Shape Shifters

I've been working on a new series of work in the past month - the Shape Shifters - and realised that it was about time I posted some background info (and images) on my blog!

The Walkers (Shape Shifters) Image: Simon Bruntnell

As usual with my work, they started life far from the kiln (and indeed the studio): on my living room floor.  While Francis reads the paper on Sunday, or we watch an old movie, I often sit on the floor with a cutting mat, some cardboard, and a Stanley knife (my favourite tool).  Footling about is what happens next - sometimes it goes somewhere, sometimes it doesn't.  That week I was messing about with concentric squares.

I started rotating/twisting the concentric squares - which gave a satisfying spiral.

That, of course, made me wonder about other geometric shapes - would I get a nice spiral with those too?  And at that point I resorted to some help from the computer.  (When I move beyond squares, I find that SketchUp achieves far better hexagons and pentagons than a pair of compasses and a protractor..! I can then print them out, and use them as cutting templates)

And you also get the chance to play with your shapes on the screen, to save your index finger from unnecessary cutting! The screen grab here, shows my pentagon templates all stacked up and rotated.

And the spirals worked well with the triangles and hexagons too.  So my Sunday afternoon at the cutting mat soon ran into Sunday evening...and Monday morning...as I cut out lots of geometric shapes. The photo on the left shows the triangular and pentagonal stacks.

These various stacks were then enclosed in boxes and varnished with Shellac, so that they could be cast.  My first casts (of the squares) were done in gelflex (middle photo).  But I  wasn't that pleased with the final result.  So I moved on to try a soft grade silicon (photo on the right).  It isn't as economic as gelflex - because it can't be reused.  But it is stronger (and seemed to give a sharper result too).

And these "positive" rubber moulds, I made the kiln moulds for the glass. Again, the silicon moulds produced the best results (so I've now made my square Shape Shifter mould in silicon too!) As you can see from Simon Bruntnell's photo of the test pieces, the first glass came out relatively well.  Please note that these have been coldworked (they aren't fresh from the kiln)!

Now I want to do some further work on the colours and the presentation. I'm thinking of casting the shapes in Jesmonite as well as glass - so that I can start building up some tessellations.

Deep Blue: Testing, Testing

Part 3 of a series of posts explaining the inspiration/process behind my piece Deep Blue. Part 1 is called Deep Blue: Inspiration, and Part 2 Deep Blue: Folding.

My last post finished with the creation of a cardboard prototype for a modular unit which would repeat and tessellate to build up different forms.

But I was a little worried about the unit: it was a truly three-dimensional form with undercuts.  Up until this project, I'd generally used only shallow casting techniques - and so moulds with open faces, rather than reservoirs and sprues...

I therefore decided to look at whether this pattern could be replicated in sheet form - at least that way I'd have a back-up plan! Although borne of being a bit of a scaredy-cat, this did actually result in really exciting line of enquiry!

Via a few leafy lanes (more about them in a later post!), I eventually created a flat relief form based on the same diamond repeat as the modular unit.  This involved some adjustments to a folding pattern found in Paul Jackson's Folding Techniques for Designers, to counteract the natural curve.

The photo is a close-up of the relief - which is folded from a single A1 sheet.  I have to say that, despite the colour, it reminds me of lots of baby birds demanding food...

As this sheet form is an example of an origami tessellation, I knew that, like my three-dimensional form, it could be broken down into a single modular unit.  So from a simple repeated unit, I could build up a larger piece.

 The line diagram is the fold pattern for the single unit - which, with the addition of a reservoir, I used to create the nine cardboard moulds in the next picture.

These are negative moulds, and were used to make positive moulds of the unit in gelflex rubber.  You now get to see a beautiful picture of me (ahem) - as it's the only picture I've got which shows the gelflex!

You can see some of the individual gelflex moulds in the bottom right corner of the picture - and I'm busy pulling the rest out of the investment mould which they made. 

This mould was then charged with some lovely aqua blue casting crystal from Gaffer Glass, and fired up to casting temperature, to create individual glass units.  The picture here shows six of the units after they've been tack fused in a slumping mould (hence the curved shape).  If you're wondering why the surface is wrinkled like skin, this happened during the slump - and I assume is due to surface tension at that temperature.

So the modular unit seemed to work - and to repeat and tessellate fairly well. BUT, the tests had thrown up a rather important issue...COLD WORK.  To tessellate well, there would need to be minor corrections - and the surfaces would also need to be smoothed and polished (especially if I needed to correct for "elephant skin"!)  This turned out to be quite difficult and time consuming on the internal angle.  If I didn't want to spend my life coldworking, I was going to need to modify my thinking again!

 

Deep Blue: Folding

In my last blog post, I introduced you to the lovely Georgian decanters from Broadfield House Glass Museum. Now I'll try and explain how they inspired my final piece...

My normal glass casting method is based on the collagraph printing technique: I build up a relief collage in textured paper and card, from which I make my moulds.

And this is how I started the project - working in my sketchbook with patterns based around the diamond cuts on the decanters, and experimenting with different textures and relief levels.


But it just didn't seem right to be working in a two dimensional format: it wasn't doing the decanters justice.  The sketchbook work did, however, remind me of a folded box form from the book Paper: making, decorating, designing by Beata Thackeray


Using this as my starting point, I started researching / experimenting with folded paper forms - again using the diamond cuts as the inspiration.

Anyone interested in this type of folded form should definitely take a look at the work of Paul Jackson. As well as doing brilliant paper sculpture of his own, he has written books covering all forms of paper engineering. They all include great "basics", ideas to play with and real inspiration:
 - Structural  Packaging
 - Folding Techniques for Designers
 - The Pop-Up Book


However, once you start making taller three-dimensional forms in glass, you need much longer kiln times - in particular because they need to be annealed for such a long time to avoid temperature differences within the piece. For that reason I was keen to simplify - and perhaps create a "unit" which could be repeated to make a larger form.  I took the yellow folded form above as my starting point (because it reminded me of Sam the Eagle from the Muppets..!)

By cutting down the height of the yellow model to just two layers (between the horizontal lines) and adding a top and a base, I found a unit which would tessellate - and also sit - in a number of different ways.  I now had to think about how I could go about casting multiples in glass.  More about that next week..!