49) An Ideal Loft

Decoration of Interiors. My client's ideal loft. 2010

Mixed Media.

This project has been my favorite up to now. Each of us had to pick a client, ask them all sorts of questions that would help us understand what their ideal loft would look like, we had to create the floor plan and finally make a 3D model of it.

We were free to create anything we wanted, but with some conditions that we all had to follow: The loft had to have a second story, half of the size of the ground floor from where we could see part of the ground floor and to the outside area, and the opposite wall from the entrance had to be a 6 meter tall piece of glass. The loft was situated on the 5th floor of an 8 story building.

Front view

Top view

I picked one of my best friends as my client because i knew she would come up with some crazy ideas for her "ideal" loft and make it more challenging and interesting for me.

She wanted her loft to be very opened and bright, also she wanted the bedroom in the ground floor so that the second floor would only be a huge walking closet, and the best part was that she wanted a jacuzzi in the living room!! Of course she had no problems about privacy so i pretty much had to work with it.

The materials i used were mostly fabric, clay, cardboard, cardboard paper, all other kinds of texturized papers, glue, wire and beads. I went to several fabric stores to get samples of fabric that i loved and used them as carpets and upholstery and created every piece on my own.

I divided the big 6 meter tall piece of glass into 6 different parts with beams and columns for support and for aesthetic reasons. I used opaque glass from the middle to the highest part for privacy issues, and from the middle to the ground i put translucent glass, which was separated in sliding and fixed doors.

East view

The ground floor consisted of an opened kitchen with a bar, a dining and living area, a small bathroom for guests, a bedroom with a small laundry area beneath the stair cases, and a jacuzzi in between the bedroom and the living room. I separated the living area from the bedroom with an organza wall, which provides some privacy but still allows the light to go through (because it is still a little translucent). The flooring was laminated wood for the entire loft, except the bedroom and the first floor which had carpet instead to make it more comfortable. Obviously the jacuzzi is something a little private so i tried to balance privacy with my client's wishes, and finally decided to place it in between the bedroom and living room with entrances from both sides.

Bedroom

Bedroom view from outside

Entrance and dining area

Kitchen, bar and dining area

The first floor consisted of a big bathroom with a big mirror, separated from the walking closet with a glass sliding door, and a small entertainment and massaging area. Its a very opened and bright area due to the several big mirrors and opened space from the main area downstairs.

West view

Walking closet, massaging area and entrance to bathroom

Thank you Vale for your awesome ideas! Te quiero!

48) Ribbon tile, gallery, rustic home

Decoration of Interiors. Other projects. 2010

Mixed Media.

I will show you some other smaller project we made here in Toulouse before our final one:

Ribbon tile

The purpose of this project was to design a ribbon tile for a bathroom or kitchen using any kind of materials. and this is what i came up with.

My grandma and mom have a small jewelry business with african and south american beads, and those beads have been a tremendous help for my models, as you can see in this ribbon tile design.

Gallery:

This was one of our color assignments and we had to play with color combinations, shapes and sizes to design a nice gallery.

I was inspired by a German bank that i saw when i went to Munich to visit. It had two different color lights in the shape of lines that went from the floors to the walls to the ceilings, and i thought it would be so cool for a gallery to interact the art with the viewers.

Rustic Home

I was assigned to create a 2D model of a rustic interior (Living room and entrance). I chose every furniture, every color, every texture and all the lightings in the interior, including as well every piece of ornament. I added small numbers to the plan to link them to the information board underneath.

47) Dividing spaces

Decoration of Interiors. Spaces. 2010

Mixed media.

We were learning about the importance of spatial planning in an interior and for this assignment in particular we had to separate a house into 6 different spaces, (3 closed, one public, one intersection, and an outside area). My closed areas were the two rooms at the back, one bedroom with its private bathroom, and a guest room. My opened area was the living room to the left from the entrance, my intersection area was the halls, joining both the opened and closed spaces, and my outside are was the entrance.

I added a lot of levels to the ground to separate spaces without having to use walls.

Entrance

46) A musician's home (From Canada to Peru)

In December 2009, i stopped studying at the University of British Columbia. I took about a year and a half to finally decide what i really wanted to study. I love art so much, but i honestly never saw myself painting and drawing and making art for a living. I wanted something a little different, something that would give me the opportunities to meet more people, to move around more and something that i was really passionate about, so i decided to go for Interior Design.

After having decided what i really wanted to do for the rest of my life, I applied to several school in Canada and Europe. I got accepted in Emily Carr University in Vancouver, but despite of that i decided to come to Marbella, Spain. I had always wanted to live in Europe and i found a design school in Marbella (Marbella Design Academy), and even though i didn't really know what i was getting into at first, i took my chances, and i don't regret my decision at all.

I've met so many great people, i've travelled a lot and i've learnt so much about so many things that it makes me happy so to have come here. I know i closed a good opportunity back in Canada, but i'm more than sure that many other doors are gonna open up for me here.

My classes in Spain were supposed to start in September 2010, so i had 8 months in Peru to do whatever i wanted to do. Obviously i wasn't going to sit at home doing nothing, so I

took a Decoration of Interiors course for a semester in "Toulouse Lautrec Institute".

This was the place where i was really introduced to Interior Design, and i loved it.

Color project. Musician's home. 2010

Mixed Media.

The first thing we did was colors. I already knew so much about colors but every time i go over it, i learn more and more. For this assignment, the teacher told us to find a real client, interview him and make a living room/dining room he/she would love to have.

We wrote down several professions in small pieces of paper, and each of us had to pick one randomly. I got "musician", so i basically had to find a Peruvian musician and interview him.

I chose "Juan Jose Chiquisengo", a very well known peruvian pianist who has had several concerts all around the world, and currently resides in Spain.

