A Wood Sculpture I Built

Another 3D design project I recently completed was made completely out of wood and required me to build an entirely new skill set.

I'm going to go ahead an post the finished product at the begging of the blog and then go into details of what the assignment was and how I accomplished it.

The objective of this project was to choose an object from nature and reconstruct it using 1/8 Plywood in a geometric way.

I had a lot of trouble initially choosing what organic object I wanted to represent. One weekend while I was home I looked down and noticed I was standing in a patch of clover, instantly I dismissed the idea because most of the class had chosen singular objects to do and I knew if I chose the clover it would be a big undertaking, I would have to produce an entire "patch" since no clover grows alone. After some more consideration I resorted back to the clover not entirely convinced it was going to be a good idea.

After sketching and building some cardboard models I was planning on doing 3 clovers in a line, during our in progress meeting with the professor he suggested exploring just how many clovers would create a full composition, recommending 15 or 20. I was shocked and honestly angry that he expected so much from me. That night I made cardboard models of 17 clovers and set them up for class the next day. At the time I didn't understand why he was asking me to make so many but I now can see how it helpful it was for me to see a TON of them and decide I needed to refine it back to five arranged in a more natural way.

So with five clovers on my mind I set off to the woodshop. I had to learn how to use a lot of new tools for this project, luckily I have been around woodworking most of my life, as a shadow to my dad, who I would consider a master woodworker. His help definitely played a large role in the finish product of this sculpture.

For most of the cutting I used band saws, scroll saws, and jig saws. It was overwhelming at first and I will admit I was a bit nervous using such large dangerous power tools on my own, but as the project progressed using tools began to feel much more natural. Another part of the project that I had to plan around was that no screws or nails could be used to hold things together. Because of this my clovers can be disassembled, the base is made with two slits that allow them to stand together and the clovers work as a mortise and tenon to attach to the stems.

I like to think of this 3D design class like one of those baking challenge shows on food network where they throw a wrench in everything you have planned by asking you to fulfill one more requirement with the finished product. Which is what my professor did, about a week and a half in he made a new rule to the project... They could not be painted the same color as they would be in nature. Which is what led to my decision to use an analogous color scheme (3 colors that are beside each other on the color wheel.) because I liked the way that the red as the lowest clover could transition into yellow by the top clover. At this point the clovers lost their green recognition factor.

The good thing about this project is that unlike the shoe it didn't have to remain as similar as possible to the original object of inspiration.

#Art