The Cooking Adventure

So, since living off campus, I've been teaching myself how to cook. Over the last month and a half, I've made pretty much all of my meals myself. I've been taking the sink or swim approach, if I don't figure out how to cook, I will actually probably starve, because I'll have nothing to eat. I could order out, but that would be accepting defeat.
Last week I tried a new recipe for a Balsamic Pork Tenderloin that I got dictated to me over the phone from home.
The reason I'm so excited is that I did not completely over cook it! As a rookie, I'm a bit paranoid about under cooking meat, so generally everything I make gets thoroughly toasted. This one was only medium well; it was also delicious.



The recipe calls for shallots, an ingredient I've never cooked with. I knew it was somewhere between an onion and a garlic, but I didn't know how it cooked. I guessed it cooked more like an onion, which is wrong. I threw them in way too early, and in a minute and a half I had to rescue all of them out of the pan, and then reapply the crispy shallots at the end. There were several tense seconds in the kitchen, but the crisis was averted. I've got to get a bit more practice under my belt before I don the chef's hat, but I'm excited because so far I haven't had any complete failures.
I didn't think I was going to like this sport, but there is a high payoff at the end, and the equipment is sexy and fun to use.

After the Crit: Fan-Tee-Pee

So my furniture and lighting studio had a crit today on our lighting projects that we've been working on for several weeks. It took the full four hours of class to get through all of the projects. There were some really exciting and wild lighting objects that people made.
I presented my project as a floor lamp that would serve as an accent light and uplight the room. We were talking about how because it was not a primary source of light, it was almost a piece of sculpture that lights up.
Someone thought out loud how it would work if it hung from the ceiling. Within seconds I had hoisted it over a rafter, and everyone went 'oooh!'
I think it is much more compelling as a hanging light, and it is much more functional, as it directly sheds light on what is below it.
I think my next move is to think about painting the insides of the fan blades to a more light reflective color, like white, to make it more powerful.
What I'm most happy about in the project though, is that the only fasteners are two S-hooks which bind everything together. It holds itself together upside down just as well as it does right side up.
I love how the solution was to just flip the lamp over. It's cool how that works.

First Look at the 'Fan-Tee-Pee'

The 'Fan-Tee-Pee' was dubbed by one of my Laura in my furniture and lighting class. This is our first project, that we are going to crit tomorrow morning.
The assignment was to create a lighting object primarily from a material that we bought from the Habitat Re-Store. The Re-Store sells used construction materials and housing fixtures that are donated by contractors and homeowners.
I scored this set of six fan blades for a couple of bucks.
So this is the floor lamp I developed out of that material. This first picture is a cardboard model to indicate scale. It is a floor lamp that can be completely assembled and disassembled in seconds.
My goal was to make a complex form as simply as possible, while maintaining the identity of the fan blades.



This is the finished product on the shop floor. Unfortunately, we still don't have a photo booth set up in the Warehouse.
That is a small steel wire at the base that threads through the holes for the brackets that held the blades. The wire gives it the tension it needs to support itself; the blades are made of particle board covered in fake walnut on one side and fake oak on the other. I only made several incisions with the band saw on the blades to make them stand up together.



I suspended a CFL at the bottom of the center column, and it has a little pull cord to turn it on. I knew I couldn't hide the electrical cord, so I embraced it and picked the aggressive pink/orange color. Also, I did all the wiring myself!
It's a ground light, for setting the mood.

ICFF

So, earlier this summer, my family took a trip down to NYC for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). It was a fun experience exploring design with my family, especially because we were all representatives of Hutker Architects, so we all got special treatment from the vendors.

Here are some of the highlights:



This was a lamp from a German manufacturer. Mostly I loved the irony of sunglasses shading an interior space from the light behind them. I think it might have been even cooler if they had all been colorful and mismatched, maybe recycled from the trash.



I thought this magazine holder was just smart. It was at the Cranbrook Academy stall; and I just love objects that exploit physical properties, in this case gravity.

Also, I got to meet Karim Rashid. I saw him from across the building because he had matched his lime green suit and bright pink shirt with his supermodel girlfriend's skirt.



