What I had hoped to do with this project was share with you how we create one of our box construction metal sculptures and journal my thoughts along the way. Clearly I got ahead of myself and a lot of work has already occured to get to this point. No matter, let’s just go back to the beginning. It will probably take a few posts to catch up so please bear with me.
If you’ve been following us you’ve already seen the renderings of Shapely Two Jennifer posted last fall. They were generated from the 3D CAD data I created in Rhino 4.0 using Jennifer’s original design sketch as a guide.
We scanned Jennifer’s sketch into Photoshop and saved it as a JPEG image. Then I pulled that image into Rhino as a background and traced several profiles . Once I had the profiles Jennifer and I sat down and she shared with me her thoughts on the third dimension. That information combined with the previously mentioned profiles enabled the genetation of the 3D surfaces. After several iterations we came up with a basic shape. Next we spent multiple iterations refining the color scheme which naturally lead to additional tweaks to the geometry. After several weeks we finalized the design you see here.
At this point the art is 90% complete. We are now ready for the craft.
The next step was to make patterns for all the exterior surfaces. This is where we gain significant benefits from using CAD. Having the design digitally captured allows us to use that data to have panels accurately produced for us. Rhino has a really nice feature which unrolls developed surfaces (in otherwords, flattens out the curves) and automatically generates patterns.
These data files were then sent off to our laser cutter and 3 days later we had these.
Time to begin fabricating. Stay tuned.
Wow! It’s great to see how this sculpture evolved. Love the mixture of art and science.
Where will it be sited?
Thank you R.S. It doesn’t have a home as of yet, but we are entering it into some juried outdoor galleries. If you have any ideas, let us know.
Thanks Ron, I do enjoy combining technology with tried and true craftsmanship technics to bring Jennifer’s concept to life. We are still working on the best balance between them and are learing from each project.
What a great piece of work– both the art and the journal of its creation. I understand your process of getting the 2D shapes, but how did you decide on the “thickness” of the elements? I love the way they taper– especially the way they thin as you go up the height of the piece.
Thank you Bud.
Regarding your ‘thickness’ question, in the past we created cardboard maquettes to determine but now we use 3D CAD. It provides us both quicker iterations and valuable data we can use to pre-process some of the components. Jennifer and I start by discussing how she envisions the sculpture looking in the 3rd dimension. I take that information and create an initial 3D CAD model in Rhino. Sometimes I totally misunderstand what she had in mind and have to start over
, but even that helps me better understand what she is looking for. Once I have a general shape, we begin an iterative process of I model, Jennifer reviews, I model, Jennifer reviews. Sometimes it is just making a few adjustments so it matches Jennifer’s vision. Other times Jennifer sees things in the CAD model that causes her to change or refine the design. There are times in which we have considered training Jennifer on the CAD tool, but I find it very helpful to be doing the CAD work, because is allows me to be simultaneously engineering the construction of the sculpture.