Connect

Big Kite "Burqa" Big Kite "Dome" For my kites, I wanted to use the theme of connection, and not only try and connect to the culture of the UAE, but tie in my aesthetic as well. I initially had three small kites and a large  k ite  that I cut down to size.  For my first designs, I was thinking of creating two smaller kites, one in the fashion of a woman’s Kandura , a  piece of  traditional dress worn underneath the  abaya by women .  My plan was to make a design based on the embroidery found on a woman’s     Kandura sleeves.  I thought of using an underlying geometric tessellation for both kites and one the woman’s, adding  Talli , the metallic embroidery of the Kandura around the edges, and for the man’s, adding a  Tarboosh , the tassel which hangs from the neck of the men’s Kandura .   I eventually changed the design and the final one  featured an Islamic ...

Small Kite Big Kite Dogwood and Dunes   Katya Hutchinson   “Connection” implies many layers of meaning, especially when  pertaining to  international exchange.  There are physical, cultural, and interpersonal connotations of the word.   When designing my kite, “Dogwood and Dunes ”,  I  attempted  to explore some of these meanings to create something that stood-out as unique, but  also  successfully created a union between the culture of the Emirate nations and North Carolina.    While my  initial   concepts  relied on a connection of land and sky  (featuring  clouds and earth  symbols) I decided that  connection  was already being made by the very act of flying the kite itself- we would already be bridging the land and sky by lifting our tethered kites from the ground.    I settled on a simple concept that merged elements of North Caroli...

"DNA" "DNA" "DNA" The overall theme for this entire course was “connection , ” which is a pivotal factor in deciding what I wanted my kite to represent. My initial ideas were to find 2 similar concepts, one from the U.S. ,  and one from the UAE  to  mesh  well together . However, after thinking about what connection means to me, I decided I wanted to incorporate different aspects of my life into the kite. The prominent part of the design is a DNA double-helix which is one of the biggest  concepts in biology.  I learned that DNA is one of the smallest identifying factors of connection between humans themselves and even to other species on the earth. I wanted to show that no matter who we are   or where we live , we are all made up of the same basic structures that makes us human  beings .  In a more physical sense ,  DNA ’s  shape is a spiral that connects two base  complementa...