Ey

My time here in France is just wrapping up, but I'm still coming across some incredibly beautiful landscapes. The Col d'Ey isn't the world's biggest or hardest climb, but the views are just wonderful. I know that I'm a cycling nut, but there is just no better way to experience a country than on a bike.

Bears (or any quadruped really)

I was thinking about design and the idea of what makes an object really something special. It's somewhat obvious that some people are more critical when examining objects than others, but it's always surprising to me to hear someone complement a piece of furniture that I look at crookedly because of its poor workmanship or strange proportions. Does art or design really play an important role in our lives as a source of enrichment, or are we as a society so choked with cheap chipboard crap that any solid-wood piece of furniture automatically becomes worthy of esteem...sometimes it seems that way to me, but maybe I'm not generous enough to the idea of subjectivity and personal taste.

I don't claim to be a great photographer, but when I take a picture I put effort into its composition. I turn on a light, I make sure I walk the extra ten feet so the power lines aren't in the shot, I adjust my film speed, waste a few frames, check to see if things are centered, turn the object around to get the best angle. Composition is something I think a lot of people who don't actively "create" don't worry about, or maybe they just don't understand it. For me composition is the hardest part of furniture building, but that's not to say that the skill needed in construction is something I've mastered, just that composition is really hard.

Here's a table I drew up while thinking about the way that a bear lumbers along a path in the woods. All the legs should be tapered, but really what I was trying to convey with this sketch is a sense of motion...

Black and White

I've been working a bit on my creative skills while I've been here in France, some sketching and some photography. I had picked up a cheap $80 SLR camera (which used to cost $600 before the digital revolution) and I've been taking some black and white (or noir et blanc) shots. Poorly digitized, here are six of my favourites so far:

Even more shots can be found on my france2010 website.

Top and Bottom

From the top:

From the bottom:

Mont Ventoux is referred to as the bald giant of Provence and is quite the place. At 1909m it's not the tallest mountain, but it's history in the Tour makes it one of the magical cycling places on this planet. I had a funny conversation the other day with this old French guy in the village we're staying in about bikes...I was wearing my pink jersey and we were about to head off when he comes up and starts asking us about our bikes... Aluminum? Carbon?...He picks mine up to judge the weight (I think he was disappointed by my 20lb aluminum beast)...I can sort of understand him, but his French seems pretty flavoured with the local Provencal twang...then he asks me how many km's I've put in this year, but I haven't had a computer for a while so I just point to where my computer would be and he understands...then he says you don't need a computer you just need your heart (while pounding his chest)...he wishes us good luck and we head out...that was pretty cool.

I took some pictures with my 35mm film camera at the top of the mountain in black and white...they're at the photomat now, but I think there'll be a couple great shots in there.

Welcome to France

France is a great country, something I learned while driving halfway across it due to the Volcano eruption that made me rebook my flight through Barcelona. I'm staying near a medieval village, Vaison la Romaine, a suitably named Roman era town with a nice market and some great history. I'm hoping to do some sketching and work a bit on my proportions, something the Romans were experts at....I'm not real big on Classical design in general, but you have to appreciate the way they lay out their geometry! I've been reading George Walker's blogand he's real big on that kind of stuff...

We got a real nice haul from the market today, some fresh cheese, an old cave aged mountain cheese, heirloom tomatoes (which are gorgeous from a pure aesthetics standpoint) and some delicious Provencal olives.

My French is coming back to me little by little, we'll see how I am after a month!

Kanna

My first kanna arrived today all the way from Japan:

I don't know what this says:

...but the dai is a nice quarter sawn piece of oak...

...this says the same thing as the box, which I'm guessing is "katsusaburo", the name of the plane..

...overall a neat thing, but due to some humidity issues (or lack thereof) I'm still waiting to get to use it. You see the blade is stuck and I can't get it out to make the modifications needed to the dai that are required for a new kanna. I think that traveling from humid Japan to the dry Canadian winter of Ontario has caused the block to dry out and shrink quite a bit and lock the blade in place.

Engineers.......

Last week I got the chance to give a lecture to a class I'm TAing at the University of Waterloo. The course is based around social design factors and is meant to be a course that helps expand the engineering students' perspective about the design process. Here's a link to my slides:

Craft, Design, and the Engineer

A little Nakashima, a little Lago, and some Sam Maloof for good measure...getting the opportunity to talk about these things was nice because it gave me a chance to think about how the design of something as simple as a chair can be really quite a complex thing. Some of the students really seemed to appreciate what I was talking about...that was really rewarding.