My portfolio

Now that we have reached the end of this course, I want to look back at everything that I have accomplished in this semester. I initially enrolled in this course as I was interested in learning more about how art worked alongside engineering, and I am very glad that I did. This semester, I learned just about everything one could about what the main and commonly used aesthetics throughout history, which has taught me a ton about how to make functional pieces look more appealing to others. This is a skill that I think will be very beneficial to me as I become a working professional engineer. I have always thought about things in a way that prioritizes function over form, and this class did a good job of teaching my brain how to think about design in ways that are more than just does this thing work.

I also learned lots of new skills in this course. For my upcylce project, I was able to successfully hand carve a wooden chess piece from a stick I found by a creek without any instructions. This was my favorite part of the class and showed me that I was capable of creating something that others could look at consider quality art, which isn’t something I really thought I was capable of. My post detailing that project can be found here. https://www.aesdes.org/2025/02/19/rustic-hand-carved-chess-piece/

My final project was more of a struggle for me, as I had a hard time narrowing down what I actually wanted to make. I would have loved to make a beautiful art piece, but when brainstorming, I was only able to come up with ideas that had general practical applications. This lead me to creating a minimalist lazy Susan style spice rack, which was a process that I very much enjoyed. The links to more detailed posts about this project are below. https://www.aesdes.org/2025/04/23/minimalist-spice-rack-part-1/ https://www.aesdes.org/2025/05/01/minimalist-spice-rack-part-2/

All in all, I was very happy with how this class turned out and think I learned a lot a valuable skills that I can apply to the design process for the rest of my life.