[image property of Richard Smith, of Jennifer Macklem + Kip Jones artists]This past Wednesday Kip and Jennifer presented our art proposal to a jury of about a dozen multi-disciplinary critics at the Routhier Community Centre on Guigues Avenue. I played a low-profile role at the presentation, mainly to show supplementary views of our proposed sculptures. Both Kip and Jennifer did a great job presenting our ideas to the jury. Most of the questions were pragmatic in nature; none of those were directed at our conceptual position which is a long leap from my usual pedagogic critiques.
Will there be sharp edges? [no]
Can the etchings be aged? [yes]
Are those the actual plinths you envision? [in some cases, yes]
What material are they? [reinforced concrete plinth, aluminium + bronze sculpture]
What sort of longevity does it have? [1000 years]
Have you considered spotlighting? [for some, yes]
Have you done this before? [yes]
All these questions were expected by Jennifer and Kip and they answered each one with some persuasive flair (elaborations of the above yes/no answers). We walked out feeling good about the presentation. The results came back a couple days later however and we didn't win the project unfortunately.
TRACES:: We started with Jennifer's mock ups which involved translating them into FormZ on my computer:
Some of these mock-up schemes were abandoned because of major constructional issues. To form aluminum or bronze casts for sculptures as complex as these, there's a high chance of error in forming hard bends and curves. Even though the process of solid casting is over 5000 years old, a construction of this sort is by no means a quick process.
[image property of Richard Smith, of Jennifer Macklem + Kip Jones artists]This initial development created numerous "sheddings" which formed a sort of junkyard of types which we were able to work with in FormZ:
[image property of Richard Smith, of Jennifer Macklem + Kip Jones artists]With these pieces, we eventually evolved the project into a system of deforming a language of serial types which we had modeled out of our central idea of "weaving". Points, lines, and planes were shaped in an aesthetic way that eventually reached contextual sensitivity:
These surviving models were favoured for both their aesthetic quality, and their ability to be constructed. Different methods include water-jet cutting the aluminum, solid casting either aluminium or bronze alloy, or bending the solid planes of aluminum over a roller. All of the etchings would be done with a hand-held etching tool, and Jennifer had considered using public designs as a means of initial community involvement in the project.
