Forward motion

So here is the maquette in it's finished form.  This is one of the better pictures too, I found out that photographing plexi is a lot like photographing glass... hard.  The working scale here is 1 inch to 1 foot.  The frosted plexi squares are 2 in. X 2 in.  So a working height of 6 feet hung from a 8 foot (from the floor) ceiling grid.

This is the foot print of the piece on the floor in tape.  I know you can't really see it but I wanted to show this photo for the light in it.  This is the light coming into the MFA space every morning and it is beautiful.  I think that light in combination with lots of frosted glass will be spectacular, hell that box is going to glow.  So here's the foot print without the funky angle.

The spacing of the columns was a problem on the maquette, I'm trying everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen for the final build.  To figure that out, it's going to take another model.  A "to scale" model at that.  I'll be taking 2 ft. square pieces of cardboard and arranging them to figure out the best spacing.  Keep in mind there will be "dead zones" in the grid from the hardware that keeps it together, I'm trying to hang the piece with that in mind.  The final model won't be finished until the end of this week, and that's if everything goes smoothly for the rest of this week.  I want to get some pictures of people standing around it for scale... maybe some of my classmates?

The specialty hardware I need has been ordered, the glass I need (that I had miscalculated about) has been ordered as well.  The glass should be here at the end of the week, the hardware order will be filled in about 2-3 days with another 5-7 days for delivery.  I'm working on having the polished glass reinforcement panels done by the end of this week, Sunday at the latest.  The next batch of panels coming in will sandblasted, so not much cold working there.  

Working with glass can be tricky, it's more practice than anything else.  I have to keep in mind the Fiberwave video and bend with any changes that might come my way, there is a way around any problem.  Gaming circles call this the "way of the water warrior", having a plan but being fluid enough to react to anything that can happen and to remain fluid through the encounter.

Transparent technology

Transparent technology, where the concept is the most important element and the technology backs it up.  This  piece is called Fiberwave, by Mokoto Sei Wantanabe.  It is a sustainable, kinetic sculpture that runs off the wind and stored sunlight to glow.  Simple, readily available, technologies making art.  

The only thing this video really doesn't give you is scale.  There is another video showing the installation of a Fiberwave sculpture (I'll see if I can edit it into this post) and the poles are about 15 feet high, maybe 10 it's hard to say.  They are much taller than the people installing them.  With stronger gusts of wind the poles really bend and get a very surreal feeling to it.

Depending on where this was installed you could really take advantage of the wind in certain areas.  How fast would this move in Chicago?  What if the color was played around with?  The color of the lights as well?  What if it was on top of a building, or maybe on the exterior walls of a building?  I just want to play around with it, because it moves and looks so cool.  I'll take 2 please.

Progress crit

My crit went really well today, at least I thought so.  I felt a little scattered with how I presented some of the information, but felt it was a flowing encounter that moved at a good pace.  I feel that I was able to talk about my current project in technical and conceptual terms, and be able to answer any questions that my classmates might have.  There are a few things that made this possible... a working maquette, material tests, a slide show of process in the Sculpture Studio (my studio away from the MFA studios), and all the notes I have been taking up until now from this summer.  Basically, being prepared.  My classmates and instructor (Ric Petry) offered up good insights and are making me think things through, they are doing their jobs and I thank them for it.

As the project has evolved, the prime execution of it has stayed the same.  Cut, polished, drilled, and Hxtal-ed glass hung from a ceiling grid in a box form.  The main thing that is presenting itself as fluid are the details.  Gone are the eyes on the windows, and actually all the drawing on glass of this project has been scrapped for something more... open and  inviting to the viewer to make their own inference on the work.  I'm trying to let the material have it's own dialogue, or at least do most of the talking, and I'm just making a structure for it to talk from.  In a lot of ways this is like working with hot glass,  it's starting to feel that way anyway... I'm using tools to talk to the material, but ultimately it's the material doing the talking in the final piece.  

Lots of little edges

This is what I have been busy with for the past week.  At least doing 2 stacks of 10 panes per day (more if time allows), each stack of 10 takes an hour to bevel 3 sides.  I am taking a little time off from this part though, my wrists and fingers are locking up faster each day so a little rest for the hands is in order.  These are the reinforcement panels for my larger sheets of glass.  These measure 2 1/2 inches wide by 5 inches long, and I ordered a gross (144) of them.  Do I need 144 of them? No.  But, like any glassblower, I believe in having more than what I need in case something does go wrong... if I happen to drop one, or not having enough water when drilling the holes and the friction cracks it, or my dog's tail knocks a few off the table, you get the point.  Redundancy in materials, having your bases covered with the same solution just multiples of it.  It goes to the big panels as well.


