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Featured Project: Handmade Kites

VTL Member and Volunteer Emiliano Sepulveda has been using our tools to build something most people wouldn’t first associate with “tools,” but certainly has wide appeal: kites! Here’s what he had to say about his project, the art process, and the best spots for kite-flying in Vancouver.

One of the Kites in Flight

VTL: Describe your project and tell us a little bit about yourself – who are you and what are you creating?

Emiliano: I’m a local artist and a recent graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.  I’m very interested in thinking about perception, experience, and the reciprocal relationship between the individual and the built environment.  Light is also a major focus of my work because most of the information that we use to create our model of reality is made of light.  The art often takes the form of installations made of sculptural studies, or as actions that I engage in, such as walks, and most recently making and flying kites.  The project I am engaged in involves walking to particular points in the city and attempting to fly kites.

The focus of my work is to generate new understanding of the relationship between the individual and the built environment.  In walking and engaging in the various actions that I do, I attempt to reimagine the body as a sensing organ of the city,  which is engaged in the act of sensing itself.  By shifting the terms of how I perceive and engage with my surroundings, I seek to cause a rupture in how others encountering me and my kites might perceive the city and their relationship to it. perception, experience, and the reciprocal relationship between the individual and the built environment.  Light is also a major focus of my work because most of the information that we use to create our model of reality is made of light.  My art often takes the form of installations made of sculptural studies, or as actions that I engage in, such as walks, and most recently making and flying kites.  The project I am engaged in involves walking to particular points in the city and attempting to fly kites.

One of the Kites in Progress

So far I have only made 2 kites, but I plan on making several.  The kites will all be made from materials that engage with the surrounding light in interesting ways.  Materials like, mirror mylar, light sensitive photo paper, lenticular prism plastic, neon construction flagging ribbon, and gel-filters like the kind that are used on lights on movie shoots.

The action of walking to a particular location and flying the kites in essence is the art.  I see the kites as being objects with which I am magically entangled.  By flying the kites I am trying to affect my surroundings as well as have my surroundings affect me.

VTL: Where or how did you learn the skills needed to build these kites? What motivated you try this out?

Emiliano: I started making the kites because I found a book in a used book store on how to make Japanese style kites.  When I was a kid I used to fly kites quite often so I was pretty excited, and the more I thought about it the more I realized that it fit within my art practice.  Making the kites is actually quite simple and only really requires really elementary woodworking knowledge.  Like always cut away from you, not towards you; that sort of thing.  Basically if you can use an x-acto knife you can make a kite.

Kite Building

VTL: What tools have you been using?

Emiliano: I’ve been using the quick grip clamps, a rasp planer, a small ax, and a small saw, scissors, and x-acto knives.  The rasp planer is just to smooth out the bamboo strips that I’ve been using to make the frames of the kites, and the ax is to split the bamboo along the grain into thinner strips.

VTL: Would you describe your kites as art, or toys, or something else?

Emiliano: Definitely as something else.  When I started it was important to me to avoid making something that functioned as a discrete art object.  Instead I wanted to make something that functioned as a small part of a greater whole.  I don’t want to make kites with pretty little pictures on them, that function as singular little art pieces, that can later be nice decoration in a house.  To me if the kite is something that is meant to be a pretty object that will later be decoration then it is not a kite.  The function of a kite is to fly and I wanted to focus on that first, and the material’s ability to affect light second.

To be clear I do think the kites are beautiful, especially when they are in the air, but the art for me is in the act of attempting to fly them, and in there eventually being a large amount of kites that form an archive of all these collection actions.

Bridle Lines

VTL: What problems have you encountered?

Emiliano: A big difficulty though has been of course the weather.  This project really requires a lot of patience because I can’t fly the kites on any old day.  There has to be certain amount of wind available.  This can be quite frustrating at times because some of the nicest kite flying days have been when I am stuck at work but at the same time I appreciate this.  It forces me to continuously consider my surroundings.  Considerations like how much wind is present, if the wind is turbulent because it is flowing over trees and buildings, the direction of the wind, and it’s speed, what other weather conditions are present, and how long the wind is likely to last.  It’s nice to be brought into such a close relationship with an element that in different circumstances I might not think about.

VTL: Where is your favourite place to fly kites in Vancouver?

Emiliano: I don’t think I’ve figured that out yet.  I want to fly kites from lots of different places all over Vancouver.  I know that Vanier Park and Jericho Beach are some regular kite hotspots and I’ll probably fly some kites in both those places.  So far though the only places I’ve flown kites are Trout Lake, New Brighton Park and Strathcona Park.  I also want to fly some of the kites off rooftops.  I’m really just excited to explore a lot of different places.

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This post is part of our “Featured Project” series which shines the spotlight on the projects that VTL members are currently working on. We hope it gives you an inside perspective on the many different jobs our tools get used on and provides some inspiration, too!

We’re always looking for more projects to feature, so please get in touch with Caitlin at communications@vancouvertoollibrary.com if you have a project you’d like to tell us about!