Childhood: Maquette & Multiples - Process Log

Eliza Kroll
Nov 28, 2023
3 min read

Childhood Part 1: Maquette

Research

For this assignment, I had to make a one-foot to one-inch square model of my childhood bedroom. I definatly had a lot of directions that I could have made with this project. During this assignment, I realized how few images of my room I actually have. The images I do have are of when I had just rearranged my room or was in the middle of remodeling it, which shows it half-painted or in some other sort of disarray. I ultimately decided to stick to the image I most associated in my mind as my "Childhood Bedroom."

Description/Process

For this assignment, I started off with a sketch depicting the four walls, ceiling, and floor of my bedroom. Next, as a class, we made floorplans of the room and measured the walls, and Nell Ruby cut the base of our rooms out of black chipboard with an extra two inches tacked onto each side. One of my walls is oddly shaped, so I struggled to cut and crease my walls correctly. Per Nell's advice, I made a tiny paper mock-up of that wall, which helped me figure it out. I used an Exacto knife to score the walls. I had to redo one of the walls due to a missed cut, however, I thankfully figured this out before I glued it down. I glued and taped down the walls to the base and to each other. I then painted the walls white and created the texture of the floor. I also painted the exterior walls black to keep the board from warping inwards. Next, I painted my walls the correct pink color. I then realized I had forgotten my closet doors, so I added those and painted them with a coat of pink paint and added a second coat of paint to my walls. I added a wire to act as my closet coat bar thing. I began building my furniture with cardboard and hot glue. I ended up spray painting them a satin white color to match what I had. The pulls on the furniture are small stick-on jewels, and the legs of the furniture are push-pins. I made the books on the bookcase from folded paper. I made my mattress from quilt batting and my pillows from foam. I wrapped all of them in fabric and hot glued them in place. I cut out clothes for the floor from scrap fabric. I created the hangers free-hand by bending wire. The clothes on the hangers are removable because I hot-glued both sides of the fabric together. I painted the top of the quilt to resemble the quilt I had when I was very young and used the reverse side of the fabric for the sheets to create my original sheets. I made the lamp from wire, hot glue, a cardboard base, and individually glued on strings of embroidery floss. I decided to paint the exterior walls the same colors that they are in real life. Therefore, the hallway is a dark sage green, and the outside is a red brick.

Images

Sketches

Building the Walls

Injuring Myself (On Accident) and Receiving a Blood Blister (this is moments after it happened)

Painting the Walls

Building Furniture

Everything Coming Together

Final Product

Childhood Part 2: Multiples

Research

For the second part of this assignment, I had to make clay sharables for my classmates from objects relating to my childhood and childhood room. I decided to think about things that show parts of my personality that were encapsulated in my room as a child. I made a horseshoe, a doll, a book, a butterfly, and a heart.

Description/Process

I molded the five objects from non-drying clay. I then placed them in muffin tins and mixed the plastic. I made sure that they were secure and then made my molds. I waited about 12 hours before prying them out of the muffin-tin. I removed the clay from the molds. I was actually pretty surprised at how well they showed the details of the clay. I mixed the plaster to create a mildly set pudding consistency and created my share-ables. One set of my plaster molds failed. I believe this is because it dried out too much and it did not have enough plaster in it to begin with. I decided to keep them flaky and chalky in consistency. After I completed the share-ables themselves I wrote small confessionals to show the part of my personality or life that they "admit" to.

Meaning

I chose a horseshoe because I was a horseback rider for 9 years. I chose a heart because the quilt on my bed had hearts on it. I chose a doll because my favorite doll as a child was named Dolly and was a Waldorf-style doll. I chose a butterfly because as a tween my walls had paint-chip butterflies. Finally, I chose a book because my favorite book as a child was Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery.