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:

Stuck

I got a little bit stuck with this project and didn't knew how to go further. But after Dem's tutorials I started to move on.

New Ideas:
1. Play with the materials that I have : how plastic lattice works with a soft material, how it stretches :

2. Change the vintage looking material to something else ;

For example something that looks like Anish Kapoor sculptures:

3. Scale : make the final peace bigger, for example 50 cm tall or taller.
4. Cut small rhombus mirror peaces with laser cuter and put them in a plastic lattice: