Having reviewed where we’d got to in our seminar with Oscar on Wednesday I wanted to look over and evaluate my final getting making IV shapes , which I’d not found the time to reflect on and I’d like to before moving on. This week I had worked with cornstarch ‘slime’ papier-mâché (slime mache?) and mycelium. Both materials I expand upon in their own posts but here I explore how I met the criteria of Bridget’s brief via my own aims that week. My aims were to explore how these two materials might embody de stressing - through encouraging play, offering comfort and connecting one to nature - for both the user and the maker. I looked to objects that I find comforting and satisfying to touch and look at. I wandered also and how something can be playful as a static, aswell as a kinetic/ articulated / animated object.

These preformed mycelium shapes were carved by hand and then joined used a wooden kebab stick which allowed for movement, many iterations and set ups and avoided unnecessary glues. I began adding colour ( a little unsucessfully ) through cornstarch coatings as well as dry brushing paint and using wax crayons. The mycelium disintegrates in water so I was limited in how wet I could let it get. I pushed it too far at points and the objects softened, but were able to dry out again in the oven. I like the scale of these - they reach about 30 cm in height so big but still handleable. I also am excited by the relationships between the shapes as they are assembled, you have to play with weight and balance and its satisfying once it comes together. I hope they begin to convey the playfulness and game like qualities I want to bring to my designs through shape, colour, form and motion, even in this rough sketch model.