Project 3: Mechanic/Organic

Inspiration

For this project, in which we were to combine both mechanic and organic elements in some way, I started by finding pictures of natural occurring patterns and man-made patterns. I'm usually drawn to nature in my work anyway, because of the intriguing patterns and colors that can be found. I considered the patterns of tree bark which is definitely repeating, but not necessarily a pattern you can pick out. Then I considered ferns and eventually flowers and succulents. These have very distinct smaller parts, in this case the leaves or petals, which repeat over and over again to create the plant. On the mechanical side, this made me think of how gears in a watch are smaller parts that come together to form the whole. From there I decided to take the mechanical component into a more geometric theme. I started looking at how simple shapes come together to form larger, more intricate patterns, which reminded me of some of the tiling work I saw in a number of palaces when I was in Spain a few years ago.

Ideation

From these ideas, I arrived at the idea of breaking down something that occurs in nature, such as a plant, into the simplest shapes possible and using those shapes to recreate the plant, Once I had this idea, I decided the sunflower was a better candidate for this project, since it has very distinct parts. The most simple shape the seed could take would be a triangle. The entire plant grows from one seed and this was the basis for my idea. The leaves would also be triangles, the petals would be diamonds, and the center would be a hexagon. As the plant grows from one seed, my plant evolves from a simple shape, to a more complex shape. However, both the diamond and the hexagon can easily be with triangles.

Process

Wax

To begin the process of making the geometric sunflower, I poured a sheet of wax using the plaster sheet mold as can be seen in the first picture below. The second photo shows the shapes I began to cut out of the wax. The third shows the triangular seeds, the diamond petals which I textured by brushing on wax to mimic the texture of petals, and the hexagons for the center of the flower. Pictures four and five show the process of assembling the flower beginning with the stacked hexagons for the center (the center of which ended up filling in during the metal pour) and then continuing with the addition of the petals. Pictures six and seven show the final front and back, while eight shows a side view in an attempt to capture the dimension of the pattern. I made the small seeds extra smooth by melting them to the center with the blow torch.

Sprue System and Investment Mold

In an attempt to have all the petals survive the metal pour, I gave every single petal its own vent, as can be seen in the first picture below. I then connected the vents with a sort of circle and added vents from the circle to the top. Picture two shows this, as well as the main 'J' sprue. Picture three shows the investment mold which ended up being way too large. Picture four shows the result of the metal pour which happily contains all the petals, but not so happily contains a lot of flashing. Picture five shows the result after much cutting, grinding, sanding, and time with the Dremel tool. I sanded the petals with sand paper to make them more shiny and left the rest of the piece sand blasted. I was unhappy with the remaining black portions  but could not find a way to get rid of them. I thought at first they were bits of burnt investment, but they ended up being metal. After a number of rounds with a metal brush, the sand blaster, the Dremel tool, and sand paper, they still did not improve very much. Similar spots on the petals were removed by cutting them away with the Dremel tool. However, this was impossible to do in the center, however, because the space in the center was too tight and I could not remove the black parts without damaging the seeds which I felt were very important to the idea of my piece, and which I already liked the texture on. More on the solution I chose later. In retrospect, I think I would have made only one layer of petals to reduce the number of sprues and possibly the amount of flashing. I think there would have been less flashing if the vents had more space between them. Also, I would have made the investment mold tighter and smaller. Never having done an investment mold before, I was unsure how much space was needed and definitely over did it.

Final

For the base of my piece, I constructed the stem and leaves of the flower out of wood and spray painted them. I started with a dowel rod for the stem and sanded down the sides to make it more like a hexagon and less like a circle, and to give it some texture, like the stem of a sunflower. The leaves were triangular to keep with my evolution of a shape and geometrical plant theme. The base is also a triangle. I like to imagine this as the footprint of the flower, possibly the footprint of the root system, in the same shape as the small seed that started it all. The triangle had to be quite large to offset the weight of the metal piece on top. I would have liked it to be a little smaller to be more proportionate to the flower itself. The base, stem, and flowers were all spray painted with multiple tones to give them some texture and dimension.  Once the piece was assembled however, I came to the conclusion that the metal needed to be more connected in color to the base. It initially appeared to be three separate levels of color, the bronze, the green, the brown, and there was nothing to tie in the metal piece, and bring the eye back down. To solve this I decided one of the hexagonal layers in the center should be brown. Brushed on paint did not achieve the opacity and texture I wanted, and it was too tight of a space to apply it between the seeds. Instead, I took a picture of the metal piece laying level, used an Exacto knife to cut out the overall shape of the center as well as the shape of each seed, and spray painted this with both brown and gold paint to tie it to the bottom and create a more gradual transition. Once this was attached, there was a more natural connection between the base and the flower. This also solved my issue of not being able to remove the black parts I did not like. I purposely had the flower pointing toward the light like a sunflower would but the shadow was a happy accident, not planned.

For this project I broke down the organic form of a flower into simple geometric shapes. Much in the same way a flower evolves from a seed, all the shapes of my piece are either triangular or can be evolved from a triangle. Gardening is something I do with my mother every summer, and something we enjoy doing together. We have tried to plant sunflowers numerous times over the years but have been quite unsuccessful whether it be because of weather, location, or animals we aren't sure, but I enjoyed creating this permanent sunflower.

One Seed, bronze/paper/wood, 12.5" x 5" x 16"