"Tyler Talk"

My mom was going through some stuff that used to belong to my late grandma, and buried inside an old day planner she found a list titled "Tyler Talk". It's a short collection of things I apparently said when I was 1-3 yrs. old, scrawled out on pink notepaper. Some of the "quotes" are pretty strange and interesting, so I've reproduced them here. As a preface, apparently at the time I was obsessed with rockets, angels, and Australian aborigines.

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"We might see some big, big, big rockets drinking nectar out of fireworks like butterflies."

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"When I was a little girl, I used to be an angel."

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"I used to be a star-child. Now I am a big boy. Some day I will be a little baby again and I will go 'Ba-ba ba-ba.'"

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"The mama cricket came from Australia. She came out of an old digeridoo-- an aborigine's one. And she went bump-bump-bump-bump-bump-bump and she listened to her heart beating."

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"The man staying at Zephyn's house is an aborigine. He has a digeridoo, an old brown one. He is sitting on the porch playing it and the rocks can hear it. Little animals are running out of the pebbles. They are hedgehogs with tiny spots on them. They like the music."

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"When feet get melted, they always turn into shoes."

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"When I was a little girl, I had a baby inside my panza [belly]. Then it cam out and got born, and it was Angelica the Rocket."

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Tyler's preschool teacher: "Do you want to be a Knight, a Dragon, or a Lady?


Tyler: "I want to be a rocket ship."


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"The other night the lightning told me it's not gonna blow out the electricity anymore. It said 'I'm sorry'."

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Tyler was sliding around the house with a piece of paper under each foot. He said: "These are called skates. You wear them at night when you're an angel."

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Tyler in the bathtub: "Look at me feet. One is a Great Horned Turtle and the other is an African Milk Turtle."

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"This afternoon we have to take uncle Kit to see the big rocket so he can play some music and it will dance."

SAIC Graduate exhibition

Just got back from SAIC's final exhibition of work produced by graduate students in Architecture, Interior Arch, Object Design and Fashion. The exhibition is open through June 25 at the Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St, 7th floor. I intend to go back and get better documentation, but for now, here's some shots from tonight.

SHADE project 2011!

Here it is, the final gallery of shade structures on site at the Farnsworth House in Plano, IL where they will remain on public display (and available for public use) throughout the summer. The Assignment was to design and build an installation that must provide shade for at least one person. It had to be strong, sturdy, transportable, and make efficient use of materials. The material pallet consisted of cedar and white corrugated plastic, plus one third material of our choice. We were given two 4x8 sheets of the plastic, and eight 8' cedar 2x4s, plus pine 2x4s and cardboard for mockups. The gallery shows the projects in the order one would encounter them, starting with Mike Revord's little pavilion on the river, and working counter clockwise around the loop formed by the two main paths on the grounds. Going back to set the projects up was really amazing...the woods are almost unrecognizable from the dormant grey trees that first concealed the House as behind a tangled curtain of black lace. Now it is completely hidden when approaching from the lower riverside path, until it bursts into view from behind the newly-formed clouds of thick green leaves.  

Ah well...

The modular, reformat-able, slot-assembled shelf I've been working on is turning out to be a failure. Here's a photo of the pieces during the painting process:

The problem is I used some tempera paints I got for free mixed with a high proportion of water, in an effort to    make a mixture that would soak into the wood and sort of stain it. When I checked on it this morning, the pieces now have a much rougher surface than before, which is unfortunate because I spent a long time sanding  them all with increasingly higher grit paper to make sure they were smooth. Worst of all, when I touched them, the pigment easily came off on my hand. I think that's normal for tempera, but I thought I could avoid it by laying many coats of very diluted paint. 

The good news is, the first of 6 or 7 pairs of shoes I rescued with the intention of painting and selling are now painted. I'm pleased with the results, I just have to treat them with some kind of sealant to make sure they hold up. 

beginnings...

Sneak preview of some of the stuff I'm working on.

Color Project 2011

I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but finally got around to it now. These are photos I took of some of installations built by us first years.

We started this project by picking a painting at the Chicago Art Institute, and analyzing in depth the color composition. We then made watercolors, collages, sketches, and geometric studies to understand the painting's composition as much as possible. The next step was making a collage based on the original painting. I don't have mine anymore (prof. never gave it back) so unfortunately I can't show to you. The final component of the project was a 3d color composition made from MDF and different bright paints. On review day, the projects were installed around Crown Hall, and remained there for a few weeks to add some much-needed color to our bleak little winter world of black steel, cherry oak, glass and snow. Below is a gallery of the photos I took. Flip through them or sit back and enjoy the slideshow.

[some] systems back online

It's been an insane last semester, and as I feared, I totally ran out of for any communication with the outside world, let alone a blog. Now that it's summer, I'm going to make an effort to document the projects I'm working on, and hopefully get my online presence into some kind of cohesive order. I will be redesigning this site (so expect it to change erratically as I experiment with it) and setting up an online portfolio as well as an Etsy store.

Stay tuned
--Tyler