I’m not a girl, not yet a woman, but I do have popular sensibilities.

Pop music plucks ideas and symbols from where ever it pleases to create a new narrative. So do I. Reflecting on how I see women and how the gaze of others affects this. By mapping my magpie like collection of images, songs, paintings and films I tell the story of my girl gang. My ceramic sculptures are a physical manifestation of my research into different ways of looking at girls.

This body of work investigates the contradictory aspects of human connections, which can serve as sources of solace as well as sources of sorrow. It particularly focuses on the dynamics of toxic relationships, highlighting how the allure of intense love is often intertwined with the potential for significant emotional distress.

The purpose of this exploration is to show in my installation the dichotomy between deep affection and detrimental dependency, how profound emotions can lead to both self-discovery and self-destruction. The reflection is rooted in the examination of the fine line that exists between passionate attachment and harmful reliance. 

This endeavor is not just a scholarly investigation but also a personal journey into the depths of human desire and its implications. By navigating this research through the lens of art, the objective is to contribute to the broader dialogue on the nature of emotional bonds and their impact on individuals.

 The exploration presented here seeks to offer insights into the enriching yet destructive facets of love, inviting viewers and readers alike to reflect on their own experiences and perceptions of romantic relationships. Through this artistic inquiry, the intention is to illuminate the multifaceted experiences of love, drawing attention to the intricate balance between its empowering and detrimental effects on the human spirit.

By reflecting upon the works I make and my thoughts surrounding them I've been looking to develop my way of understanding and working with art. By looking at both creative and emotional aspects underlying the artistic process I try to understand what impact they have on both the art and the artist.

Through my working process and by writing about my thoughts and emotions during this project I come to the conclusion that this is what can be referred to as a cathartic experience for me.

Mitt examensarbete tar avstamp i hur historia och historieskrivning alltid ärspekulativ. I det skrivna arbetet har jag undersökt hur avbildningar och teorierkring förhistorisk tid ser ut, och diskuterar tendensen att fylla historiskainformationsgap med antaganden som på olika sätt speglar och förstärker samtidanormer.

A recent discovery made at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, demostrated in a scientific setting that the human mind has a neural mechanism actively making the self avoiding thoughts about its own mortality. Curiously enough the research further suggests that an awerness of the selt's death could potently lead to a more meaningful life.There is an inclination around being sick and weak, holding back how we approach end of life care and our inherent mortality; which in return affects presence and expectations regarding our lives. If death and transience were to be viewed as natural occurences, mirroring how we view horticulture and gardens, this could ease anxiety and phobia regarding the end.In my paper I am sharing research by Athul Gawande and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross regarding death-phobia and end of life care. As suggested in some of the literature, death-phobia may occur due to anxiety over not living a meaningful life and I am using Lev Tolstoy's fictional book The Death of Ivan Ilyich to evoke thought about mortality and what a meaningful life could be compromised of.In my conclusion and through my sculpture of enlarged flowers made out of cast glass and high fired stoneware; I modestly argue that love and presence can provide meaning and solace, for conquering  death-phobic acculturation. That by acknowledging that transience is a forum for beauty one could enhance the magic of the mundane. 

In this writing, I guide the reader through different aspects of the emotional understanding and experiencing of art. The general purpose of the research is to argue that aesthetic experience is intertwined with various emotional stages. I attempt to decipher the meaning of an imagined or recreated nature (landscape and creatures) by other artists and then focus on my own realizations in creating it. To undertake this challenge, I aspire to understand the unconscious emotional connections of nature to humans, as well as the related notions of the uncanny and the corporeal. The methodology of the research is partly by finding evidence from the discipline of psychology and phenomenology, partly introspective and also process-based (technical) by focusing on the discipline of glass making. The paper’s main conclusions are embedded in my final work, which serve as an illustration as well as qualities of a craft-based research.

Abstract

This report accompanies my Master project in the fields of ceramic and glass, the CRAFT! MA program, Konstfack. In this project I fuse my industrial design toolbox and my current engagement in open-source 3D printing technology with my ceramic and glass craft practice. The first pair brings in notions of innovation and an active approach towards technological change, while the second carry ancient craft methods and knowledge. I develop and make 3D printers for clay and use them as an experimental ceramic work method. In this research based practice I use ceramics as the material for 3D printed glassblowing moulds. This act represents a link between ceramic and glass crafts, one that was known to the ancient Roman craftsmen. 

A view on craft and digital innovation

Although the computer is in use for several decades now, in most crafts it is still used mainly as an assistive device and we seem not to look at it as a professional tool; as a craft tool. New methods of making are out there. We need to have two toolboxes now: Our traditional one and our new digital one. We can already CAD our concepts, control CNC machines and build 3D-printers customised to our growing new practice. We share our new knowledge on open-source platforms, teach each other through the web (and around the globe) how to apply digital techniques to our craft. We now have the opportunity to join hands with the movements of democratisation of contemporary manufacturing techniques and reinvent our practice, our tools and what new-craft could be.

A self portrait. With an auto ethnographic study method and my own craft; glass making I examine tacit knowledge. A portrait not only of me, but also the human in need of control. An invite to look at our society and see how the measurable is in charge and positivistic science have the leading position in knowledge production. 

I aim for the subjective, the knowledge stored in my body which is passed on through making, in to the glass to be kept.

Jag har skapat ett verktyg för att kunna synliggöra mina egna tysta kunskaper. Under 120 timmar blåste jag en och samma form och sparade allt i en kronologisk ordning. Formen eller glaset blev ett verktyg genom vilket jag sedan kunde studera min kroppsliga inlärning utifrån. Jag ser mitt verk som en processberättande dagbok. Ett utsnitt av ett arbete ur vilket jag sedan kan betrakta min kroppsliga inlärning ur ett nytt perspektiv; genom glaset.

This paper is about my relationship to the material clay, and how it has affected my creative process. In this text I argue that clay is a material with human properties. I think of my practice as a dialogue between me and the material, an exchange rather than a monologue. This is how I picture clay as my main partner for discussing the deeper questions of what it is to be human, how clay as material can stand as metaphor for what it is to be living. I argue that clay has the poetic strength to communicate these questions of life of a more existential nature.

Through the argument of clay being a material with human properties, I reason that a practice in materiality is a study of empathy since we spend much time with our materials to fully grasp how they behave. I firmly believe that this world is in need of an empathic movement, and I think that the field of craft has the possibility to be part of that movement. I see practitioners within the field of craft as practitioners of the sometimes irrational, emotional and indescribable parts of life. As researchers of the more existential qualities of life, I believe that we are important voices in a society that is getting more focused on rationality. With some help from writers, practitioners and philosophers within and outside the field of craft, I reason around the following research question:

Can a material based practice stand as lodestar in todays society, to show empathy towards each other as beings as well as our surroundings?

Clay, the ancient, common, cold, slippery, heavy, dusty, funky material which stretches across our long land, how do we form an understanding of the material, and in turn, how does this knowledge impact what, how and why we make ceramics?  

To address these questions, I will take you on an imaginary studio visit where we follow my thoughts and artistic practice surrounding clay. On the tour we will consider topics concerning; how the industrial narrative of clay influences ceramic making, how challenging ceramic rules and advice affects ceramic making, how language shapes our understanding of wild clay and ceramics, how knowledge of clay impacts the maker’s relationship to the material as well as their ceramic practice, and why it’s important to communicate knowledge about ceramic materials for the development of contemporary ceramic making.

With employing the intuitive method as the initial approach in my bachelor work, I seek to express what I feel but can not see. In my body and in the clay. In my thoughts and in the clay. A meeting of the hand and the thought in which the subconscious and conscious build in unison.

My bachelor work has been a searching process with clay, where I’ve allowed my memories and my states of mind to color my work.

 My hands describe an alternative world from my subconscious and conscious states.

 A world in which nothing is what it seems.

I mitt examensarbete har jag undersökt min prekära situation som konsthantverkare och hemtjänstpersonal. Arbetet innehåller reflektioner från den prekära situation det innebär att arbeta i hemtjänsten och att vara brukare. Jag belyser mina medvetna och omedvetna översättningsprocesser från hemtjänsten till mitt konsthantverkskap. Arbetsprocessen i verkstaden binds ihop med prekariatets mindre synliga delar. Identitet, tillhörighet och gemenskap.

About moving language from one material to another. 

Jag tampas ständigt med känslan av att inte veta vad jag håller på med. Jag funderar och funderar kring mitt arbete och försöker hitta något att greppa tag i, som kan förklara allt. Ett ord jag har hittat längs vägen och fastnat för är ordet ”minnesbilder”. Till en början var det ett ord som löst beskrev ett projekt, två keramiska tavlor med abstrakta, intuitivt målade motiv. När jag har arbetat intuitivt har fälten fått växa fram allt eftersom vad som känns bra och någonstans längs vägen har jag formulerat att färgerna, formerna och stämningen i målningarna kommer från en inre värld av bilder: minnen.

This project asks questions about identity, place and the role of structures as memory aids. It specifically deals with the aftermath of having moved from one culture to another,  and how being surrounded by a new and foreign architectural world can interrupt one’s connec-tion to the sense of self. Working from the question “Can I recreate what I lost by using an imaginary architecture imbued with my memories?” I create what I call architectural ghosts, structures made with porcelain, wood, wire and metal as an attempt to replace the memory connections I lost when leaving Mexico.

I mitt examensarbete vill jag undersöka form, yta och funktion. Alla tre komponenter kommer bilda en samtidsservis bestående av en serie bruksföremål som är inspirerade av enkla linjer och urban miljö. Min ambition är att de ska användas till vardags. Vilka funktioner behövs i vardagen? Vad är samtidens funktionalism?

Jag vill addera olika slags relief som påminner om betong, det ska vara ett enkelt uttryck som kan binda ihop dem olika produkterna med varandra och samtidigt visa på materialens, glas och keramik, olika kvaliteter. Målet är att produkterna ska få fler än ett användningsområde. Hur kan jag ge fler funktioner åt ett objekt?

A full working day I spent measuring the minerals and oxides for glaze tests; 31g of feldspar, 11g of chalk, 32g of kaolin, 7g of dolomite, 13g of quartz, 10g of zirconium silicate. In total 32 tests. That means adding 32 different grams of oxides or stains to the mix of minerals written above. Labelling each batch with a specific code to separate them. The following day I spent filtering each test through 100 mesh and dipping 64 clay tests. 

Out of these 64 tests I liked 4. 

As a crafter I am used to having to do things more than once to find what I am searching for and my master project has been no different. I have let my attraction to colors, shadows, forms and in-between shapes guide me through these two years and this is where i ended up - with framed utilitarian objects in the shape of a cake. 

Written here is a text about process, everyday and memory. My relation to the materials I work in and a reflection about using objects in a ritualistic way. I am writing this text from third- perspective, it has given me enough distance to myself and my practice (and process) to easier be critical and more direct regarding my subjects within my master project. The novel perspective gives the reader a chance to easily get closer to situations from a crafters point of view - how the plaster feels when mixing it with water and frustration towards norms around utilitarian objects. My project is named It’s a piece of cake and the series of utilitarian objects I made for my master project I call Tårtan (cake). 

I call my project COLORUM - A ceramic investigation of form in relation to balance and spatiality. Colorum means colors in Latin. Dividing the word, color from English, and rum is space in Swedish.

I have investigated the ceramic process through basic geometric shapes. Trying to understand, learn, feel and master the material. Work with and against it, control, and let go of control.

I have been working with casting techniques and exploring the primary forms, challenging the material, pushing the clay norms to their edge. By relating to geometry, I defy myself to create these precise forms in ceramics. I combine soft, colorful glazes on the surface with a strict body that creates a juxtaposition that opposes each other. The journey continued by challenging the precise forms through gravity movement creating imploding bodies. I'm curious about the dialogue and the meeting between different expressions in shapes, material, and volumes.

This paper is an investigation into the crossroads of traditional and contemporary glass craft techniques. Through innovative methods in the workshop I have set out to bring glass into the public sphere using the potential for handcraft in architecture.

It must be a bad child

I build rooms, installations, where I combine objects into scenes.  This scene is an attempt to portray feelings and mental states surrounding sexual abuse. I'm building a girls' room, but it's more of a psychological place than a real room. I want to let the girl take place and show a trauma that lives in the hidden, depending on the environment not seeing, in the public space.  It's about living with memories of a trauma in a traumatized body. I place two larger sculptures in the installation, a girl and a woman, who share the (mental) room. Selection of materials is an important part of my practice. In my installations there is almost always a feeling of discomfort, that things are not what they seem at first. I use the expectations that exist around different materials and what they symbolize and create uncertainty in the room by, for example, giving them new places and functions. I use film to get movement into the installation. The sculptures come to life through the film. The film contains no sound when I see the state I portray as silent.

Abstract

Saker som inte finns och saker som inte har hänt (II)

Things that do not exist and things that haven´t happened (II)

It feels like I have a bulb of glass around my head. I'm in the real world but still I am not. My head is in another dimension. I can see that my body is moving but the movement feels unreal and

disconnected. Sounds are distorted – a sound from my head lies like a layer over all the sounds

around me. To be in the real world but not belonging, a place where sounds and movements feel

different and strange. It´s a quiet state, a secret panic that doesn’t show itself outwards. You must

wait, it will eventually pass.

My bachelor project is about a psychological state, which I call bathroom-psychosis. It’s about being

traumatised by sexual abuse. My work is about what happens afterwards, when the trauma is not

present. It’s about the human mind's ability to shut off and block difficult states but its lacking ability to take care of the mind fully. It’s a silent panic, turned

inwards – inside the own body. It´s a secret. A feeling you must suffocate. It must be hidden.

“Longing for Touch” is an investigation of what

makes us drawn to tactile interactions. With this

project and essay I am focussing on the importance

of our haptic sense and draw attention to the experiences

we lack, in a world where our experiences

are getting digitalized to a greater extent.

I am investigating how phenomena such as pleasure

and aesthetics are linked together and how

they can be used to foster physical interaction.

I have a fascination of how we as humans are

drawn towards disgust, and I’m interested in the

tension these contradicting feelings create. In this

essay I present research, that shows disgust both

revolts and attracts, and I go over why disgust is

an effective tool to capture attention.

In the studio, I’m transforming my findings from

the research into physical objects.

By focusing on aesthetics while playing with

elements of disgust – I can create objects we are

drawn to touch.

This essay and the work within describes my project where I have been investigating the possibilities to explore the material pewter through my craftsmanship as a glassblower. I've been trying to find new methods and expressions in my work by adding another material to my practice and questioning my own tradition as a glassblower and my perception of glass. Inspired by post humanist theories on materialism I have through a experimental approach developed a method of combining the two materials into objects or Hybrids.

In this collaborative Craft Master project by Ulrika Barr and Kristina Levén, we have investigated how glass can affect an environment to create a space in between. A “Ma-space” that could offer a pause in the everyday life in relation to the public sphere. We have worked parallel with two expressions of glass in relation to a room. Rocks of Glass casted hot glass together with Foamglas and colors and Veils of Glass- fused window glass in leaded techniques. By using filming as a medium, projections brings out the inner world of the glass. Sound is another layer in the collage installation outcome.The collaboration has been from first idea and intuitive investigations in the workshop to the final installation.The material outcome is a unique expression for this Glass Craft duo called BarroLevén. The written part of the project includes both common and separate parts.

This paper presents my master project “Grey Flowers” which is an incarnation of a poetic metaphor to a ceramic flower sculpture. The project is an installation of crafted flowers as a strong symbol of a short lived moment which has now stopped for ages. This sculptural work is based on the notion of decadence of the 19th century and presents a new way which it can been interpreted.

Ceramics, clay and firing processes are used as a methods of unpredictability and a “happy accident”. The main aim of the project is to create a feeling of abandonment by showing decaying and dying beauty. The sculptural work investigates the different aspects of the flower and its representation trying to show different approaches tothinking and working while telling about the same idea.

In the chapter craft and meaning are explored, with whell-throwing as an example, both from a personal inward perspective and a communicative outward perspective. Both of these perspectives on meaning may explain why many makers stubbornly stand by their craft practices and materials, and why art and crafts continues to affect and concern us over time. 

In concrete words this master project is the exploration of violent dynamics through craft practices. Using performance as a method of creation in a collaborative project; clay as the main material, the maker’s body as the subject and sound as the space, having the possibility to transform and exchange their rolls during the creation process. The work is thought to be presented in a public space or a space which can be accessible to a wide range of people. The ephemeral characteristic of the piece lead me to use multi-media documentation and on-the-side pieces which have been crucial for this exploration.