Thursday, January 12, 2012

“Clouds may come, but clouds must go, and they all have a silver lining. For behind each cloud you know, the sun, or moon, is shining.”

~Unknown
The overall arching theme of my third semester of Sculpture was Hope--being able to see the miraculous in the mundane. For my final project, I wanted to do something completely different than what I had previously done. I'm not really certain how I came up with the idea. Looking back, I think this might have been my motivation:

As a kid, I loved Lite-Brites. I have very fond memories of fighting Sarah over who got to play with it, relished every single time I pressed the pointy-end of the pin through the black construction paper and was mesmerized by the resulting beam of light (I guess it's the simple things, right?). While surfing online, I found this awesome "Push and Store Cabinet" designed by Chung-Tang Ho. It reminded me of those awesome Pin Art executive desk toys. I thought that perhaps I could combine my love of Lite-Brites with Pin Art and some how meld it into a HOPE-themed project. Whew.

I decided I would make a light box and use extruded acrylic rod to act as the pins for the project. I wanted to round one end of the "pin" and keep the other end flat. My hope was that this would turn the "pins" into small lenses. I bought 6-ft lengths in 5/8", 1/4", 1/2" and 3/4" diameters. I cut those rods down to ~3" segments, and wrapped painter's tape around one end.
To keep the rounded ends as symmetrical as possible, I loaded the rods into the chuck of my drill press. Since I don't have a lathe, this was the best solution. The only problem was that my chuck was 3/8" so I couldn't use this method to rounds out the larger stock. The taped end went into the chuck (the tape protected the end from being marred by the chuck).
Then I used some metal files to initially round the end. I started out with a file that was almost like a rasp, and move to finer files as I got the basic shape down.

This is what it looked like after filing was complete.
After filing was done, I moved onto sandpaper. I started regular old coarse sandpaper in 80, 100, and 120 grits.
Then I moved onto wet/dry sandpaper in 220, 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000, and 1500 grits.
This is what the rounded end looked like after I was done sanding it with the 1500 grit paper. After I had rounded the ends of all the cut rods, I used a sanding block to sand the flat ends smooth. I skipped the files and moved straight on to the paper, starting at 80 grit and ending with 1500 grit. I hand rounded and sanded the acrylic rods that were too large to fit into the 3/8" chuck of the drill press, using the same procedure as sanding the flat ends. After all of the rods were rounded and sanded flat, I slathered on metal polish, and then used my fabric polishing attachment to my Dremmel and polished the heck out of each rod. Collectively, I'd say it took about 45 hours to do this (I'm not kidding!) process. It was a PAIN and took forever and ever.
Next I went about constructing my light box. I originally intended on using some really old walnut that I had lying around, but I nixed that when I realized I wanted to make the box several inches tall and my walnut was only 4 inches wide. I settled on some hard maple instead. First I cut the box sides to make a 6" x 9" x 6" rectangle. For my design, I wanted to have a sheet of acrylic glass suspended over the lights where I could attach an image. The I needed another sheet of acrylic suspended some distance from there where the rods would rest. Somehow I jammed up my palm router, so that was out of commission, so I had to use the table saw to cut the grooves for the box. It was slow work using the table saw, but it turned out well. Before I put the sides together, I sanded the insides. I fitted the box together using wood glue and nails, making sure to insert the first sheet of acrylic before putting on the final side. To elevate the box a bit from the surface below, I hammered in some decorative thumb tacks. This is the view of the bottom of the piece:
This is another view of the bottom, where you can see image that was inserted above the suspended acrylic sheet. You can also see the LED tap-light I used for illumination.
This is the top view of the image (a cloud with the sun peaking out behind it). This was set on top of the suspended acrylic sheet.
Here's the view with the lights on. I need to go back and sand the acrylic sheet to diffuse the light a bit.
And this is the view from the top with the second acrylic piece suspended.
I constructed a four-sided box (no top and no bottom) out of acrylic sheeting to contain the acrylic rods, and then assembled the rods on top of the acrylic sheet. I put the rounded end of the rods pointed towards the image, so the flat ends were at the top.
Here you can see what the individual rods looked like after they were sanded and polished.
And this is the view from the top of the piece.
You can look through individual rod lenses to see the image behind them.
See it? It's a cloud with a silver lining!
This is how I wanted the piece interpreted: when we focus on the things immediately in front of us, they blur our vision to seeing the larger picture. The individual rods are like raindrops on a window--dreary and blurry. But they illuminate and magnify what's beyond them when you look closely at/through them.

It doesn't photograph well, but it turned out exactly as I had imagine it :o) I think it has great potential for being a series of pieces. If only it didn't take so damned long to make! Click here to see more pictures of it.

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

~Richard Bach
For the third semester of the Sculpture class I'm taking at the local community college, the instructor gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted, so long as I set my own schedule and met my goals. The kicker is that the projects had to revolve around a centralized theme. I struggle with themes. Mostly, I just make whatever I think is pretty, and don't really care too much whether some other person would classify it as ART. So rather than worry about it too much, I just decided one four projects that I wanted to do and used the shoe horn to smash my evil step sister foot into the glass slipper.

I decided my theme would be hope. Being able to see the miracle in the mundane--separate the wheat from the chaff, that sort of thing. While I was content with how my butterfly sculpture from the Spring semester turned out, I wanted to readdress it and make it larger. And more colourful. And somehow cram it into having a HOPEful message. So I made more paper butterflies, using the same techniques as I did in the Spring, but not limiting my colour palette to blues. I reused the blue butterflies from the old sculpture, and added about 25 more. Again, I used high def colour photos of real butterflies and moth as my reference material.

I used a much larger sheet of galvanized steel and beat it with a hammer against the concrete of my driveway--I'm sure the neighbour's LOVED that. I wanted the piece to be a wall hanging, so I drilled two holes in the backside and strung wire through it. Then I glued the butterflies on as randomly as I could.

This is the finished product.
And a close up of one of the moths.
I know I need to go back and add more/better photos. So check this flickr set later for better pics.

Now that I've done the butterfly thing twice, I know why I haven't really been enthusiastically happy with it. When I have the time, I'm going to do a third run at it. This time, I'm going to make the butterflies substantially smaller--like total circumference being around 1.5-2" and all with the same wing pattern and I'm going to make a BUNCH of them, all in rainbow colours. Like (10) per ROYGBIV. And I'm going to arrange them in a swirling pattern up a more cone-shaped piece of galvanized steel.

I think it would be a nice companion piece to this one. One being order and the other being chaos.

But sheesh, making the butterflies took a long time, so I'll tackle the companion piece later. I'll add it to my list.

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."

~Rabindranath Tagore
Spring 2011, I took the second semester of Sculpture class at my local community college. I had the same instructor as the first semester, and two classmates from that class joined me. The instructor didn't want to hamper our creativity and decided that we could collectively decide what we wanted to do. The three of us came up with six projects/subjects to tackle during the semester, and timed things so we would present our works on the same days as the Sculpture 1 students were.

We decided on the following projects:
  1. Use colour to convey an emotion
  2. Use texture to convey a touch-sensation
  3. Use of light/shadow on the human body
  4. Convey the passage of time
  5. Use three or more malleable materials together to create something new
  6. Found object: manipulation or assemblage
For my first project, I couldn't decide what to do. I tend to prefer monochromatic works, even better if it's black/white/shades of gray. I have a hard time committing to colour, especially in art.

Several years ago, I was at the San Diego Zoo in the gift shop, and I saw some beautiful butterfly specimen shadow boxes. I loved them, and wanted them, but had a hard time justifying both the expense and the thought of displaying something dead in my home (houseplants being the exception). So I decided to make my own butterfly specimens using paper and Prismacolours. I made my mom a Blue Morpho and my sister a Monarch. And they were, if I say so myself, spectacular. I had meant to make some for myself, but the project was perpetually waylaid for other shiny things that caught my attention. But this sculpture project gave me the perfect excuse to make some butterflies again!

First I collected as many high quality photographs of butterflies as I could. I decided to limit my palette to blue butterflies. I made wing templates for each butterfly so I could ensure both sides were as symmetrical as possible. I then traced a set of wings on I used plain white card stock paper and coloured the wings in using Prismacolours. I tried to make them as realistic I could. In all, I had completed 5 different types of butterflies. I made the decision to only colour the top-side of the wings, and painted the backsides using flat white acrylic paint. After I cut the wings out (leaving a little extra "tabs" on the inside of the wings so I could insert them into the bodies), I ran the edges along the tip of a chartreuse Prismacolour to call attention to the edge.

I made their little bodies out of Sculpey III polymer clay, and inserted 28 gauge steel wire for legs and antennae. Before I baked them, I made slits along the thorax so I could insert the wings later. There was a slight baking mishap (darn Josh!) and evidently polymer clay EXPANDS greatly when fired at 500 degrees. Who knew? But I rolled with the punches (and cursed Josh under my breath), and used the bodies anyway.

I typically struggle with coming up with bases for my sculpture pieces. A bad base can ruin a piece pretty easily. I got it into my head that a crumpled piece of galvanized steel would be cool, so I grabbed some roof flashing from Lowes and beat the crap out of it on concrete using a hammer. I then made a square base by stacking/laminating together several sheets of MDF and then spray painted it gloss black. I drilled two holes in the top and inserted short lengths of dowel that had also been painted black. Then I hot-glued the crumpled flashing to the dowels, and then glued the butterfly legs to the flashing.

This is the finished product:
View from above, complete with Albert's socked kitty-feeties. Note that the red on the sheeting is the reflection of my red wool coat on the coat rack.

View from the side.

I was pleased with how the piece turned out, but didn't have a whole lot to say about it. So I polled friends. Here's what I/we came up with:
  • Butterflies are the second life-phase of a creature.
  • The butterflies are vain, and they're trying to look at themselves in the shiny reflective surface of the metal. (which makes my decision to keep the underside of the wings matte white interesting, since the reflection of an individual butterfly's wings is plain white)
  • The crumpled, shiny metal energizes the space between the sculpture and the viewer, compelling the viewer to look more closely.
  • I've always been fascinated with how quickly nature can take over after man relinquishes control of something. This piece kind of shows that. This idea could have been amped up by using rusted metal.
  • My sculpture instructor, a painter by trade/obsession, said he was YEARNING for some orange in the piece.
So there you have it. Click here to see more pictures of the piece.