Beginning Sculpture: Medium #1 (Continued)

For the final project of Medium #1 (Foam Core Board), I had to create something that was a "walk-through" sculpture. Based on the cryptic description from the hand out the instructor provided us, I thought a walk-through sculpture was one where the viewer interacted with the piece, where they could easily see top and bottom of the piece but would need to move their entire body (not the piece itself) to do so. So I decided to create a mobile--dunno why, it just made sense.

I decided early one I wanted to do something involving a tessellation. I always loved the Escher tessellations, and thought it would be awesome to make one into a mobile. Since it was kind of a theme with the other projects in the medium, I went with a simple leaf pattern. I laboured through one whole class period (6pm-9pm) trying to get the pattern right, where all the angles matched up. I failed and I cried and I thought about mass executions. I then tried to make the tessellation using a graphics program, but the angles didn't match up. I failed and I cried and I thought about mass executions. Finally, I buckled, found the tessellation of a leaf that I liked, printed it out, cut out one of the leaves, blacked it out, enlarged it via photocopy and printed it on a card stock sheet of paper. I then laminated it with packing tape, cut it out, and used it as a template. I cut as many leaves as I could using the left over foam core I had. After I cut them out using a very sharp Xacto knife, I peeled the top layer of poster board from one side of half of the leaves. In the other stack of leaves, I flipped them over and peeled the new top layer of poster board. After that, I used a blunt point to "etch" a vein pattern onto the top and bottom of all the leaves, then strung two together using fishing filament; I used different lengths of filament. After all of them were paired off and strung together, I attached them to a simple T-shaped hanger (two strips of straight-cut foam core glued together). Et Voila! A simple mobile. Here's the piccies:

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