So I got to meet him. I asked him what his favorite pen was. It's the Bic High Liner (a highlighter!), and he's used them for 28 years of his career. He seemed a bit surprised by the question. Though, he did sign the book with a Sharpie.



It was really cool to meet Karim, and I hope something rubbed off in the handshake, but honestly, I'm not a big fan of his work. I think it places the art of the object over its function; I don't see a whole lot of play between the two. I think his work is important, as he is experimenting with contemporary forms, materials, and processes. Maybe I just don't feel a connection to his objects like I do with other 'superstar designers' like Marc Newson, and to some extent Philippe Starck. I feel his is almost forcing the future on me, instead of letting me naturally roll into it. But then again, someone has to do that, and I guess I'm glad it's him. I do however, appreciate the suits and the attitude; he's a smart designer, and he knows how to market himself.

New Hampshire Art Shots

This was near the boat launch at Newfound Lake in NH (the 4th or 14th cleanest lake in America!)



This manhandled cedar tree isn't so much as an art shot as it is just really cool.


hi

Cool Bugs

Here are some cool bugs I've encountered recently:



This is a future Luna Moth caterpillar.



And this is a Cicada that was on the pavement. Someone saw me crouching, taking a picture of it and told me that it was disoriented because it was about to die. Evidently, they all die about the same time.

My Apartment at School

My apartment at school is pretty old. So old that it has started to shift around a bit. Every morning when I pull aside the shower curtain, this is what I see:



What's even better than this crazy amount of shift in the door frame, is how the land lord fixed this problem:



The land lord obviously cut off this sliver from the top of the door and glued it onto the bottom to even it out. I love that.

Out of Africa

Wow. So I got back home from South Africa at the beginning of August, and I haven't had time to do a solid wrap up of the trip. I got back after the 24 hour journey and just crashed at home. I was exhausted.
The trip was really a blast. This is the last photo I took in Africa:



Over the six weeks I grew a play off beard with some of the other guys (it's gone now). That is my friend Nate, who also goes to Syracuse. We stayed for three days after the program to hang out a bit more with some of the South Africans we had met over the six weeks. We found some dorky sunglasses that someone had left behind, and we thought they looked good with our fruit juice.
I think the trip was very successful. I had a great time experiencing the South African culture and the people; I learned a lot about business; and we were able to help the entrepreneurs that we were working with.
In our last meeting with our client, Charlene, she told our team that for the first time in twenty years she had made a deposit in her business' savings account. I think she has much better control over her finances after working with us.
By the end of the six weeks we had worked with Liesl to develop a strategy for her to go out and market herself to cater to other businesses and other party planners. She now has a system of buying baking ingredients in bulk. We also made her new business cards and brochures that she can use to network and market herself. Her biggest challenge will be first getting a more constant number of jobs, and then handling that increased work flow.
Both of our entrepreneurs were very excited and appreciative that we were able to help them develop their businesses. I learned a lot about consulting, teamwork, finance, business, and culture from the experience. The trip really put my life and how I live in perspective to the rest of the world.

Life is Good in South Africa

Just in case some of us were working to hard, the program coordinator, Jocelyn, took me and a couple others out to the Fairview Wine Farm. They have herds of goats that they make their own cheese out of. This is one of them:



For R12 ($1.50 US) you taste six wines of your choice, and as much cheese as you can fit into your wine filled belly. This is me in front of the cheese humidor:



I was in a happy place. The wine was decent, but combined with the cheese made it a blast! The 'native' wine grape in SA is Pinotage, which tastes a bit like a mix between Cabernet Sauvingnon and Merlot. I actually like it a lot, it's nice on it's own, and very good with food. I'm learning a lot about wine and surprisingly, brandy here. They're living the good life down here.

Business Time

This is Justin and my baby. After hours and hours of labor in the computer lab we finally finished her last Monday at 4:59 PM (it was due at 5).



This was one of the final reports that we had to write to our professors for each of our clients. We analyzed their businesses using a specific business analytical model; then we included the deliverables that we worked with the clients on. The deliverables were strategies that we developed with our clients and either implemented or set them up to implement themselves. So that consignment deal that I talked about in an earlier post would count as one deliverable. We worked on developing accounting systems as well as budgeting systems for each of our clients, as neither of them had either. We think they will continue to use them, and that they will help their businesses mature.