SAND MEMORIES
A dialogue between craft and technology, where memory, material, and time merge through wood, sand, and digital reproduction.
The wooden statue was sculpted in a remote village in Zimbabwe. The African boy indifferently took my suggestion to sit next to him, watching his work. When I asked to join and sculpt with him he turned his head towards me and sent a surprised look straight into my eyes.
He put a hammer and a delicate sculptor in my hand and asked me to practice on an left-over piece of wood, sending a look from time to time to find that this was not the first time I had held these tools in my hands. Only after he was convinced that I did not intend to spoil the work, he agreed to join.
He sculpted, to me he allow to handle the crease of the garment on the waist and the hair, I started too low behind the ear. The boy asked me to be careful, proving to me with his finger that the hair I pierced is not in the right place. When we finished he gave me the wooden statue. Even to this day I do not know whether he gave it to me because he appreciated my effort, or he was totally unsatisfied with the result.
I scanned the sculpture to recreate it. Maybe the printer would re-sculpt it? why not? Modern technology and a common material, sand that although it fell victim to the printing revolution and was forced to become sophisticated so that it would be measurable and accurate and fast to harden, did not lose its ability to get liquid and hot metal closer to it.
The sand printer is used to produce mold cores in an aluminum casting industry. It is an amazing innovation, a true technical revolution. In an industry with an ancient and almost frozen tradition, it is possible to create internal and three-dimensional space that easily skip over the obstacles of extraction and distortion.
I love molds, love their essence, the sand molds are the most intriguing of them all. The charm of the common material that works against its nature. The color of the layers and the meeting marks left behind by the heat and the casting process. I am thrilled by the structure, the shape and the secret that are slowly assembled and crumbled at once.
I chose to design an object that is both a product and a mold, an object with an inner secret
sometimes visible, sometimes implied. Its end is closed. Its shape constantly changes as a result of the encounter with time, with the audience and with the spirit.
Exhibited at:
“Smart Materials – Stupid Materials” , Julia Mizrachi, Vitrina gallery, HIT – Holon Institute of Technology, Israel . 2016
Curator: Shlomit Baumann
“On Guard” Hansen House Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel. 2018
Curators: Michal Evyatar, Guy Aon, Adi Orian.
”Biennale of Craft & Design 2020 – First Person, Second Nature” MUZA Eretz Israel Museum Tel Aviv. 2020
Israel.
Curators: Henrietta Eliezer Brunner, Yuval Saar, Nir Haramt, Merav Rahet, Liora Rosi.
”Breaking the Barriers of Material” New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan. 2022
Curators: Henrietta Eliezer Brunner, Yuval Saar, Nir Haramt, Merav Rahet, Liora Rosin.
Part of the of The Eretz Israel Museum – MUZA, Collection Tel Aviv, Israel.
