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sara schmidt
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Salvage: I Fancy the Abandoned (MFA thesis project) sustainable brand concept, ethnographic research and the design of a store, product and on-line component copyright 2005, salvage, LLC (thesis presentation, ACCD, December 2005) INTRODUCTION This presentation isn’t about one specific project, but rather a method of making. This way of working, of designing, and of creating art has been around for decades. However, it is precisely this reason that I believe the realm in which I am designing – the realm of this thesis—is still relevant. There’s even a possibility in my mind that this mode of making is more relevant now than ever. I FANCY THE ABANDONED. In many of my projects, I have worked with found or discarded materials. Perhaps this is due to the financial restrictions on my graduate school budget which have forced me to be innovative in how I tell the stories I want to tell. Afterall, NECCESITY BREEDS INNOVATION. The book I designed, Los Angeles a Collection of Personal Maps, is an example of how working with reclaimed materials produces unanticipated results. For this project, I asked seventeen people to draw me a map of how they saw the city we live in: Los Angeles. Their hand drawn maps were paired with maps that I cut up and reused from a Thomas Guide. The book shows the unexpected juxtaposition of materials. The colliding of one pattern with another, the mix-up of rough and smooth edges; the unanticipated occurs. Sometimes when you work with what you have or what you find, the resulting design can’t fully be planned or understood until after it is completed. The combination of patterns and materials may be awkward and imperfect, yet it is these characteristics which to me make this mode of design more human, more honest, and more real. Where as some people strive for perfection, I feel like I am more of an imperfectionist. To me it’s just more interesting that way. (IMPERFECT IS THE NEW PERFECT) ... The practice of using found materials as art or design has been around for decades. Probably all of you sitting in this room have a story yourself about what you have creatively re-used. Maybe your grandmother used to turn her nylon stockings into rugs, as mine did, or you turned old coffeecans into flowerpots. The idea of using refuse as art material is generally traced to Picasso and Braque who were creating collage, or assemblage, at the turn of the century out of various wasted paper scraps. Rauchembourg, Basquiat, and Nancy Rubins are other artists known for their work created with found material and trash. Though these artists may have brought collage into the museum, women years earlier had been working with collage to create quilts. The act of making a quilt is often a community practice and has been a mode of recycling scrap fabric for years. Quilts are patchworks of stitched together stories and records of history. Each scrap has its own story and when combined they create another. Quilts are one of the few items in our homes which we won’t ever throw away as they are often heirlooms that warm generation after generation. Historically quilts were representations of feelings, which often had no other outlet. They spoke of women’s concerns and commitments. By the mid-19th century, American women regularly turned to quilts as a political statement, using them as raffle prizes to raise money for causes such as abolition. Today this traditional craft is still used as a political statement. (As you can see here with the AIDS quilt on the mall in Washington). The history of quilts is embedded in our culture, and conversely, the history of our culture is stitched into our quilts. Reuse is alive and well in our culture today, and some contemporary examples of reuse include the Frietag Bag which uses old truck tarps to create messenger bags, the Rural Studio designs buildings with found materials including this façade constructed from old liscence plates and ReadyMade magazine explains such how-to projects as converting your old speaker box into a coffee table. The interesting observation I made in my design work was the curiosity displayed by my peers. I was often asked not HOW TO, but WHERE I found my materials. One project which I made that raised a lot of questions from my peers was the Letters From Away book. For the Letters From Away project, I asked people to write me a letter about where they thought their garbage went. Where does your garbage go? "Where is Away?" I asked. The resulting project is a collection of these letters, surrounding an essay written by Susan Strasser about the social history of American trash. Some answers included : “Nice Guys in a Big Truck pick it up.” And “It is picked up by An Old Lady with a shopping cart.” The book was printed on wallpaper that I salvaged from an interior design showroom in Santa Monica. The resulting design is a collection of serendipitous moments where old material and new message collide to tell another layer of the story. Working with someone else's discards allows freedom to mess up, to experiment further, and to leave room for failure because you aren’t worried about ruining pristine material. In this way, designing with found materials creates SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS in your work that are unplanned, unexpected yet often DELIGHTFUL. ..... SALVAGE Through experiencing this interest by other designers and the delight that working with discarded material brought to me, I created SALVAGE. It is a system which connects those who have materials to get rid of with people like me. The Salvage project celebrates and inspires a way of working. The Salvage project consists of the following parts: The Salvage Exchange, the on-line community, and an example artifact. Prior to coming to Art Center I worked in an architecture firm where I was exposed to beautiful materials and finishes that came to us in the form of small samples. Since space was limited for us, we would regularly try to find good homes for our discontinued samples and over-stock. But, often times takers were hard to find and unfortunately materials got filed in the round file. Hoping to learn more about those who have this material to give away and about those who