Tag: alchimia school

about setting rules

10/12/2012

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Everyday a little blog entrance, this is the rule I set myself for the next month.

Setting rules was the theme of Christoph Zellweger’s summer workshop at Alchimia.

Setting rules is of primary importance in any creative work.

I need rules to free myself from the infinite…

I need rules to stay on the surface…

I need rules to break out…

I need rules to go deeper…

I need rules to discover the unexpected…

I need rules to reach the infinite…

I need rules not to become crazy…

I need rules to overcome my limits…

I need rules for measuring…

I need rules to play…

I need rules to live my life…

I need rules to jump over my fences…

I need rules to stop thinking…

This summer I was invited to the Turnov Symposium, a gathering of jewelers, we stayed together for 10 days in a wonderful town in the Bohemian paradise.
Each of us had to make a piece for the museum.
We had four days to work on it.
A big problem, four days to make something to remain “forever” in a museum. You want to be good, you don’t want to leave a “bad” record of yourself in a museum.
I searched for a concept, something deep and intelligent which I knew I could not find not like this in four days under the pressure to be “good”.

I searched for the rule: four days of crochet with iron wire, without stopping eight hours work for four days.

I would ask each of my 10 colleagues

to give me something
of their choice

to work into my piece;

like a spider entrapping the victim

I would not stop and had to accept

every gift I got, no choice.

It turned out as an almost mystical journey. I got very unsure on the way.
What am I doing ?
It is getting horrible;
I have to change something, it is getting too ugly;
How can I ever get this tiny granat in ?
Maybe I should just stop it and admit my failure,

But I did not give up I resisted, I made no esthetical decision I just followed the rules and the result has the size of a heart with eleven mysteries in it.

each side is different and even the tiny granat sits on a piece of wax ( a gift because I could not add or choose anything )

and now it sits in the museum and I am proud of it!

see you tomorrow

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Hazardous experiments: the continuation

05/07/2012

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Starting to unpack all our experimental boxes. What will we find ? How are we going to show them all ?

Beautiful and very big space to fill with hundreds of small material experiments

first step: spread it all out……..and then try, try, try…….

fortunately we had this construction foam matching perfectly the colours of the floor and the walls, practically a miracle….

And then there was a glue gun, many, many pins, quite a number of intelligent and creative minds and the will to work it out together !!

the “Cerveza” was maybe also of help

and so we did it very fast, really professional teamwork

the result was fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!! an amazing exhibition.

lots of people came and all were interested to know about our working and teaching

the Operations Team members explained everything, and the visitors were happy to able to touch, feel and smell all the experiments spread out in the show

and then after the work we had also some relax

as suggested by Pablo in one of the many amazing graffity paintings we discovered all around Valencia

at every angle some surprise could turn up, and going the same street I could discover something new each time

some more violent,

some very poetic,

others amazing and funny

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Hazardous Experiments, the beginning

05/05/2012

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An exhibition I cocurated together with Peter Bauhuis and the Alchimia second year students part of the wonderful event concentrated on contemporary jewelry organized in Valencia: Valencia Meltingpoint 2012
We formed together the Alchimia Special Hazards Operation Team.

Peter Bauhuis, Valentina Caporali, Chiara Cavallo,
Ha Na Choi, Anna Drexel, Lena Grabher,
Doris Maninger, Enrica Prazzoli, Lavinia Rossetti,
Yu Qi Tan, Nur Terun, Francesca Urciuoli

To know more about the whole project please see the blog: hazardousexperiments.eu

I will begin here with the documentation of our arrival in Valencia and the start of the exhibition set up.

where are we and how will we get anywhere ?

found it let’s go……

first obstacle, getting through the barriers

seems easy………

sometimes all went well

but YuQi got stuck

Peter made it at the end

The first Cerveza in Valencia, Spanish Air, how wonderful

the hazardous box

first attempts to organize the mess

then the hunger took over, fortunately in Spain you can eat also at midnight, if we were in Belgium no chance…….
Starvation would have been our fate!

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textile techniques in metal – a weekend course

02/20/2012

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15 hours of chrochet and interlacing,

silver wire

wires all over the place, from silver to aluminium to iron, only gold was missing – too expensve for learning of course

We began with free interlacing over a form out of foam, a really interesting technique and you just need foam, the one used for construction, a knitting needle, 1 pair of pliers and that’s it.

2 interlaced balls iron and silver

here you can see the outcomes, the foam will be dissolved in Aceton and you get an hard and empty wire structure

the we passe to crochet – nothing else than wire and a hook

crochet is an incredible technique, very “young” in contrast to most needlework – and was invented in France in the 19th century, becoming soon extremely popular

hairpin lace in coated copper

Crochet is a French word meaning hook – and with this hook and a thread or wire we can create worlds, it is an extremily versatile technique, the stitches can be mixed in every way – we could say that crochet is a world with just one rule – creating loops to slip a wire through

the students were encouraged to work without a plan, exercising the stitches, letting the pieces grow by themselves

faults are used to become surprising decorations, if a wire breakes the hole can be closed with another wire, nothing is definite in crochet

maybe this is the reason why it has fascinated me since I was a little girl, nothing is definite
you can alsways hook in and continue

but of course you need patience, and willing fingers

it is meditative, you can forget yourself over the loops

infact we did far more than 15 hours and the students also worked at home

and everybody finished at least 1 piece of jewellery and some the first one in their life

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Tag: alchimia school

about setting rules

Hazardous experiments: the continuation

Hazardous Experiments, the beginning

textile techniques in metal – a weekend course