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The installed work includes a line of mini sculptures, sketchbook drawings and process notes, one linework shelf design, and one ambient lighting stand design.

Form and Function

Caitie Cardwell

Undergraduate
Form and Function gives primacy to form by way of gestural mark-making, linework, and sculpture before translation into furniture. Unrestricted by functional constraints during initial ideation, the practice emphasizes the specific gestural forms to serve as foundations for further development. An exploratory process of sketching and note-taking subsequently interpret and refine an individual shape’s potential as different functional items. The body of work comes together from a personal interest in furniture, fascination with the boundary between functional design and fine art, and in response to a space between how we are trained to move through the design process and my instinctive approach to art and creative ideation. Form and Function embraces iterative exploration and by asking “What could this become?” the practice composes working objects that require some level of interpretation or deliberate configuration but do not truly abandon functional purpose.