Reflecting On Residency
Last Train Home - The Pat Metheny Group
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Last Train Home - The Pat Metheny Group ♪
It’s 8am, the morning winter air is sharp. A traveler departs from home to explore a new avenue in his life, the whistle of the train coming in marks a beginning of a new journey.
It’s been a while since I’ve been on a train, he thinks to himself. Reminiscent of his time living in Pittsburgh when we would take the last (and really, only) train home. The Appalachian Pennsylvania countryside, the stories and individuals living their lives along the way, a glimpse into the heart of post-industrial America. On the way to Susquehanna, he sees his hometown from a new perspective for the first time, that of the onlooker, the town lying peaceful and calm upon the old coal mine hills he grew up playing on.
Arriving at Harrisburg station, there’s a 3 hour layover wait time for the bus that will take him to the college. It’s been a while since he’s travelled on his own, especially through a downtown city, but either way he decides to take a chance and find a local restaurant to grab lunch. He finds a small bistro claiming Italian and French roots specialized in serving crepes, the owner, a Muslim man with a warm smile greets him. They share a conversation about travel and life, while he enjoys both a savory turkey and spinach crepe and a sweet strawberry and Nutella one. The food is great, and he walks away feeling happy in his little adventure.
Although he knows it already, he cannot even begin to understand the adventure that is to come.
When I think about my experience at Residency, It’s hard to believe how dramatically my viewpoints on our field and our relationship with design changed within the short span of 10 days. I came out of residency saying to my loved one “My mind is a blender, primordial soup,” it took be a bit to really process and get through everything and get some good rest.
Faux Kucha Vol.1
Travelling into residency, I was somewhat prepared for all this, a shift in perspective, but for things to be so different; To walk into a room where every person in front of you understands and pursues design as more than a career, to hear the words “Decolonization” and “Design Canons” in common cafeteria conversation, it was mind blowing. I felt “Where were these people my whole life?”
I had no competent idea coming in of a sense of self in design, I worked for freelance clients, and created many projects in undergrad on topics I appreciated, but my design was hollow. I felt no attachment to the vast majority of it, it was a delivery agent to show off my competency and improve my hire-ability. I’ve always felt this odd contested relationship with design that set me apart from my usual undergrad peers, ones who saw design as simply a career path.
The VCFA community has been warm, welcoming, and just what I needed in a time when I was feeling derelict and down about this career path. I simply don’t want to work for a company making empty brands that perpetuate a status quo and culture of silence. VCFA showed me that there was in fact, options, for me outside of that.
The Bauhaus was indeed thrown under the bus.
All of my short explorations.
Turning the 2d into the 3d.
Turning the 3d into the 4D.
I have a complicated relationship with making. It’s not that I dislike making, but it’s more the feeling that talking and discussing the theory, ideas, or history of design makes me much more excited. I get caught up in wanting to make my work become this grandiose big project with every tiny detail accounted for, which causes me to have choice paralysis on what I truly want to do. In the end, I sit thinking about a million projects and ideas, conceptualizing how they would look and how I could accomplish them, and in turn the artboard remains empty.
The Bauhaus workshop showed me that we can take making a little less seriously, I remember commenting to my peers beside me that if my mom saw what I was doing at a masters level school, she would probably want me to quit. I managed to weave together the 2d to the 3d, and then create a 4d work out of it using model scanning. I really enjoyed the process of creating the 3d model and capturing the moment in real time.
That being said however, I still feel chained to undergraduate project based workflow. Even something as simple as working on small experimentations feels as if it needs to be or contribute to some large defining project or over-arching narrative. I know this thinking isn’t exactly right, but I can’t seem to help myself, so I still get stun-locked.
This connection to 4d spaces and moments made me rethink my entire documentation workshop, and I created the presentation we saw at residency with 3D scans. I think this turned out way better than my original idea, which was sound based. Sound and music making remains the hardest hurdle in my knowledge-set, I guess one person can’t be good at everything, but I still try to push it.
Documentation Workshop Winter 2024
Moments: throughout our time here, we've gathered in Susquehanna as a cohort of designers from many different places. We shared our time in this physical space. We conversed, created, collaborated, and made memories together.
These spaces we inhabited will not be home to us for another year now, but until then they will live on in our memories as we look back on our short time together.
My original plan for this project was far from how it turned out, but I found that exploring something odd and unique like 3D scanning was actually really enjoyable.
I learned to let go of making things perfect, giving me a new lens on making and design as a whole. The app I used was far from perfect, the scans would be bumpy, odd, off textured, but I felt they still captured the moment we lived in as our memories centered around these objects.
After the Bauhaus workshop, I went back and documented the places in which some of my best memories lived in within 3d space. "Newey" lounge introduced me to the culture and fun of the welcoming people here, as well as let me get to know the graduating thesis students better.
Ice cream represents to me our meals together, the many conversations we've had in this time. Collectively we've all suffered a little from the food here, but in the end the soft serve would always come in to save the day.
The water fountain represents to me my conversations with those in my dorm hall, Hassinger. Sharing collective excitement and conversation about our days, and our exhaustion washing over as we turn in for much needed rest.
The pool table was all about the late night social gatherings, David and I played together as a team before I knew he would be my advisor (However, he already knew). We lost fabulously, but enjoyed it nonetheless.
The celebration of the thesis students last night was the cementing of my feeling of belonging here, Feeling as if I'm starting to fit in with this community. We shared drinks and had meaningful conversations as the grads prepared to say goodbye.
Finally, I scanned my desk here at the residency, because in this moment I sit and really contemplate all the memories and ideas we've shared; I feel an exciting future ahead of me moving into my first semester with you all.
This presentation might have ended up rather corny, but I think that's fine. Sometimes we need to be a little corny, and hopefully we'll share more happy memories together in the coming years. The scans didn't end up looking amazing either, but that doesn't matter, I had fun with it. Thank you.
Tying the documentation workshop into an emotionally charged commentary on spaces and moments shared together as future memories was really great, I got to activate that level of telling stories and making videos I want to explore more later.
A conclusion that is only a beginning.
I found a lot of myself in the short time at VCFA, and I’m very happy to have made the choice to come here, it’s exactly what I needed. I’m still very young, sometimes it makes me wonder if I’m ready for something like this, especially when confronted with the monolith of peers and faculty as designers who have established practices and long careers trailing in their wake. I hope to feel even more confident that this was the right decision as I continue on my tracks.
And thus, a warm thank you to everyone at VCFA.
I drew this in the sandbox one day while relaxing in the lounge, I liked the form of the type and the look of the sand mounts in contrast.
Our Cohort Picture!
