I’ve come to relish the unforeseen turns projects take in school. Not knowing what the finished product will look like, or what ideas will come, is at the same time both exciting and dangerous.

In the latter sense, a perfect example is my latest (and first, actually) short paper for my history class. I read the assignments, I thought about them, I read the texts and answered the question. Or so I thought- inevitably, I always lead myself to get sidetracked in tangential thoughts. Sooner or later these extra thoughts all add up and make me lose touch with the original matter, in this case the homework assignments.

But there are positives.

Our first class-wide studio assignment is basically to watch ice melt and draw what we observe. Of course, everyone melts the ice in a different way. Some freeze it into unique shapes, others color it, some hang it, and so on. I think someone even fried the ice (yes, as in a pan).

My original idea was the watch how cavities I froze into the ice grew and met the shrinking overall perimeter of the ice. Through a number of steps, I now have a totally different project. Lately I have been ignoring the ice and concentrating on how I recorded what I saw as it melted, which in data form is very different from what actually happened. Keeping that I mind, the project then becomes about the differences in what are two truths.

Perhaps it isn’t the changes in focus, but how they came about. I would draw or diagram each step- melting sizes, time, shape, etc. and inevitably the drawing would expose some new idea, or some lacking element, and I would be reoriented in a new direction.

All pretty obvious, from one step to the next, but I loved the process and look forward to more unknowns.

Here’s a drawing from somewhere in the middle. I think it looks like a germ.