4B - Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
4B - Thursday, November 4, 2010 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom
Contributors to the FOUND store include
FOUND
From Page 3B
hearing voices, and then going
and fighting for the French, and
then being burned at the stake.
So I found little things that repre-
sented those various stages of her
life to me."
Among these artists' diverse
found art endeavors, Cambruzzi
maintains that the most popu-
lar items are John Marchello's
silverware bud vases. These
slim vases are made out of a hol-
lowed knife handle with a deli-
cately bent teaspoon as the base.
There's just enough room to hold
a single-stemmed tea rose. Before
he turned his talents to silver-
ware shaping, Marchello used to
design metal hockey and wres-
tling headgear for the Universi-
ty's hockey team back when Red
Berenson played for it. Marchello
also designs silverware angels,
fork wall hooks and spoon rings
for the store.
"I think part of the reason that
they're so popular is because he
writes 'Made in Ann Arbor' and
dates them on the bottom," Cam-
bruzzi said. "For people who are
visiting, what better way to bring
back apiece of the city than to buy
one of these vases?"
Due to the store's limited space,
Cambruzzi must always be selec-
tive about what she brings in.
"I never want to have too much
jewelry or too much old stuff or
too mnch new stiff. hecause the
local artists and University lecturers.
whole premise of the store is this
mix of the old and the new and
things that are made from recy-
cled, found objects," she said.
This premise even extends to
the objects that she finds.
"Two different times I have
found cabinets that are made of
old wooden cheese boxes," she
said. "Back then, Velveeta cheese
came in (Velveeta-sized boxes),
and in the Depression-era maga-
zines, they have directions on
how to turn those kinds of boxes
into something to store all your
screws in. I've had one that had
four drawers down and six draw-
ers across of just cheese boxes in
a cabinet.
"I love things like that prob-
ably better than anything, things
that were made from discards at
that time that end up. serving a
different purpose."
Indeed, it is FOUND's unique
mixture of vintage knickknacks
and art recycled from them that
have melded the present, past and
imagination into one unforget-
table treasure hunt.
"My store isn't really about
selling old vintage stuff; it's more
about having that element that
is able to connect generations,"
Cambruzzi said. "For instance,
these spoon rings. They used to
be popular when I was a teenager.
Young people come in and buy
them because they think they're
cool or because they want to be
green, but their mothers come in
and say, 'Oh, I remember wearing
those!' There really is that cross-
aenerational link in this store."
SHLIAN
From Page 1B
taught them in class.
In Shlian's Creative Paper Fold-
ing/Engineering class - offered last
semester bythe Lloyd Hall Scholars
Program - students engaged with
paper in a much different way than
they had previously experienced.
Kyla Suchy, a junior in Art and
Design, said that the course was
unique in that the material was the
focus rather than merely a canvas.
"(The class involved) taking
something really two-dimensional
like paper and used it as a medium
to build with instead of something
to draw on," she said.
Suchy said that the course helped
her shift her focus in her own work
from two-dimensional projects to
three-dimensional ones.
"I picked up a lot of skills with
measuring and just being able to
analyze structures a little better,
which are 3-D now and mostly 2-D
before (taking Shlian's class)," she
said.
While some students took a more
formulaic approach in Shlian's
paper engineeringclass, Suchy said
that for her, the class was more of
an exercise in trial and error.
"In order to get things to sit
together right and to open up in
the pop-up books you had to make
sure the angles were right," Suchy
said. "But it was more of an exper-
iment for me. You can be very sci-
entific about it when you're trying
to figure out how things are sup-
posed to function, but you can also
just play around with it."
In the class Tools, Materials
and Processing 1, students collab-
orated on paper sculptures such as
pamphlets and pop-up books, with
each class session geared toward
a different project. Dylan Box, a
junior in art and design as well
as mechanical engineering, said
that paper engineering definitely
played an important role in TMP 1.
"(The class involves) applying
paper techniques to engineering
principles,". Box said. "There's a
lot of work - a ton of math and a
ton of trig to make sure it'll work
geometrically."
"I think that mixing art and
science is very important because
without artistic and creative peo-
ple, the sciences could be a very
un-relatable subject," Box said.
"On the contrary, without sci-
ence and technology, a lot of art
wouldn't exist today. There's an
Matt Shlian started his paper engineering career based on an interest in pop-up books.
animosity between mixing the
two sometimes. But the cross-
disciplinary research is vital to
address the gamut of needs and
issues."
On various projects, Box used
a more scientific approach, which
often baffled fellow art students.
"In TMP1, it wasn't mathematic
to start out with, but I definitely
got really involved mathematically.
I was pulling out my calculator and
protractor while working and get-
ting some weird stares from other
art students," Box said. "There are
a lot of people in the art school who
use math and science without real-
izing it, but you have to know it to
do design work."
Another project in the course
involved packaging design, which
is what Box is currently hoping to
further nursue as a career.
"I'm hoping to do product
design. That stretches everywhere
from the product to the package.
