Getting the plaster to the right consistency was pure chaos. There’s no sugarcoating it. My first pour was a surprise, not a failure, but definitely not what I had envisioned. I hadn’t fully transliterated my voids into solids or my solids into voids. The spatial logic was off, but the result had a raw beauty to it. It looked cool, although unintended, it was compelling.

By the second pour, I had cracked a crucial hack: lining the entire interior of my foam core mold with thick, clear duct tape. Without it, the plaster seeps into the paper lining and bonds like concrete to foam core. With it, the mold releases cleanly. Hack mastered. The second pour came out beautifully.

But then came the waiting. Forty-eight hours passed, and the plaster still hadn’t fully cured. It was dense, but damp. And in that liminal space between wet, dry, frustration and possibility…I began to work with the substance itself.

During desk crit, Professor Youseff encouraged me to carve. To treat the plaster not just as a cast, but as a medium. The moment I scraped away that first slice, something shifted. I felt ancient and connected. My hands were shaping the material, they had become the hands of a maker. It was meditative, almost sacred. A classmate stopped by my desk and was like, “Whoa, that kind of looks like a temple… and my only thought was, “Perfect!”

I fell in love with that second model. It held the story of sacred discovery. But the assignment required three final pieces, so I had to keep going. This time, I secretly hoped the plaster wouldn’t cure all the way. I wanted to carve again and return to that ancestral joy.