Before the CNC router, I was hired by Scott System to create bas-relief walls. Scott System is a company that uses rubber form liners to add interest to concrete walls. I was given a black and white line drawing and created a low relief in plasticine oil clay to scale. The walls were often 16’ w x 4-6’ high.
The project on the left is a texture representing calico fabric. On the right is one of the small moths created in plasticine which are embed in the design.
On the left is a low relief concrete panel which was precast, then added to a wall. On the right is a wall that is cast in place.
Inspiration comes from natural history as well as cultural history. The fish are indigenous to the area, but relate to this old Roman mosaic. Even the tile border is passed on from antiquity to this contemporary installation at Honey Creek Resort in Iowa.
Natural inspiration in the form of a Common America Toad. The sculpture takes the warts and turns them to peace signs and flowers to make it appealing to even little girls.
The Common Grackle is not well liked, it steals the eggs of more pleasant song birds, but even this maligned creature becomes attractive with iridescent mosaic tiles in a large scale.
Oh, run!!! A dreaded hornet/wasp. The sculpture adds a dimension of loveliness with a Baroque pattern in bright yellow and black. Now how can you resist.
The milkweed beetle isn’t so bad.
Lovely lacewings.
The Evil Gypsy moth has destroyed whole oak forests. But the sculpture “The Night Butterfly” is delightful resting on the large oak leaf with a wing pattern that includes the night sky.
Another dreaded pest the Emerald Ash Borer, as a sculpture is almost cute. As a sculpture the beetle becomes an emissary for life itself- he is only doing what he needs to do to survive.
On the left, a maze, on the right the trailings of the Emerald Ash Borer larva in tree bark. The near symmetry is captivating.
The maze becomes an ash leaf mimicking trails of the larva in the bark.
The design is cut on a CNC plasma cutter, on the right are the drop and the leaf.
The final piece at the Lincoln Park Zoo
The metal armature and components for the wasp.
The metal is powder coated and covered with foam, then fiber glass tape.
Next a two coat application of concrete makes a thin shell on which mosaic is added.
The mosaic is grouted.
A design for the story vase on which the wasp will perch, inspired by a Swedish glass story vase.
The program created to cut the letters and rings. On the right is the text on one of the rings with the “Barbarini Wasp” as a dingbat.
The Barbarini Bee, the inspiration for the dingbat.
A jig for the base ring.
The completed base ring, reads “of the Universe”
A rendering for the wasp on the story vase.
Inspiration comes from a fountain in Piazza Navona, Rome.
A fountain at the Green, Charlotte, NC.
Water creatures in the design for Fountain Square, Evanston. The turtle represents regeneration and wisdom, the support of the worlk. The Water bird represents longevity, happiness, tact and delicacy.
The maquette on the right with a granite base, Blandings Turtle, Blue Heron and Dragonfly. In addition to the natural inspiration on the left is cultural inspiration- the Chekov story “Kashtanka” with a drawing of the “Egyptian Pyramid”
The heron is made in clay and 3-D scanned then imported as a mesh into rhino.
The next step is to make a sub structure, the pieces to cut out are on the right
The CNC plasma cutter.
The sub structure of the heron.
What about the milkweed beetles? They need a milkweed pod to live on.
The Milkweed Beetles need something to make them public art scale, the connect them to the earth, both physically and thematically.
Milkweed pod and drawing.
A close up of the stem portion of the milkweed pod, with components to create it in steel on the right.
The truncated cone pattern in two pieces makes the end of the stem.
The pieces are formed on a 25 ton hydraulic press.
Pieces to make new dies for the press.
½” steel plates which will be heated in the forge an welded to the inside of the dies.
Fitting the dies onto the press at the collet on top and the plate on bottom.