I've definitely applied a lot of Matt
(Shlian)'s principles to current
projects. Without Matt I wouldn't
see package design the same way,"
Box said.
He said that paper engineering
is a combination of the aesthetic
and pragmatic. Not only does the
work have to be visually arresting,
but it must also serve a practical
purpose.
"There's definitely a practi-
cal application. Packaging design,
that's complete paper engineer-
ing," Box said. "Really limited pal-
ate of materials to hold a product,
make sure it doesn't break and
looks nice. If it's not designed well
and engineered well the product
can fall flat."
For a project called "found
typeface," the students were to
construct a version of the alpha-
bet using found materials.
"I took a match and using long
exposure photography I drew
out the letters. Glowing letters
with a little flame at the bottom.
It was really cool," Box said.
Work ethic is crucial in Shl-
ian's classes, and Box said that
it was one of the major aspects
he carried away from Shlian's
class: making sacrifices to mas-
ter a craft.
"I guess one of the big things
was about time, putting in time
for your work," Box said. "We
read the '10,000 hour rule.' The
idea is that to master a subject,
or anything, you have to spend
ten thousand hours doing it.
There are tons of examples,
(like) the Beatles and Bill Gates.
You have to make sacrifices to
become good at what you do. In
the end of it all, you'll be much
better because of it."
In Ann Arbor, outside the
sphere of the University, Shlian
has spawned an artist colony
called (half-seriously) the Dhar-
ma Initiative Artist Collective
- a reference to the television
show "Lost." On the show, the
Dharma Initative is a hippie sci-
entist group from the University
of Michigan that does experiments
on the show's mythical island. The
workspace of Shlian's collective
allows local artists to have a physi-
cal community to share ideas about
their current projects.
Carrie Mood, a local glass art-
ist, was drawn to Shlian through
a mutual friend and is now cur-
rently a member of Shlian's Dhar-
ma Initiative. Since relocating to
Detroit, Mood has switched focus
from high-brow art to more acces-
sible crafts.
Mood met Shlian just over a
year ago when a mutual friend
thought they shared some artistic
interests.
"I'd kind of fallen into the indie
craft scene here," she said, "which
is the furthest from gallery art-
work as possible."
Mood said that the underlying
motivation behind the Dharma
Initiative Artist Collective was to
have a communal space, which she
found difficult to have after college.
"We always talked about having
a studio, but (Shlian) was the one
who really pursued it and got all
these artistson board. Once you get
out of college you don't really have
that community," Mood said. "We
just wanted to influence each other
and inspire each other and help
each other out. We all do our own
separate thing but it's about being
in the company of other artists."
Although artists mostly stick
to their own work, Mood said
that she finds Shlian's presence
beneficial. She is able to use tools
she previously wouldn't have had
access to if not for Shlian, which
has contributed to her personal
growth as an artist.
"It's really nice because (Shlian)
is on the academic side of things so
it's really beneficial for me as an
artist to grow," she said. "There'll
be like some techniques that he
knows and will be familiar with
and help me with my work. I have
some grand ideas to use a Plotter-
Cutter, a machine that cuts paper
that Matt has. I would never have
access to that if it weren't for him."
Seea multimedia piece about this
story on MdhydeDdilycom
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CLOUD
From Page 3B
play's director and a 2010 alum of
the University's School of Music,
Theatre & Dance. "In this case,
time actually does stop."
The two spend a night togeth-
er, represented in the play by a
20-minute scene. When Anibal's
brother Nelson, played by Dear-
born comic Frank Gutierrez, vis-
its the couple, they learn that two
years have passed in the outside
world.
The three characters try to
come to terms with the time that
has passed, which reemphasizes
Celestina's problem of identity.
"She's looking for her place
in the world, because, for her,
time has no meaning, the world
has no meaning," Medelis said.
"She seeks to be always traveling,
always hitchhiking, always wait-
ing for that bus that doesn't seem
to be coming.
"She's lost and looking for
answer that it seems the rest of
the world has."
The first season of TNTP is
themed "Identity," so Med'elis
also chose this play because of its
prevalent questions of personal
place.
Medelis explained that a lot
of Rivera's work is about what it
means to be Latino in America
and how he thinks many Latinos
are losing the identity associated
with their cultural heritage. It
is a theme that touches "Cloud
Tectonics" as well. The play has
a Spanish-language monologue,
but Anibal has forgotten his first
language and can't understand.
If the play investigates the need
for identity and the effects of love,
it also points out that identity and
love can't be understood.
The play's title, "Cloud Tecton-
ics," is the science of how clouds
move. It is drawn from a line in
the play that discusses Celes-
tina's need for love; understand-
ing this necessity is "like trying
to understand the anatomy of
the wind or the architecture of
silence or cloud tectonics."
"Cloud Tectonics" explores the
relativity of time, but finds that
in the complex realm of human
emotion, nothing can provide all
of the answers. Some things -
and people - exist outside the
world of natural lawls.