.png)
By Mohammed Wajeehuddeen
Greetings everyone, today I wanted to share with you a creative passion of mine that I have been fostering for the past few years. Ever since I was quite young, I have always had a burning desire to create, may it be through drawing, enacting whole narratives through my little superhero action figures, imagining up my own fictional fantasy world, you name a creative art and ill probably of at least engaged with it before. So of course, with all that being said, due to all this creativity festering inside my little mind, I naturally saw the world differently to most people.
What many may have seen as “Just a useless tin can”, I saw as something that could be useful to me one day, yet I did not know when or even how. Thus, after a few years of collecting random “junk” such as broken magnets, bottle caps, canvas wood and so much more, I inevitably had a diverse array of “Junk” that was just sitting in my wardrobe. Funnily enough I recall the idea to create my first creation coming about when I decided to experiment with a cardboard pipe from a used-up cling film role as I wanted to make the cardboard pipe stronger.
The reason for this is because I wanted to make a table for my alarm clock as I previously had my alarm clock sitting on the floor beside my bed which I found to be quite irritating in the morning when I needed to switch it off in order to not wake up my whole entire neighbourhood.
I first started experimenting with it by grabbing a cardboard box, crushing it, rolling it up and shoving It inside the previously hollow cling film pipe. I then sawed off the loose ends with a combination of pouring water onto the surplus cardboard while rapidly sawing It off with a Beyblade launcher. After finishing this gruelling process, I then let my art piece rest for a day and came back to find that the previously wet and weak cardboard had now hardened up like a scar.
I then finished my art piece by shoving a small wooden stake through the top of it by drilling the stake through the (now hardened) cardboard with my bare hands, while also pouring water onto the cardboard to weaken and break through it with the wooden stake to make a hole.
AND WALLAH! That was the story of how I made my first “Junk creation” in the form of a table leg, unfortunately I never got around to finishing that table as my parents just ended up buying one for me instead.
Over the next few years I went on to create even more creations in the future out of “Junk” with each time employing a new technique such as, carving, using supporting objects, binding with appropriate materials and more.
One thing of note is that, of course with the nature of my resources used for these projects being “Junk”, (Even the tools used) I think you already know quite well what would happen if these items were to be put under some pressure, “SNAP, BANG, CRASH”, so unfortunately I am most regretful to inform you that half of these creations shown are no longer with us today. Of course, whenever my beautiful creations that I poured my time, heart and soul into came crashing down It did strike decent amount of anger and sadness within me. However, ironically enough, I am most thankful that I went through this suffering as through these unfortunate events, it has given me a proper motivation and drive to learn and improve upon my craft through research.
This research in turn led me to not only learning a lot more about engineering, but it also led me onto the road to embarking upon some knowledge that would really push my creativity to its limits.
Thus I decided to study all sorts of techniques to harden materials such as wood and metal as well as learning about compliant mechanisms and trigger mechanisms used on everyday objects that we take for granted such as doors, cars, taps, E.T.C. At first when looking at this project on one hand and looking at the projects I had already made on the other hand, I almost dismissed the idea entirely as I thought to myself, “That is way to advanced for me, I can’t even begin to understand how that was made plus how can I even make something as intricate as that with the junk that I have. I made a few sketches and plans in my notebook to attempt to understand the inner workings of the mechanisms used on a technical level so that I could eventually create it for myself.
And thus, this is where the story ends, well at least for now. I sincerely thank you for reading through my crazy ramblings. I have really enjoyed sharing one of my greatest passions with you today and I hope to create some more cool stuff in the future. Again, thank you for reading and I hope you have a great rest of your day, goodbye.
Comments