Final Piece

Even though my final piece doesn't look like my prototypes I am really happy about it. While the dress idea was fun and kind of cute I prefer this one mainly because it is more iconic and aesthetic.

I really enjoyed making this sculpture. Of course, it was a bit annoying to peel the layers off and later glue one piece to another, but watching the spirals grow taller and taller was exiting! 

I have only a few things that I would have done differently :

I would have bought a bigger acrylic mirror sheet so I could have made more mirror pieces. Because of that I couldn't done my sculpture top as I wanted ( not to close it with mirrors, but to make something like mirror explosion).

All in all, this project gave me a lot of knowledge about 2D Design program, laser cuter, different materials. Although, I can see how I could improve my sculpture even more I am happy with my final piece.

Work in progress

More photos of my progress in gluing mirror pieces inside the tower :

Spirals

I still didn't finished gluing all the squares one to another, but I really wanted to start gluing spirals inside of a tower sculpture :

From brown color into silver

I finally painted wooden strips into black and silver colors. This is how they look now :

I used acrylic based paints.

Acrylic mirror sheet

Finally, the mirror sheet has arrived! I took it to 3D teacher Pete and he said that he has to look if it's suitable for laser cuter, because some kind sheets can damage the machine. These news really scared me, because I had only a week left till the dead line and I sure didn't wanted to change my idea.
But everything was fine and all i needed to do was to draw little squares with 2D design program. Laser machine cuts everything in the same order as you draw it. I didn't knew that and draw everything like this :

Pete said that it's not going to work because my squares are really small and the plastic pieces are going to fall  inside while they are still not cut as a squares. Then I tried to draw something like that (all squares separately ) :

But it would have taken 50min to cut everything!

In the end Pete figured how to cut these small squares :

Laser cuts everything in this order :

1. Black lines
2. Green lines
3. Red square (edges)
4. Repeat everything with the next square

While laser machine cut little mirror squares I was peeling of the protective layer from each and every little piece ! Not to mention that now I have about 900 pieces, the protective layer is burned to the surface and it is really hard to peel them off...

It is going to take me ages even to peel these layers off, that's why I changed my mind about making lots of mirror cubes. Also, I want a lot of small mirror pieces and to make one cube I need 6 pieces. I strongly believe that it wouldn't be enough (900/6=150 cubes). So I am simply going to glue two mirror squares one to another (900/2=450 mirror pieces).

Changing Idea

I really like how my sculpture looks and I don't want to cover it (my previous idea with material). I also took the top ring away and it looks good as if my sculpture is not closed ...

Furthermore, I would still like to use mirror and that is how I thought about my new idea. I don't want to cover my sculpture so I will create something inside of it. And that something is going to be from mirrors.

Sketch of my new idea :

I want to make lots of small mirror cubes and create a spiral from them inside my sculpture. That also means I have to count again ...

First of all, I thought that I could make small Styrofoam cubes and glue mirror squares on top of it, but after I realized that if my mirror sheet is going to be 3mm thick I can count what kind of squares I need and glue them one to another :

I quickly draw this with  2D program, found 3mm thick plastic sheet and cut these squares. Then I tried to glue them and that's what I have :

I ordered 3mm acrylic mirror sheet online, I suppose to get it sometime this week. I am a bit worried, because I don't have much time left till deadline and during this waiting I loose 3-5 days.

Wood

I found a sheet of wood that has one side colored in black and other in brown. And it is 3mm thick ! Exactly what I need! I believe that wooden strips are going to work better than plastic, mainly because when I tried to put plastic strip in a slot, the plastic ring broke too.

I worked all afternoon with 2D program and finally finished  to draw already curved strips.

Then I tried to put rings and strips into one piece :

I really like the shape of this sculpture and how the rings and strips work together. Also, the left sides strips look black and right sides - brown. I only need to repaint right sides strips because you can see a bit of black (and I want to change brown color into silver or white).

Different materials

I took these rings home with an idea to find something more bendable. At first I tried cork sheets :

It bended really nicely, but my strips has to be about 60 cm long and quite thin,  because of that cork was crumbling and breaking in small peaces.

After that I tried white clay, that dries in air :

 And again because I need really long and thin strips this did not worked out too.

The only solution that I can think of is to draw these curves with 2D program. I know that this is going to take ages, especially the counting part, but I can't think of anything else.

Problem!

It took me quite a lot of time to figure out this 2D program, but at the end I managed to get what I want :

• 6 different diameters circles.
• 8 straight strips.

 I took just a small parts from these drawings ( an example of a slot and strip) and cut it with laser only to see if its going to work. After that I knew that I have a huge problem. I believed that I could bend the curves of my sculpture from these straight plastic strips, but they broke really easily. That means that I have to think about different materials that are more bendable .

Counting

In order to use a laser cuter you have to know a precise size of your object and every little pieces that it contains and then draw everything in a 2D Design computer program. I started to count and do some sketches when I realized that it would be much easier to draw 8 long strips that goes into the slots than many small one as in my previous sketch : 

Previous one:                                                                                     New one:

6 rings are going to be in a different diameters but the size of a slots  is going to be the same : 

More mirror sculptures

Mirror House by Ekkehard Altenburger

The sculptor created this mirrored house installation in 1996 as part of an [temporary installation] exhibition on the Isle of Tyree in Scotland. The house consists of a steel frame and large mirror sheets, which sit in a shallow lake, reflecting the Atlantic Ocean.

Mirror Sculptures by Rob Mulholland: