So even with the ridiculously easy goal of posting once a day for the rest of May, I didn't actually post every day. For shame. But its the summer now, and I (theoretically) have time to do stuff like put up some of my favorite stuff from this last semester.

The first thing I will show is related to my earlier How to Make Rubber Molds post, and is quite possibly one of my all-time favorite final reviews ever. These are pictures from the final review of the second in a series of two graduate studios I took last year. We spent the last three weeks building physical objects, and at the end it was decided that we needed an installation to truly showcase all of this tactile work. So a few people commandeered (sp?) the small conference room at the end of our studio and got to work.

The room was anchored by this scene, which is a complete re-creation of my friend Hannah's bedroom to showcase her final project: two pillows placed side-by-side on the bed, with the phrases "When I don't sleep I can't work," and "When I don't work I can't sleep" cross stitched on either one:

It was such an appropriate message for the often compulsively creative and driven nature of the students here, and placing it in the manufactured serenity of a bedroom with these two vibrating messages on top was very effective. The room actually became a makeshift bedroom as thesis presentations loomed closer, and it wasn't uncommon for me to get to studio in the mornings and find someone napping on the bed!

Also in the installation room was a corner dedicated to a collaborative group calling itself Sustain Me, which was dedicated to producing gentle acts of public intervention that educated people about environmental issues. They produced a stop-motion animation about coral reefs using all of these hand-sewn "creatures" and then re-created the installation for the final review.

Mary's awesome "cross-stitched" tape lettering on the fence on the empty lot next to our studio. The building that used to be here burned down the year before I came to school here, and it supposedly housed a very cool diner.

Huy's huge cardboard letters and luscious photographs of them in abandoned buildings.

Melissa's "us" made out of garbage collected from a local lake.

There are zillions more I could show because it was a really cool set of projects! Many thanks to Mary, who put a bunch of the pics from the final review on flickr.