Time is flying!

I am already on my third week being out of school and working on this project!  Yikes, days are going by so fast!

A super brief overview of the project is this.  I am working with a great community group in Gould Arkansas, called the GCAC.  During phase one, I met with the group to ask if they would be interested in working with me on this project.

 We talked about what it was like living in a food desert, where the closest grocery store is over ten miles away and there is really no public transportation.  They shared their stories and concerns with me and then agreed to work as collaborators on the project.  I went down to Gould again with a student, Hunter Oden, and we gave disposable cameras to all of the GCAC members.  Hunter and I took photos that day too when we went on a tour of the community with the mayor and another GCAC community member (Rosie).  We gave the rest of the group about two weeks to take photos.  On our third return we picked up the cameras and brought them back to get the images developed. Hunter and I filtered through the hundreds of images taken by GCAC and us to pick out the ones that most fit the goals of the project, then began putting the images into photoshop and working them into decorative patterns that we could turn into decals and other images that we could use for silkscreen image.

During all of this I was also working on the first (failed... not awesome) prototype for the tableware.  Soon after all of that was completed I was too pregnant to continue so the project was put on hold. During the "holding" period I researched how I might make a thin solid cast tray and came upon the idea of using a concrete vibration table which the molds would sit on while they were being poured.  Slip is thixotropic which means that it stays liquid when agitated and "sets up" under static conditions.  In theory (keep your fingers crossed for me) I should be able to pour this very thin (1/4") undulating tray without "choking the mold" or in other words without the slip setting up in an area of the mold before the whole thing is filled therefore resulting in a partially cast tray.  A friend of mine asked me the other day why the clay tray won't crack in the mold over the curves as it shrinks in the mold while it is setting up...good question and I don't know?!?  I don't think it will because the curves of the tray are pretty shallow and domed...but it is always good to have another thing to fret over...keeps you on your toes!!!

So here we are.  I have had a number of contacts with people and organizations interested in helping with the fundraising component of the project which is really exciting.  It is also really overwhelming because I have to make the work first and it has to be good!  This is the first time the work I make is aligned with a commitment I have made with other people.  It feels like a lot of pressure but not (yet) in a bad way, although  do have nightly nightmares of all of the problems I might have and what I might do as a contingency plan!

So this week!  All of the material is here for the vibration table, which is what I will be using to create these solid cast trays, and now we (as in the royal we, because really our awesome technician Robby will be welding it for me) just need to put all of those parts together and we will have an industrial strength vibration table for a quarter of the cost. If it doesn't work for me at least the UCA art department will get an awesome vibration table so we can cast concrete!

In the meantime I am finishing up the positive for the tray, trying to get it as perfect as I can and trying to imagine all of the things that might go wrong (so I can fix it before it does).  I am purchasing the plaster tomorrow and so I hope I will get the mold made by the end of the week (we are going out of town for a few days) so that pushed my schedule a bit later into the week.