Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We've all seen the commercials about hunger.
And so I'm looking for a new way to communicate those same
ideas and hopefully leave people with a new sense of
urgency for undernourishment in developing nations.
I think successful art is art that generates conversation.
And I want to generate a conversation of my own.
My family has always encouraged the arts.
I think I really knew for certain what I wanted to do in
about third or fourth grade.
It's really a holistic experience to live in a city
so big and to become part of a different community and a
different culture.
You think you understand what the world is like, and what
it's like to live.
And then, when you see how other people do it, it informs
the way that you participate in the world.
I'm back to classes now.
And I have an art theory course, which I anticipate to
be pretty exciting and pretty challenging.
I'm taking Drawing III, which focuses on the figure.
And I don't particularly love to draw.
I don't love to spend a lot of time drawing.
But being able to work with those skills that I wouldn't
choose to do if they weren't assigned to me, and then
really getting to use that medium and think about ways
that I can apply that medium to my designs, I think that
that's rewarding to just put that into your toolbox.
I also get to explore a little bit in self portraiture with
that class, and think about my own identity
and a sense of self.
I strive always to try and apply the things I do in art
and make them relevant to my life.
Ultimately, the project is about communicating ideas to
other people.
My main focus is not so much on the facts and figures.
It's using those facts and figures to communicate a
bigger message.
I had worked with Kelby for roughly two semesters prior
and knew that he was very technically savvy, pretty
smart, and fairly energetic.
And so those were all good qualities to allow me to say,
yes, I will be your mentor.
He came to me and said, I think I can do some
information graphics with ceramic forms.
And I asked him a little bit more about it, and just
thought it was a great idea.
And I suggested that he get involved with the
undergraduate research program.
First is the initial research, finding the facts and the
figures and developing visual solutions to communicate them.
So the display floor with icons will show the amount of
metric tons it will take to relieve a nation of
undernourishment with an additional bowl that
represents the US, and the 30 million metric tons of waste
produced by the US last year.
And I'm hoping that viewers will be able to visualize how
all this waste in food could be provided for other nations.
It's a laminated vinyl on like a [INAUDIBLE] board,
essentially.
OK.
Kelby struggled a little bit to pull together
the graphics area.
So I pushed him quite a bit in the research.
And that was a very important part of it, is to learn as
much as he could about the problem with world hunger and
approach it in a new way.
A lot of times, she'll find things that I haven't
considered, or she'll reinforce ideas that I'm
already thinking about.
And so that then gives me more confidence to move forward
with those ideas.
All right, I will talk to you soon, yeah.
So a bowl, being a familiar vessel, is something that
everyone can relate to.
When you hold the bowl in your hand, it'll
feel and look normal.
But the volume where you can actually place food varies.
So the rim on one bowl may be this big.
And the rim on another bowl may be much smaller.
And that's representative of various abilities to cope with
undernourishment.
He knew that mold making was going to be the key method to
developing similar diameter and general hemispheric form.
And then, he also knew that through a little bit more of a
technically challenging mold-making approach that he
can develop a way to provide an offset volume.
So he had one part of the mold as being a constant, and then
other mold parts been interchangeable.
He did have some up front problems, forms collapsing
within the mold.
And he slowly worked those things out with a little bit
of my help and oversight and ended up with some pretty
dynamite forms over there.
Jared is great because he's always ready to do it.
He's always got a solution for your problem.
He's no nonsense, no excuses.
He just gives you the tools you need to be successful.
And so I'm also very fortunate to work
with him in that regard.
I approached the black sheep about catering a dinner for
the opening of the exhibit.
OK, so here's the US, obviously.
Yeah, this is the US back here.
Who's the second one, is that India?
That is India.
Each one of them is going to be served an
unknown portion of food.
So there are six bowls and six countries.
Thank you.
Then, creating the space was my next challenge, and
reserving the gallery space.
Hi, Tom, this is Kelby.
It's a closed event.
Yeah, it's about 36.
We're good to go.
Well, thank you so much.
I appreciate your help.
It's all coming together, but kind of by
the hair of my chin.
I just spoke with the university.
And they offered to bring stuff over and set it up.
And it worked out really well.
After I figured out that, OK, I am going to have this
printed, this is going to actually exist in the space,
now I have to make this happen.
People responded to it in different ways.
Some people just really loved it and got there and walked
right all over it.
And some people walked on the perimeter of it.
And they weren't sure if they should be interacting with it.
I think that's similar to the way that people
approach the issue.
When they arrived, they'll be expecting this beautiful meal.
And what they might receive is a bowl of rice.
Some of them are going to be given an enormous amount of
food they could never possibly consume.
And the best part of the experiment is to see how
everyone is going to react.
I'm hoping that there'll be a few people who show leadership
and provide solutions to the inequality.
And at the end of the day, if everyone walks away with a
full belly, then everyone has really received
the message of sharing.
And that's really what I'm hoping for from participants.
As you probably realized, there was a little twist to
the evening.
And that was part of my undergraduate research.
Thank you so much for being here tonight.
Thank you so much for coming, thank you.
We're able to now make a contribution to the cause
because of the project, as well.
I was really pleased that Kelby tackled a social issue
with it, as well, because I think a lot of people think
that design is either about putting a picture frame on
something, making it pretty.
And it's really about thinking.
It's about communication.
Without the undergraduate research support, so the
funding and the time which gave him the time to work on
this, he would have been really restricted in terms of
how far he could go in pushing his knowledge
to a different level.
So the example I mentioned earlier with combining the
ceramics, the exhibit, and then the performance was a
beautiful thing.
And I don't believe that could have been done in the
classroom in a single semester.
So it really facilitated all of that.
Definitely it bears weight within my resume.
And just like all these conversations that we're
having now, those are conversations that I can have
about the experience I've gained because of this
project, and how that lends to what I'm able to do
professional.
It was really, I guess, empowering.
And it was definitely a rewarding experience.