work with found material, I grabbed my camera and headed out into the neighborhood to interview people. Here are a couple of short research videos documenting each group I interviewed. The first is a video documenting the commercial design studio and their concerns + Video One: the challenge. I also interviewed a number of independent designers who each expressed joy in working with what they found. The designers sell their items in local venues, small scale shops, and on-line. Here’s a research video documenting them. + Video Two: the delight. Having my research validate my thinking that there clearly is an interest is using “reclaimed stuff” I devised a system that connects these two communities, and encourages and inspires this method of making. It is based on this simple principle: YOU SCRATCH MY BACK AND I’LL SCRATCH YOURS. Salvage is the missing link between these two groups. It provides a service for businesses looking for a place to donate discontinued samples or over-stocked materials. And, it provides a resource for people with a desire to use these items. THE SALVAGE EXCHANGE The Salvage Exchange is the place where these two communities come together. The process of designing the Exchange involved location scouting, and research into other retail establishments from junkyards to high-end boutiques. Using a closed down Goodwill store with good bones I began sketching and space-planning how a place like this may look and work. The design of the space follows the same principles of the items sold there in that the building itself is an example of adaptive reuse. Once I had collected precedent studies and made my sketches, I collaborated with architect Rachel Seigel who helped me render my vision. To examine my design, I built a model out of various masonite and wood that I found in the scrap bins here at school. The model itself is an example of a design project that could be created with materials from the Salvage Exchange. Salvage is a place for interaction, education and play. The design of the space centers on a work area complete with sewing machines and other supplies where artists are encouraged to work, share ideas and collaborate on projects with materials available. At Salvage, the materials that have been donated are displayed with items made from these discards. This provides the visitor a visual connection to the raw material and inspiration for what they can make with the scraps and samples. To add to the theme of everything found, a large flat screen panel in the exchange screens various lost and found footage. The display wall is a modular design that allows for an evolving and ever-changing stock of materials, including textiles, glass, paper, wood and metal. The wall is a patchwork of modular drawers that can be changed out depending on the material that is available. For instance, drawers made of wood house the wood samples, drawers covered with fabric indicate where the textile samples are. These walls become a graphic indication of the amount of materials that are available at the exchange. Users are encouraged to play with the materials, to climb up ladders and dig into the fabrics and materials. Businesses who donate to the Salvage Exchange may receive a tax write off, positive PR, and the service of having the material picked up. As Richelle Waddell, a Maharam Textile Sales representative explained to me “It’d just be wonderful to have someone get the samples out of my garage”. Since scraps and various industrial refuse abound in cities all over, Salvage Exchanges could be scalable and exist in multiple locations. SALVAGE ON-LINE The Salvage system also includes a website that is a network linking the two user groups. Similar to the display units in the exchange, the homepage of the website is a graphical indication of the amount and availability of materials. For instance, the amount of wood, paper, and textiles can grow and shrink depending on their availability. One can also customize their homepage to their personal interests. For instance, Angel is only interested in the availability of textiles and papers, so her homepage is set to those materials. Similar to websites like Craigs List and Ebay, on the Salvage site, Angel can search for needed material based on her locale. For instance, she can search for blue fabrics in her zip code of 91205. She can also post the items she designs for sale on the site. On the flip side Braulio can post notices and photos of the material he would like to get rid of. With the Salvage website Angel can pick up the blue upholstery fabrics that Braulio no longer needs. THE SALVAGE QUILT / THE ARTIFACT To explore the types of products that could be created with this system, I designed my own version of the traditional scrap quilt—one out of various upholstery samples that I rescued from interior design showrooms in the area. As I mentioned earlier, quilts historically have gone beyond being a mode of recycling fabrics, to bringing people together around social issues. It was important to me that my quilt not only be an example, but communicate a message. It does this by being an information graphic of what Americans do with our trash. The red fabrics account for the trash we bury in landfills, the green the trash we recycle and the blue we burn. Designing the quilt gave me an opportunity to work with an intentional goal, but an unpredictable outcome. Because I didn’t have a bolt of a specific red fabric to use, I had to use what I had available. The resulting design is a patchwork of unpredictable, serendipitous collisions of fabrics and mis-matched moments where I used a traditional method of making to make an untraditional statement. There’s clearly a current trend of reuse in craftmaking, art and design in our culture. Whether it be televisions turned into aquariums, vases made with junkmail, or benches made out of skateboards. The Salvage project celebrates and inspires this way of working. Salvage in this way is an opportunity to bring together industry and citizen, the rejected with the revered, and to turn the forsaken and undesirable into the delightful. My hope with Salvage is to accelerate and broaden the scope of reuse and imagination in design, and inspire You to Fancy the Abandoned too. Thank you.
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