Done! (again)

I changed my mind about the base. Or to be more accurate, I talked to a few people including my TA who nervously asked if I'd cleared my choice of a canvas topography with Sung Ho (our instructor), and also Saori who strongly recommended I do something to upgrade it. 

I went into to studio around 10 this morning and helped Saori build her group's model stand. Nan, my partner, was just leaving after taking photos of the model herself. Then I went outside and took about 100 photos of the model in the sunshine from various angles and orientations. There are really two modes of thinking about studio models. You can hold on to them forever until they start to break into smaller and smaller peices until you are effectively transporting a model entirely in plastic baggies or you can trash the damn things after a semester and after you've taken about 100-200 photos of it. I used to be the former category, but then when I couldn't store models in my parents garage anymore, I switched modes of thinking.

It's hard to throw away an architecture model. They are quite literally the embodiments of huge amounts of time, thought, and money. They are beautiful and interesting objects of art that are also usually the capstone of a design studio, and until a final presentation, there is no more sacred object in the proximity of the architecture building than people's final models. There are unwritten rules to architecture school and one of them is basically "Thou shalt not touch other people's models" written right above "Thou shalt not kill." Given all this in mind, it becomes very difficult to simply toss it in the dumpster like an old lamp, which is why most people start with the Keep mentality.

Anyway, looking at our model, photographing it, and then comparing it to the other finished models, I started to feel pretty crappy about having a crappy canvas base. Not only does a crappy base make the model look, well, crappy, but its also a crappy reflection of your group to the rest of the studio, who most of which took the time (and expense) to make nice basswood bases. So I tore up the canvas and booked it for Art Mart, a store on Hanley which sells (surprise) art materials. Really fun store. Dangerous, as Saori would call it, since there's so much for sale that creative people want to buy immediately. Great variety and selection. I picked up a roll of cork board, a disposable fountain pen, and a tiny penguin eraser for Saorichan.

Took about two hours to glue down the new cork topo but it turned out much nicer than the canvas. Afterwards, Saori and celebrated the end of the pre-semester studio with Thai pizza- small thin crust pizzas with Thai food covered with mozzarella cheese. Really good.