Surface design

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Hesere Gildenhuys ‘Gauze Poetry’ was the highlight of the CPUT exhibition for me. She is a B.TEch Surface Design student that I feel produced something truly beautiful, interesting, engaging and strong with meaning.

Hesere Gauze Poetry 1

To give you some insight into the art pieces I will drop few key words: phenomenology

Three torsos

embodiment

Body blisters

perception and representation

Gauze Poetry NEck

self reflection

Up Close

They are inspired by traditional body adornment of African women in tribes such as the Kaleri, Ga’anda, Nuba, Maro, Mbaye and Zaire. Geisha’s from the Japanese culture with their blank white faces and painted red lips were also very inspirational. Overall, I think Hesere has produced something very special.

The Surface Design Department really pulled out all stops. Every surface imaginable had been reflected upon. It was a visual and tactile wonderland.

Surface Design Collage

Photographs taken at the CPUT Design Exhibition 2009.

The 1st year Surface Design Students at CPUT did a project called the “Paradigm Shift Project”. The aim of the project was to challenge the way of seeing and knowing objects as. They had to take a ‘known’ object and unlearn what it has been learnt to be and recreate its purpose. They had to find one household object to work with, were allowed a maximum of 4 extra objects (including glue etc) to make this ‘new’ object of use and were encouraged to spend very little (if possible, nothing) on their objects.

I was so excited by the results of this project we organized a professional photo session for their products (and them) to be shot. Here they are:

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Above: This bottle-top opener and cork-skrew all in one device is made by Micka Chisholm. It was originally a thick metaled fork.

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Above: Amanda Wababa made a filing system out of South African cereal boxes. I think I need to make one of these for all my posting envelopes.

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Above: Isabelle Manyuchi cut and stuck scoring blocks together to make a seat cushion. She called it “score a seat”. It is colourful, comfortable and an extremely affordable cushion. Love it!

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Above: These are placemats made from old diary covers. Lara Stanford took used diaries, removed all the pages and then stuck chopsticks onto them as heat insulators. They are also reversable.

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Above: Monique Arnold took her broken bar bridge and turned it into a herb garden for her flat. She fitted it with a full watering and lighting system.

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Above: This jewelry organiser is made by Anri Vercuiel by turning a coat hanger upside down, adding an extra metal foot for stability and nails to help organise the jewelry.

I think these objects are brilliant, clever and fun. I wil post the rest of the class tomorrow….

This is a project recently done by the first year Surface Design students of the CPUT.

To begin, they studied and experimented with the balance between negative and positive, different line tensions and cosmic shapes (which have a focus point). They then took these activities and combined them into one A1 painted artwork again focusing on the balance between all the elements (see below).

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By Stohm Savage.

These designs were then taken to Peacock glass (scanned in) where they were sandblasted onto mirrors.

I absolutely LOVE how they came out and feel from both a learning and design perspective that they are a great success.

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It was extremely reasonable too. What a great way to take your bathroom mirror and do something different. This is so much more interesting than a boring old frame….or even….what if you had to sandblast a designed frame……the possibilities are endless.

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Design Students below from left to right:

Monique Arnold, Cheryl Marley and Amanda Wababa

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