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> > more....blogs > make blogs for core! be famous! >> JenTrip archives
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JenTrip The Journeys of a Brooklyn Designer |
....who is Jen anyway? |
Thursday, October 18, 2001 I am finally recovering my couch. I find it interesting the mystique which surrounds upholstery. It is really quite easy (though messy and time consuming)... but many of the folks I’ve told about it have asked a litany of questions on the hows and HOW??!! of it. In the end, people don’t really know what holds them up, where what they eat comes from, how what they buy works. It is just a massive leap of faith. I guess I knew this already, but having grown up with an if-we-don’t-have-it-and-can’t-afford-it-then-make-it mentality I forget the extent to which this sentiment goes. Happily, the process of ripping all the fabric off of my couch has started me designing again. Yesterday I pulled out the old plasticene to start modeling a new idea. I ran into my friend Kristen (Starting the TRUCK) the other day and we both agreed that with everything that is happening in the world we haven’t felt much like designing. Sometimes saying it out loud can be the means to overcome it. Saturday, October 06, 2001 I’ve been thinking about the differences in the titles "architect" and "industrial designer." -- what each of them connotes in addition to the skills of the profession. The jobs overlap - for sure – but the general public ignorance of what an industrial designer does or can do generally seems to imply more of a layman than the grand title of architect. George Costanza pretends to be an architect (along with a Marine Biologist) for the sheer prestige of the title. The Bradys certainly did okay. Some people think I am an engineer, some think I am a woodworker – but very few people understand the creativity and broad thinking that is required for this type of occupation. Say "architect" and people raise their eyebrows. Say "industrial designer" and people look at you like an old acquaintance that they can’t place – familiar yet blank. Naturally then, I’ve also been thinking about the title "bartender" and how impossible it seems to be for some people to get around, above and beyond the job I do to pay the rent. Here is a quote from John Barthes' The End Of The Road which is not exactly comforting – but perhaps apt: "The game was spoiled now, of course: I had assigned Miss Rankin the role of Forty-Year-Old-Pickup, a delicate enough character for her to bring off successfully in my current mood; I had no interest whatever in the quite complex (and no doubt interesting, from another point of view) human being she might be apart from that role. What she should have done, it seems to me, assuming she was after the same thing I was after, was assign me a role gratifying to her own vanity – say, The Fresh But Unintelligent Young Man Whose Body One Uses For Pleasure Without Otherwise Taking Him Seriously – and then we could have pursued our business with no wounds on either side. As it was, my present feeling, though a good deal stronger, was essentially the same feeling one has when a filling-station attendant or a cab driver launches into his life story: as a rule, and especially when one is in a hurry or is grouchy, one wishes the man to be nothing more difficult than The Obliging Filling-Station Attendant or The Adroit Cabdriver. These are the essences you have assigned them, at least temporarily, for your own purposes, as a taleteller makes a man The Handsome Young Poet or The Jealous Old Husband; and while you know very well that no historical human being was ever just an The Obliging Filling-Station Attendant or a Handsome Young Poet, you are nevertheless prepared to ignore your man’s charming complexities -- must ignore them, in fact, if you are going to get on with the plot, or get things done according to schedule... We are all casting directors a great deal of the time, if not always, and he is wise who realizes that his role-assigning is at best an arbitrary distortion of the actors’ personalities; but he is even wiser who sees in addition that this arbitrariness is probably inevitable, and at any rate is apparently necessary if one would reach the end he desires." Actually, this is the third time I will have written this particular entry. Now, ordinarily I am not this determined. In fact, I still wonder who – other than the people I know - would want to read anything that I write. But today you see… I am frustrated, and it is this frustration which is powering today’s text. Why? Well: I am frustrated that every time I turn on the television I am bombarded no longer by WTC realities – but by an insidious capitalization of our grief and patriotism. At watching a slow motion American Flag billow in the wind with "AT&T" boldly written in front of it. Or at the catchy "America Rising" "America Strikes Back" or "Infinite Justice"... must we make movie titles out of this? I am frustrated that as I lean over to wash glasses behind the bar - as people rush to consume a "leisurely" brunch - I hear an overly gelled and tanned gentleman whisper stock tips to his buddy: "..whatchya wanna do is invest in New York construction companies…". And finally - I am frustrated that I was able to somehow look up while typing and delete everything I had written not once, but TWICE! And so here is to the best of my recollection, the entry that would have been posted a few days ago: More shelves. Pantry style. I was inspired by shelves my Mom just had built and she was inspired by another’s. I guess that’s the way it goes. What’s special about them is that they are narrow 4" shelves that can only fit one jar, bottle or box. That way the cook instantly knows what items are available without running out in the middle of preparing dinner to get another can of chick peas when all along there was one last one behind the cous cous box. We had been using those metal industrial shelves you see in every artist’s loft. The texture drove me nuts to touch them and there was always something falling behind them. So I took them apart and spray-painted the corner braces, hoping to somehow invoke the great Eames God of organization, and screwed the big ladder like thing together and into the wall (with 4X20X1" pine shelves at mostly 6" increments and some larger ones toward the bottom). Not only did it get instantly filled up (it’s ten feet tall!), but I was forced to acknowledge my propensity for hoarding De Cecco Whole Peeled Tomatoes and Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans (six of each of them). Somehow we had five boxes of Domino Sugar... and that can of Jack Mackerel we’ve been saving because of the groovy looking label finally has a home on the very top shelf. Overall a very satisfying experience. |
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