Flother

  • Celina Carlisle

An accidental mark-making process

An investigation on short lifespans and irreproducible moments. After many experiments melting a mixture of ice and ink, I discovered a new process of mark-making. When the ice of the blended mix ice melted, the ink separates and crystallizes into a unique shape. The term flother, meaning snowflake, is a hapax legomenon. This describes a word of which only one instance of use is recorded. The concertina publication evidences each individual flother, encapsulating one of them in a display to capture it’s decay.
Flother is an exploration into the place that process takes in the world of value. We are inherently attracted  to uniqueness, prioritizing hand-made and laboured artefacts over mass-produced items.The irony in the process is found by batch-making the mix and freezing the 36 ice cubes together. Mass produced up until the irrepeatable moment of melting, where the value of the outcome is inreased due to its individuality. An inimitable instance, where an ice cube carries out its entire lifespan, creating a singular ink flake, and a trace of its melting pattern.