After the great success of last year’s Enterpreneur’s camp winning project (solar mobile phone charging bench), another “Made in Croatia” product intrigued the visitors of this year’s edition of this great event for young entrepreneurs and startups.
Luka Mimicacame 3rd this year with his „Island to go“ project, unique souvenirs made out of epoxy resin: „Few years ago I started experimenting with this material, and now that I’ve gotten a lot of practice, I can tell you that you can construct many different things from it. I’ve learned how to control the material, and now I can even create a replica of the sea surface, which is now the foundation of my work“ – Mimica commented for Dalmatinski Portal.
Mimica, who has an MA in sculpting, commented on how his experimentation with epoxy turned to production of souvenirs: „In order to cover the cost of my other art projects I started producing small pieces for the galleries. That’s how the first samples of souvenirs-islands were created, I made them out of sea sand and resin. After that, I came up with a whole range of products together with my colleague Danijela Šušak: rings, broaches, medallions etc. The concept was pretty simple, who wouldn’t want to have their very own island? And to be able to take it home, an „island to go“.
Each piece is unique and Mimica taught himself how to use the epoxy resin because he couldn’t find anyone in Split who used this particular material: „ I made my first steps by watching YouTube clips. There was a lot of trial and error involved so now I mentor others. Obtaining this particular resin was also a challenge since here it is only used in construction so high quality clear resin is hard to come by.
The islands are not replicas, their shape and form is imaginary while Pakleni islands and Mljet were taken as a sample for the exact colour scheme. His souvenirs are already generating a lot of interest and soon he plans to offer them to tourist boards: „I have many plans, my goal is to come up with a new generation of interactive souvenirs for tourists to finish according to their own wishes. For starters, I would like to create a small beach with sand that can be written on“ Mimica revealed.
