Artist-designer Dylan Chan integrates chalk sticks from classrooms into everyday contexts, creating sculptures and design pieces to preserve a fleeting material in a rapidly digitalizing world.
Insight
After enduring the sight of blackboard and chalk for nine years of his early education, Dylan Chan dives into these materials beyond their forms as sticks and boards. He grinds chalk with water and drips the mixture onto lathed wood pieces while tuning out his thoughts. Layer by layer, Chan turns chalk from sticks into morphing structures and plants them on the blackboard-coated pieces underneath. The Blank Stick is an installation with chalk and blackboard pieces beyond their everyday forms, joining the two together once more to herd the vacant stares of their former subjects.