Sculpture: Metal - Fall 2011
Taught by Associate Professor of Art, Daniel Graham, this course taught the basic fundamentals of welding and metal sculpting. Using different grades of steel, we assembled sculptures out of sheet metal, steel rods, and hollowed steel tubes. One project involved the lost-wax casting method, which we used aluminum instead.
Stilts
When I was tasked to make stilts, I was not excited. The purpose of stilts is to raise a person off the ground in attempts to make them taller, but I am content with my height and I would never want to be taller. Instead, I created my stilts to be dynamic and have a rocking-chair effect. These stilts were built with sheared sheet steel and 1/4 inch steel rods. The metal was spray-painted black and velcro straps were attached.
Here is a video of the stilts in action. If you pay close attention (more so in HD), you can see how awkward the rods on the bottom can be, especially if I was on a waxed tile floor:
Aluminum Casting
By using the lost-wax casting method, I was able to transform the plastic body of a Holga camera into aluminum. Our first attempt in making a plaster didn't end so well, as you can see by the professor's defeated look in this first image. After the metal was poured into the cast, it was a whole metagame to unearth the aluminum remnants, because it felt like an archeological fossil excavation!
This was also the same Holga that I used for my Photography: Holga project. Since I did not cast the lens and mechanical components, it is possible that the camera may still work after I patch up a few holes left from the casting process.
Logo Branding
For this branding project, we couldn't choose a brand that was too specific, like initials or such. We had to create something abstract and commonplace, yet something personal to us that others may not relate to as closely. I chose to make a brand with the number "5." This number represents an imperfect human quality, which was influenced by the Pentangle from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I branded the logo on my wallet, which I still carry with me after three years.
Sheet Metal
This project required sheet metal to be sheared and/or riveted. My design is influenced from a doodle that my dad created when I was in high school. His image and its subtitle do not make sense, either separate or together, but they hold great value to me and I recreated a 3D version by spray-painting my metal white and the edges black so it looks just like a sharpie doodle on paper.
Final Project
Our final project was up to us to decide, as long as it focused heavily on conceptual design. My concept was to create an object, which in itself has no function or purpose, but with the human element was introduced, this object transforms and becomes a chair. The idea of a chair only exists with its human counterpart. If people became extinct, the idea of a chair would no longer exist, just mere objects.
It's difficult to explain how this chair functions, so I made this video, which will make even more sense if you watch it in HD:
