having some kind of purpose.

Stephen Drew, deputy head teacher, Passmores Academy (from Twofour documentary for Channel 4, Educating Essex)

some questions i have been asking and letting simmer this week. 

is there something that can be better made, in bamboo?

what can clay bring to an exercise for self-awareness and therapy?

and a round of what ifs, of course. befitting for this new journalling attempt as i have always decorated my old journals with it - homage to my favourite fictional 8-year-old Oskar Schell (Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) :

what if we made a skyscraper out of bamboo?

what if three-year-olds kept journals?

what if lands had bamboo skeletons?

what if we made objects while blindfolded?

show season part 2, new designers part 1. regrettably i didn't take many photos, and actually have zero of my own space. but here are a few from the brighton stand - you know, that little lovely room with air-conditioning! 

our exhibition catalogs arrived the day before the opening. we got great feedback about them; people loved compiling their own books. and they could take it to ND part 2 to collect even more pages!

beci giving a demo of her charming little dough extruder. 

gemma casually+stylishly demonstrating her crochet necklaces

university of brighton degree show 2014

my friends and i were silly to think that the last month of university - show season - would be a breeze compared to the rest of the academic year.

save for not being able to get a catalog produced in time, the degree show was a success for us in Design and Craft. i myself had some really interesting conversations thanks to the curated themes throughout our exhibition. (most people wondered why ceramics was in a corner of screens and iPads)

New Hands is a body of research with three-dimensional, experimental resolutions. The development of mobile technology in the last two decades has given modern society new relationships with form and surface. These new relationships are explored through the use of hands: gestures, grips, tactile language, and tacit knowledge.

come see (and hold!) this

and an entire campus more of brilliant work at the

2014 university of brighton degree show

new gestures

Is the way that we use our hands changing because of technology? 

This series is curious about how technology is giving modern society a new tactile language: swiping, pinching, the sensitive use of fingertips, and the dominance of the index finger and thumb. 

Making starts with a 200g (average weight of a mobile phone) ball of clay. A simple vessel is thrown with one hand, with dimensions specific to that of phone screens. 

colour

These spinning tops conclude an investigation into Colour Vision Deficiency (colourblindness). 

Working alongside a person with red-green colourblindness, I was able to pick out certain colours that looked similar. He also made the important observation - that seeing certain colours together feels like an "optical illusion" - which led to the development of the spinning tops as a vehicle of illustrating how it might feel to be colourblind.

WATER 

red beginnings

This series of tableware was inspired by research into the history of art in the Philippines.

The significance of colour in this series is from research: records show that art began in the Philippines through the discovery of iron as a means of colouring handmade objects. 

It was through this project that I acquired an affinity for tableware, realising its importance in bringing people together. The serving bowls in particular were made with a shared meal in mind.