Ashley Bohne and Michal Schwab, “Divergent Fates”
Mentor: Yevgeniya Kaganovich, Art & Design
Poster #52

In 2018, professor Yevgeniya Kaganovich launched the project Divergent Fates, a project diving into Kaganovich’s longstanding research interests in materiality, particularly her research into reused plastic, polyurethanes, and rubber. The current portion of this project, Tree Inuit’s Chair, focuses on using reclaimed materials like paper, cardboard, plywood, and chipboard, and using these new materials to develop a new body of work. This work addresses issues of material agency, sustainability, consumption, and human impact on the environment. Currently, our research team is working on reverse-engineering trees from chairs and making trees as they might be remembered by paper. In order to do so, we are tending to grafted trees at Lynden Sculpture Garden as well as crafting artificial wood out of layered newspaper held together by wood glue. At Lynden, we landscape and provide upkeep to the sculpted trees, as well as assist in the process of grafting and arranging the branches to form desired shapes. When we aren’t at Lynden, we work in Yevgeniya’s studio, building the newspaper logs layer by layer. In addition, previous portions of these newspaper logs are being cut and arranged to imitate the shadow of a chair. Recently, the work has been exploring how to finish these pieces and methods of attachment. So far, the most successful method we have discovered is simply coating the sections in wood glue, which is later sanded off to reveal the “grain” of the “wood”.  As for the methods used to attach the pieces together, we are experimenting with fiber techniques such as sewing and crocheting.    We are expecting the Lynden trees to continue growing over multiple years into chair and shelter shapes, as well as completing the chair shadow made from its artificial counterpart. These final results will convey ideas about sustainability, memory, and the importance of materials.