Balsa Wood Sculptures

Architect

Balsa wood, Masking tape, Paper, Hot glue

5.5” x 12.5” x 8.25”

This piece focuses on space, using cutouts to create an internal space, along with tape strands to define negative space in the piece.

Child of an Engineer

Balsa wood, Masking tape, Hot glue

5” x 7” x 6.5”

This piece focuses on repetition seen through the use of triangles.

I developed these two sculptures with the intent that they would be able to stand as individual pieces, but when combined, would form one cohesive sculpture. Individually the pieces are abstract representations of repetition and space, but when put together become reminiscent of an ultra-modern architectural structure.

In Process

To create the geometric paper elements of Architect, I first created sketches of the shapes I wanted and played around with the dimensions through trial and error. After measuring and drawing shapes out on printer paper, I taped the individual shapes together and folded them up to create three-dimensional forms. When I was satisfied with how they looked and fit together, I untaped the shapes and traced them onto thicker paper, cut them out as one piece, folded them, and then sealed the edges down with hot glue.

When experimenting on the walls for Child of an Engineer, I initially wanted the sides to be made from sheets of wood glue, but they dried unevenly and were too brittle, so I decided to create the walls out of sheets of masking tape instead to get a similar transparent surface that wasn't as fragile.

Comments

Healing - Touch Response

"Not only do we long to know how fast we can run, how high we can jump, how long we can hold our breath under water - we also like to keep checking these limits regularly to see if they've changed. Why? What difference does it make?" Pain pg. 101-102 After reading this quote from the section discussing pain, I made the very poor decision to not reapply sunscreen at the beach, thinking I'd be fine. I was absolutely wrong and ended up with a horrible sunburn on my back. When I began brainstorming pieces to create, I looked at the quotes I underlined while reading and this one struck me since it very much mimicked my reality. I chose to create this piece as a print because it would allow me to produce the exact same image as many times as I wanted. I repeated the image of the female back in red ink three times without reapplying the ink so that the image would fade to mimic how my sunburn faded as it healed. As much as I'd like to think I've learned fro...

Textiles In The Landscape - Update

Feeling uninspired with my initial landscape concepts, I've revisited the idea in hopes of coming up with something more inspiring. The Oldest House Museum is the site of the longest continually lived on plot of land in town and has a rich history. Because of the number of structures built and destroyed at the site over the years, what is now the home's backyard used to have an outhouse, a different shaped fence, and possibly other structures that no longer exist. I think it would be interesting to plot out with fabric where these former structures stood. It would take a lot of yardage but I could sew shorter pieces together to get the length and shapes I'd need. It would take some communicating with the Oldest House Museum team and getting their permission but if they'd allow it, I'd like to pursue this idea. Another concept relates to creating pieces referring to each of the homes residents at one time. The oldest permanent structure on th...

Allison Davis

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