Paper Stacking Inspiration

Speaking of Touch Response

Diane Ackerman talks about a very interesting subject - touch - and the feelings and emotions behind it. Touch, according to Ackerman, is essential to life. There was a study done that showed that premature babies developed much slower when left alone untouched. This for me was an incredibly interesting fact. Who know that it was essential for babies to be touched, swaddled, and cuddled. It is essential to life and it amazes me. I never imagined that that almost basic want to be "cuddled" (even as an adult) was so necessary to life. She says, " If touch didn't feel good, there'd be no species, parenthood, or survival. A mother wouldn't touch her baby in the right way unless the mother felt pleasure doing it. If we didn't like the feel of touching and patting one another, we wouldn't have had sex." I had never thought about this before but all of it is so incredibly true and makes me think more about touch.

Touch also helps us identify our world as three dimensional. It helps us to picture ourselves which is a really cool thought. We are constantly fiddling with ourselves to understand and to "see" ourselves better.
Not only this but one of the most stand out phrases in Akerman's writing is "Touch is so important in emotional situations that were driven to touch ourselves in the way we'd like someone else to comfort us. Hands are messengers of emotion." This stands out so prominently for me because I know that when I was younger I would get upset and curl up in my bed, wrap my blankets around me and would gain comfort from that. We figure out ways to self-soothe because at the time we don't have someone there to do it for us, but to continue with life we want/need that comfort.

"It's About Time" Design Discussion

I really had a difficult time with this soap carving. It was hard for me to take a block of soap and carve out unnecessary parts to create an animal to the correct scale. I was able to get the just of my panda bear, but I know that it didn't look quite right. I just was too afraid of messing it up as well as feeling like I didn't know where to go next.

However when I melted my second panda down and began the additive and subtractive process it got much easier for me. I was able to react to each step and create a completely different piece - a molded penguin. I felt that that was much easier for me. To take a ball of melted soap and mold it into what I wanted was easier for my mind to comprehend. I could mold it and make it look the way I wanted and if it didn't work out I just re-melted it and tried again. That was not the case with the carving.

Additive and Subtractive

Melting the panda is subtractive. Adding heat may seem to make it additive, but the fact that the panda's form is getting subtracted into something else makes it subtractive.

I then added ink, which is additive.

Molding the melted, colored soap into the shape of a penguin is additive because he is taking on a new shape from what he was.

Molded Soap

I then added paper clips to his head in thought of creating hair. They went through different parts of his body though and I left them like that as spikes that may have killed him.

Paper Clips

I then put him in the freezer which sadly did nothing but make him really cold - I won't count that as anything.

Freezer Time!

I started to make a hole through his body, eliminating soap making it subtractive.

Hole in the body

 I put some googly eyes on the penguin which is additive.

Added Googly Eyes

 When I picked him up again one of his feet fell off; subtractive.

Missing Foot

I planned on cutting a space in between one of his wings so it would have looked like he was moving it. However when I attempted this the wing crumbled off making it subtractive.

In-Process "It's About Time"