Sophomore Year Final Entry

Celestial Pathways was a design for the Pufferbelly Depot here in Pullman, WA. The duty was to create a residence and gallery/studio space for our client. In my case the client was a ceramics artist who also taught ceramics along with making her own pieces of art. This was a depot that is to stay on the historic registry for being the first depot and main transportation for Pullman back in the day. The design consisted of keeping the original ticket wall as well as any other walls that could be used for water-walls. I used the ticketing wall as a space for the home office and storage area that was accessible by both the residence and the studio space, for extra storage and connection between the two.

Throughout the semester, the design was being accomplished by starting through abstract thinking to create a concept model to reflect on our designs. From there we were to take a abstract module that we thought best reflected our three words, in my case those words were Power, Shape, and Movement. I felt the most important portion of this design was the abstract drawings and also the textile that we created from that point. My textile was one that I was incredibly happy with, how it portrayed my words precisely while giving a look of modernism and a contemporary design. My inspiration object helped both my module and final parti for my textile come around to be what it is, the object was the lamps inside of the depot that were along the ticketing wall, as if they had always been there and were original lamps, with a look of deteriorating and odd shaped structure. In creating the design itself, I wanted to incorporate the use of round elements as well as straight ones, like my final parti, I did this by including archways throughout the residence as well as rounded walls with openings in them to connect rooms while they are also separated to define space.

Overall, this semester was a lot of good, hard work that was worth the time to increase my knowledge of design. I now have a better understanding for vision impairment with design, and also ADA requirements for commercial spaces. I have seen myself improve immensely in drafting and perspectives, especially in my accuracy for proper scale. Also, with drafting, knowing how to create a demolition plan to show where old walls were and where new walls are placed and in egress plans, learning routes to safety and being aware of how many exits are needed for a specific sized space. This semester was a great for new learning and being able to use past information for solving problems in design.

Art Gallery

The Gallery I chose to view was the Blue Whole Gallery, located in Sequim, WA on the main road through the town. The work that can be seen in this gallery is paintings, ceramics, glass works, metal works, a variety of different artistic works. The Exhibit space takes up the majority of the gallery around 450 square feet. The Gallery's art can be placed on the exterior walls, and they have the option of a few moveable walls that usually stay more towards the center of the space. They use many pedestals for the solid artworks like ceramics and glass works, but they also place many of the glass and fragile works in open glass display cases. When it comes to lighting in this space, the main source of natural light comes from only the front windows, where there is also work displayed for those walking down the street, or driving by in their cars, but the natural light does not peer to the back of the space. Other lighting is artificial and is placed throughout the space along the ceilings, on large track systems, which gives the gallery a large amount of light to truly brighten the artwork and make it pop. The exhibit is clearly laid out to where you start viewing on the left, and work your way around, back into the back gallery room and back around to the front of the gallery, this is not done with colors, but with how the space is set up and artwork that leads you to the left, with a diagonal wall with work on it. The environment itself is calm and comfortable, the floors are a lovely lightened solid wood flooring for a smooth walkthrough, the walls are white to give more focus to the art pieces being hung on the walls, while the ceiling is truly for the lighting itself, with nothing being hung from the ceiling, but just the walls. This gallery constantly has new work to look at and I try to visit the space whenever I get to go home. They also offer classes that anyone can take, from watercolor painting to learning how to draw life, or realism images.

Impaired Vision Experience

The chance to experience how those who are vision impaired go through everyday life, was a very good one. When using the plastic bag to look at a newspaper, it was very difficult to make out the readings, the pictures were not well visible, besides the colors of them although they can blend together to cause confusion easily. When moving closer to the newspaper with the plastic bag over my eyes did not make much of a difference, it still caused issues in reading. With looking through two layers of plastic, visibility is very limited, I was able to make out where people were located but it is still a blurry sight, as well as the lighting, it all looked blurry. The colors and contrast between them were still visible. The vision Simulator was very interesting in learning how different types of vision impairments that there are out there. With central vision the ability to only see what is around this dot that was blocking my central focus on an object, causing to move back and forth to get the full view of a certain object. Crackling vision makes reading and just viewing any object complicated, I tried to read the newspaper again, and the crackling vision causes for words to break and even sentences would be separated, causing confusion in what I had just read. Tunnel vision causes issues with objects around me, as my central focus is really all I had to work with and would have to turn my head around in order to get the full view. With complete blindness, the loss of vision causes it to practically be impossible for one to view anything around them, it causes a complete blurriness. While wearing the glasses smeared with patroleum jelly, it was a very useful to see how those with vision impairment may see things on a regular basis. While walking around it was difficult to make out items that were alike in color, but when there was a contrast in them, it made finding my way around much easier. I tried to walk to the elevator and the main thing that helped me find my way was the noise from the elevator as well as the wall around the elevator was a dark red, and the elevator itself was the shiny silver. While in the elevator it was difficult to read the buttons for levels, but once they lit up you knew what one you pushed and where you were going to go. Stairs, these are what I find to be tricky, I found it extremely difficult to walk down them without using the side rail to find my way. The black strips along the edge help with traction and the ability to know where the step ended and where it began, making walking up the stairs much easier than down, as they appear closer. In attempt to using the ATM it was by far the most difficult task, there were no brail buttons to find the number and also there was no good lighting on the numbers, card slot, or cash spot. There are many things that those with vision impairments go through everyday that are difficult and can take a good amount of time to do. This experience was one that can't be forgotten and very helpful in understand vision impairment.