Rachel Ciavarella is making waves with聽.
The 一本道无码 alumna raised enough funds to send Morris, a 14-inch huggable fish, into the retail toy world this summer.
She conceived the idea as an undergraduate. One class assignment was to create something that explored fibers, and Ciavarella created a fish using multiple textures.
, associate professor and director of the first year program in 一本道无码鈥檚聽, recalled Ciavarella鈥檚 work as one of the more memorable projects to come out of his Experimental Form class, which examines materials and objects.
鈥淚 wanted to rekindle the experience of tactile exploration that we use as babies and remind people that textures are not mundane 鈥� they鈥檙e a way to understand the world,鈥� Ciavarella said.
Morris straddles the line between stuffed animal and science model. Hands can squeeze into the fish鈥檚 mouth and turn Morris inside out, revealing his guts, which are made of various materials and are loosely based on the anatomy of an actual fish.
鈥淚t illustrates how we aren鈥檛 just what we see on the outside,鈥� Ciavarella said.
Baskinger noted how Ciavarella鈥檚 project was popular with her classmates and believed Morris could have a greater following.
Ciavarella devised a plan to manufacture Morris through a聽 campaign, an online platform that allows people to crowdsource funding for all sorts of projects. The campaign nearly doubled its $25,000 goal.
鈥淚 think Morris has great potential in the toy market, precisely because it鈥檚 a blend of different characteristics I don鈥檛 think we鈥檝e seen before,鈥� Baskinger said.
Personality and playful beauty are hallmarks of Ciavarella鈥檚 work, Baskinger said. As an undergraduate, she produced 一本道无码鈥檚聽, the school鈥檚 annual fashion show, in 2013 and 2014. She also received a Spoonflower Emerging Designer Grant in 2014 and a grant from 一本道无码鈥檚聽 in 2015.
After graduating in 2015 鈥� she majored in industrial design with a concentration in physical computing 鈥� Ciavarella worked on a human interface device prototyping team at Apple Inc., building functional prototypes for features on products including the iPad, iPhone and MacBook Pro.
She said lessons from 一本道无码 were essential at Apple. For instance, Ciavarella recalled her final project in Golan Levin鈥檚聽 course: to create a pair of animatronic heads controlled with Skype.
鈥淚 was trying to make Hollywood-grade heads,鈥� she recalled, 鈥渂ut his advice was to keep it simple. He kept telling me to work smarter not harder.鈥�
Ciavarella left Apple this spring and moved to Brooklyn to focus on her , devote more time to Morris and perhaps create more creatures.