After i interviewed him, this was the living room/ dining room i thought he would like:

(I did every single thing on my own, from the walls, to the furniture, to even the smallest details in the piano. It took some time but i loved it.)

Entrance view:

Dining room:

Room divider details + piano:

Living room:

Piano details:

View from inside the dining room:

45) Nature Flesh

Painting. Nature Flesh. 2009

Acrylic paint and mediums.

After i was done with "Modernizing Porongo," we had a special guest who was going to teach us all about acrylic paint and mediums, how they work and what we can use them for. I already had a background on acrylic mediums and had already experimented with them the previous year, but i realized that what i knew before was nothing compared to what i was learning at the moment.

Nature Flesh was the successor of Modernizing Porongo, maintaining the same concept but at the same time, integrating what i had learnt.

Nature Flesh is an installation that i created using several separate pieces made of fabric, paint and pouring medium.

For my installation i used a new and one of my favorite painting techniques that i learnt. On a glossy surface such as glass or plastic, i would pour lots of pouring medium, creating with a palette knife the shape that i wanted, and i would add a bit of acrylic paint on the medium, pigmenting it. (I added several colors for different finishes in each piece) Once the medium was dry, which usually lasted about 12 hours or a day sometimes, i would slowly remove it from the surface and i would get an awesome, almost translucent piece of what was really just paint. In many of these pieces i added the fabric that i used in my previous installation for better texture.

My installation is called nature flesh because each piece reminds me so much of the meat markets in Peru., in the way they hang the meat for exhibition, the natural colors and the organic shapes and textures they possess.

I hang my pieces in a tree at a park next to my house and left it there for about a day to create public reaction. It wad so much fun walking around the place looking at people's reaction to my work.

I want to thank my little brother for helping me set the installation up. I love you.

33) Picture Frame (From Canada to Peru)

After my first year in Vancouver, i went back to Peru to spend time with my family during summer, but since i pretty much do nothing other than relaxing when i'm there, i decided to take some painting courses just for the sake of learning and doing what i like most.

I realized that paintings in Peru are usually different that those in North America, not only because of the style they use but also because of the different materials that are available. I personally LOVE peruvian artists, i don't exactly know of anyone in particular, but simply

walking in the streets and seeing the amazing things people come up with is just unbelievable. It always makes me think how, having so much talent, opening a small store is as far as they can get, while many others without that talent are much better off. I find it very unfair sometimes, but i guess that's how life works.

I wanted to learn the techniques these artists in Peru use so bad that i signed up to a painting course in the institute "Peruano-Japones" in June 2009.

Picture Frame. Peruano - Japones. Summer 2009

Acrylics on wood.

We learnt how to create nice textures on wood using a sponge, molding paste, hard fabric and styrofoam. For example, I created the little leafs using molding paste and a palette knife and added some basic texture on the surface of the frame using the molding paste and the sponge. It's amazing how simple creative things can end up looking pretty good.

Every part of this picture frame has texture, either with the fabric or with the molding paste, but there's no single smooth area other than the center which is where the picture goes.

14) Perspectives. Non-smoking sign.

Non-Smoking Sign. 2007
Wood, cardboard, latex. (45x45x45 in)

I started with the idea of the cornered frames and the 3rd dimension, and finished with a complete study of perspectives and optical illusions.
With this piece i wanted to experiment with the optical illusions that many artists had been working with. Ex. Julian Beever (An artist who is know for his chalk art in the streets). It always amazed me how our visual system could flip into thinking that it can see a flat, 2D pattern, when in reality it's a disjoint 3D one. I chose this specific sign for personal reason (I don't smoke).

The creation of this piece was a bit more complicated that the other one i had previously done. I build this room by my own, put every piece in this room together creating a more challenging surface to work on. How did i do it? It took me a while to figure out how myself, but it honestly looks harder than it actually is. I projected the image onto the surface and traced it with a pencil. Then i painted it.

This images are examples of the perception of depth in vision. From a specific perspective, we perceive the image of the non-smoking as a 2D image in a 3D surface, however, if we move from that perspective into another one, even if it's only 5cm to the right, the image will be distorted and will not show the image in its perfection.

13) Framed Marbles

3 sides cornered frame. 2007
Crystal balls on board.

"One of the themes i am working on is the 'different dimensions'. This is the beginning of a bigger piece of art where dimensions and perspectives are manipulated, modified and authorized by me. I chose to make the frame in a way that it exploits the idea of the 3rd dimension, and i filled it with crystal balls to add up to the 3D and a more vivid view. The shininess and the perfect circular shapes of the marbles express the simplicity and pureness of nature, which is something that i love." - Pilar Rodriguez 15/10/07

Applying the same ideas from the previous piece, i create this new cornered frame. This time i added a bit more of challenge to the work by adding an extra side to the frame, and by changing the texture of the 'eyes'. Some of the feedback that i got from the previous piece was that if i was intending to portray eyes, i should have used a more realistic and believable material, like crystal balls. In this piece the crystal balls are a symbol for 'eyes' or nature.
I kept experimenting with the idea of the 3rd dimension, and i wanted to keep experimenting with it little by little before starting on a big 3D piece. Which you will see later on.

12) Eyes

Cornered Frame. Eyes. 2007
Mixed Media. Styrofoam or canvas.

Combining both ideas of Damien Hirst (Except this time i didn't use real eyes, but simulations if them) and Yoko Ono, with the idea of a cornered frame.

I wanted to expand my boundaries from a flat plane to the third dimension. I created a simulations of eyes (Of all living animals) and pasted them onto a canvas on a cornered frame, which i made myself and painted in bronze, so that when hanged on a corner it gives the sensation that you are constantly being looked at.