*edit* Remember up above when I said I didn't need 144 of those small little pieces?  I was wrong.  Redoing some of the math I am actually short by about 70 pieces, when I was tabulating how many I would need I was only counting the reinforcements for ONE side of a 2' x 2' pane.  The good thing is I caught it now, not when I'm trying to everything glued up and hung later.  I will still have extras, which is good since I had 3 casualties today out of 50 pieces.

This is my crate of glass goodness, this came to the Sculpture Studio yesterday, and that made me very happy.  There are 36 panes total, I need 31, so there is room for error... just not a lot of room.  The edges of these 2 foot square panes of glass will be beveled enough to take the edge off, so a millimeter at most here.

I'm thinking about the material, and for a project this size material is very important, what you use is just as important as how you use it.  I'm also doing some research into more conceptual art and those books arrived today in fact.  In my head the project has undergone a transformation, at this point I don't know if I'll be drawing on the glass, and most likely won't.  I do plan on writing on it, text from myself, my Mother and Grandmother will adorn 3 of the sides of the box.  The remaining wall will be blank in reference to my Grandfather, who is gone.  The project is starting to feel like a family room, that room in the house that everyone would hang out and talk in, maybe watch some T.V. or a football game.  That room is usually filled with mementos of the family that lives there, little figurines, photographs, and books.  The thing is I'm getting that vision of it completed in my mind's eye.  I can see it and as I work on the glass it gets more clear everyday, I have most of the materials now and nothing is going to stop it... except exhaustion.

Happy QR Code Fun Time

Ok, I have to admit it, the idea intrigues me.  That could be from the whole "What's it gonna be?!" scenario.  It has that same feel of the toy in the Cracker Jack box.  The whole notion of being able to physically embed something into my work that takes you someplace else is... for lack of a better word, magical.  We, as artists, all want to take our viewers somewhere and we can do that.  For this code in particular, and it seems dependant on the QR reader you have, it either jumps straight to the video (which is the desired effect) or takes you to the YouTube dashboard to play the movie.

Linking this code with a piece about the body and what resides within has a lot of potential.  Being able to visualize that, a heart monitor, ambient sounds, something completely grotesque... gets me to think about what I see in the people around me, and ultimately in myself.

Maquette Progress - Part 2

The maquette is coming along nicely, the base and support structure for the grid are mostly done.  Patch a few holes on the base, drill a few holes to hang the plexi from, a dash of black spray paint and base will be done.  This was a pretty easy build for the most part, all the supplies used here... styrene sheet, 1/4" square styrene tube, 1/8" round brass tube, 1/8" square brass tube, styrene cement, and superglue are available at any hobby/model train store for a reasonable amount.   This build was only $15, but I can get a rough idea of what it's going to look like and how it will work.  All that is really left to do is straighten a few more paper clips  to represent the cable holding the glass from the Unistrut grid.

"No plan survives contact with the enemy"

  

There was one, grossly overlooked detail that escaped the production of this model.  The struts are 6" long, the exact measurement of the plexi... they need to be at least 6 3/4" to allow spacing between the rows of hanging plexi.  If this was the final, the glass would banging against each other and breaking.  No problem though, that's why I wanted to build this model.  To see any potential problems in the build and correct them before they could become a major problem later.

Glass has arrived

On Tuesday most of the plate glass for my project came in.  Today was the initial cold working.  There are a lot of small, 2 1/2" X 5", glass pieces that need to be beveled, and then glued to the larger 2' X 2' panels.  Then the 3/8" holes can be drilled after that.

I decided that working on batches of 10 would be best, there 144 of these small pieces to do total.  Just working on the 80 grit wheel, 10 small panes come in at just over an hour to bevel three sides, which will turn out to be about 15 hours.  This is just the roughing in of the bevels.  It's just like sanding wood, only with water to keep the temperature down, if the glass gets too hot from the friction it will crack.

The upside is only half of them need to be polished, the downside is half of them need to be polished.  The grit sizes I use are 80, 220, 400, 600, then cork and cerium, or just cerium, as you can see the polished panels need 4-5 more steps.  Time is not my friend on this project, between the cold working and the gluing I'll need to be spot on with time management and I still might miss/break something.  However if something does break, it's not the end of the world.  I ordered more than I needed just in case something unfortunate happened.