DESIGN - Prototyping

Artist Bench - Transition from Craft to Art

The Artist Bench is inspired by Anni Albers’ woven textile, tapisserie murale de 1926. Anni Albers’ textiles transformed the stigma of sewing done by women from a craft to an art. This artist’s bench portmanteau reflects her transformation from a craftswoman to an artist. I used the textile as a guide for the form of the bench. The divets in the bench allow for places to store books as well as slots to rest tools like pencils. The front rope slots allow for a place to rest finished projects or as a drying rack. The backside of the bench provides storage space. The sides of the bench have rope that allows for note passing from visitors by sliding paper under the rope. The use of rope to hold the piece together reflects the woven textiles of Anni Albers, as well as the action of assembly through hand weaving. The act of making the Artist Bench reflects Anni Albers’ dedication to the craft of women artists.

Portmanteau

Tasked to create a Portmanteau. "Portmanteau relates to 2 distinct design objects. The word is the combination of the French words porter, meaning carry/wear and manteau, meaning mantle.

If we allow the linguistic understanding of the word to inform an expanded field of combined forms, it opens up new potential in Design. What might occur if we stretch the literary use of Portmanteau and apply it to an object: taking two distinct pieces and combining them? Your project should define itself as the novel form arrived at after performing this operation. As we pursue an observation of Design to be inseparable from making, a Portmanteau provides many avenues to explore.

Your Project must conform to the following building constraints:

-All wood used will be 3/4” Thick Plywood
-Projects can not use more material than a 4’ x 8’ sheet
-All pieces must be joined with mechanical fasteners or friction joints, NO GLUE "