i. am. feeling. stressed.

there is so much I need to do. today i spent 4 hours on a little zip-up bag and it still isn't done! i really like the piece, but the zipper is being a little bitch.

this weekend i am strapping down. my goal is to make 5 little zip bags and 1 laptop case. and if i choose to work on my thesis that would probably be a good idea too.

i don't have a lot of other homework to do, i just have a lot of life-work...finding jobs, sketching for an internship, application for volunteering. but this is my weekend for IP.

Movin' and Groovin'

I met with Shaun Jackson yesterday and talked to him about ways to make my prototypes look polished. He recommended using nylon edge binding. He asked for some sample material and he is going to put the edge binding on it. We shall see if it actually happens. He told me to put the plastic bags in a waffle iron and use that for the cushioning...I don't know how I would prevent the plastic from sticking to the iron. He kept focusing on the manufacturing of the product and the feasibility of producing this material on a large scale. That frustrated me because I don't know that I want to do it on a large scale like that because it will totally take away from the environmentally friendly aspect of it. I also think that I am uber scared of doing on a large scale, it is very intimidating, so that might be part of my resistance. There was an obvious disconnect between his way of thinking and mine. It was nice to see that I don't have the same mindset that he and many of his collegues have. I see it as an opportunity for outward ideas that might not mold to the models that have been used for the past 100 years since the industrial revolution era. Since I don't know much about that arena, I am not bound by it.

wow, that was a bit of a soliloquey.


I also met and spent some time with Anne Knott today. She is a local Ann Arbor artist and friend of Sherri's. In the past, she did a lot of work with plastic bags, ironing them and everything. She was initially drawn to them because of the saturated color and she saw them as an opportunity to add to her large scale fibers work. She obviously came from a very different direction, but we were able to discuss different ways to create visual interest with the bags. She mentioned rusting metal onto the bags and that intrigued me. She is all ready to hook me up with her old sheets of metal that she used to rust her papers and plastics. I see some potential in that. I will definitely keep in touch with her once I have some more finite pieces and she can enhance them by suggesting ways to introduce color.