Friday, March 03, 2017

Sunrise Sentinel Thunderbird

Follow the evolving project page, share and leave comments at this post: "Sentinels Of The NorthWestPassage."  A #Canada150 project.
Thanks. :Eric

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My proposal calls for several #sculpture installations, eventually. I would like to start with "Sunrise Sentinel Thunderbird".

This sketch is a first draft of a simplified #Thunderbird #pictograph 3D representation, to be fabricated from a model utilising
1-foot diameter cardboard tubes and wax, cast in #bronze, fitted with indestructible red and white navigation-grade lighting and placed on a polished stainless steel cylinder base. With free power and a location of my choosing. :)



The piece in the sketch is a little skeletal, because it only represents the cardboard bones of possibility. Wax can be added to the paper and #papiermache model, built up and sculpted to detail the texture of the final metal surface. At a distance, such detail will be lost, but it is meant to be seen up close, as well as from afar.

The "tubes" of the design were penciled in centimetre increments. When designing the sculpture model, I was thinking in terms of imperial feet, imagining cardboard tubes in my studio of one foot diameter. It could easily scale up to a meter or more tube diameter, for some North Korea - level of monumental art (using steel pipe, not in the current budget).

The model was drawn flat, but the tube elements will be shifted out of the ideal flat plane in the studio, when the physical structure is put together (sketches to follow.)

Some of the quick numbers that I pulled from this sketch:
- 16' base + 12'H x 24'W sculpture
- Having the base of the sculpture 10m+ from current sea level puts red  heart/beacon about 55' above sea level.
- #Tbird head is 9' long.
- The wingspan in the sketch is about 24', the "shoulders" are 11' wide, wing feathers are 3' and tail elements are 4'.

Edit (March 9): After thinking about my sketch; at the the 1-foot unit scale, casting #bronze this big (12'x24') would be prohibitive, but welded 1' pipe with cast bronze accents would be doable (in the price range that I am starting to formulate). 
Looking at the sketch in the 6-inch unit scale, the Thunderbird  figure would only be 6'x12', much more casting-friendly. To be appreciated up close. The 6' figure would not translate far out to sea, but its heartlight will still function as a beacon. Set atop a large enough polished stainless base, the sculpture will have a cool "knife of fire" effect, at sunrise on the NorthWestPassage. Of course, if someone drops $150 million in my lap, there's always the Colossus-of-Rhodes scale 2m welded pipe option. :) 

This sketch will also be used to start estimates of materials cost for modeling and metal fabrication; adjusting for size variation of final materials.

Project and studio donations can be sent to www.paypal.me/bingorage
Some pieces for sale from #BingoRageStudio, linked-to at the top of the page.
Thanks.
:Eric