Eli Skelly’s Portfolio – AesDes Spring ’25

My time in Aesthetics in Design

Like much of my graduate education, you got out what you put into this class, and that brand of open-ended creativity catalyzed my growth as an artist and maker. As an ATLAS student dabbling in engineering courses on my way to earning a certificate in Mechanical Design and Product Development, this class offered an unmatched opportunity to “go and do” while receiving constructive feedback from peers across the academic spectrum. I’m walking out of this semester with a much better understanding of who I am as a designer and e and, more importantly, how an entire history of aesthetic practice and reform has influenced the form of everyday designs around us. Now, I hope to go into the world and make things that not only improve lives and systems; I also want to make things that express my artistic perspective and add some spice to the world.

Now, onto what I did indeed make over the course of this class, which incorporated two main projects: an upcycle project made of recycled materials and a final project highlighting form over function. With freedom to explore various materials and tools throughout our creative processes, I found myself naturally turning to wood as my primary material to work with over this semester. As someone with a few years of woodworking in my back pocket, this didn’t necessarily surprise me. Instead, it gave me a chance to work on those deep-brain projects that often don’t get explored for lack of time or resources. You’ll see that both projects involved combining wood with something else, whether that be light, touch sensors, metal, or resin, to push my known bounds of physical design and fabrication.

Upcycle Project

For this assignment, I made a set of two small platters meant to embody an organic patchwork aesthetic. By creating pieces that are slightly askew in character, I experimented with the power of asymmetry and negative space in highlighting the natural characteristics of wood. This involved dusting off some leftover wood cuts from my garage and cracking open an epoxy resin set that I had purchased at least a year prior but never got around to using. After throwing in some copper and gold flakes from Art Parts in Boulder, allowing everything to cure, and turning these small blocks on a lathe, I ended up with the following:

Overall, this project was a wonderful start to the semester as I was able to experiment and push myself to try something new in woodturning, a category of current interest to me. Like many design processes, creating these platters was not without a few pivots and bumps, allowing me to learn while doing and become a better designer and fabricator overall. Learn more about my process, fabrication, and reflections here.

Final Project

To bring it home, I created what I like to call the “Wöddha Board,” commonly explained as a wooden version of the zen drawing Boddha Board. This user-driven product combines my love for woodworking with my love for creative technology, especially focusing on a minimalist aesthetic and Wabi Sabi principles of simplicity and impermanence. Also, I made sure the user’s contributions added to the overall aesthetic of the project in a way that ‘you are part of the art that you create.’

Compared to where I started at the beginning of the semester, this month-long project taught me that aesthetic exploration and fabrication will always include a healthy blend of mistakes, research, and extra time! I faced many challenges in integrating the lights and touch screen appropriately, but am really proud of how it came together as a functioning piece of artwork and engineering in the end. Similarly, this project serves as a foundation to expand this idea into furniture and/or installation art, perhaps through my Art, Engineering, and Making class next semester (Fall ’25). For more on Wöddha, check out my full write-up here.

https://www.aesdes.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/IMG_9969-1.jpg

Lingering Gratitude

A quick note of thanks to Professor Hertzberg and the members of Pod 3 for all of the helpful insights, fellow aesthetic pursuits, and attention over the course of these projects. I can’t wait to see what is next for all of us – and know it will be good!