"Growing Together" is a sculptural allegory depicting three simple, sweeping shapes that diverge and merge as they gain in scale. These forms and their interactions metaphorically speak to the path that people take as they learn and grow, with the intersections representing our reliance on each other and institutions like the Poudre River Public Library to enable and encourage this process of growth.

More pictures of the fabrication here.

I batted around the idea of titling this one "Just After the Big Bang" or "Origin of the Universe" or some such - but I decided to simplify. Nonetheless, to me it represents what the Universe could have looked like just a few Planck Time units after the Big Bang, with a lot of artistic license thrown in for good measure. I started with a simple egg-shaped surface in Rhino, then used the built-in Paneling Tools to array the hexagonal base unit over said surface. LOTS of flailing around and reiterating until I finally got something that would work. One complication of this particular design that normally doesn't occur in my Rhino work is the thickness of the material - because it incorporates repeating components, the thickness of each one must be allowed for in order for the pieces to properly form the correct final shape. This is one area that Rhino struggles in, as it employs surfaces that are zero-thickness rather than solids with volume like real-world sheet metal. I imported the surfaces into Solidworks and added the appropiate thickness, but then had to pull them back into Rhino to produce the correct patterns for the laser cutter - Solidworks is just too rigid to allow my crazy shapes to be modeled with its sheet metal tools. Go figure. Anyway, this is what I ended up with, pared down to a quarter of the whole form:

As you can see, each strip (color coded for clarity) is just slightly different from its neighbor, necessitating careful labeling in order to keep it all straight. It also takes someone who can handle simple arithmetic, like how many quarters it takes to make a whole - which I goofed on and had to order the other half after the fact. Oops. 2 X .25 is NOT 1. Below is the unrolled strips - half of them, anyway.

Evident on these strips are the bend lines, with mountain and valley folds color coded cyan and magenta. Keeping that sorted in my head was a source of continual stress. I ended up modifying a drill press vice to simplify bending the strips. The basic procedure can be seen below:

Once I had all the strips bent into these goofy accordian-like shapes, I was able to clamp them together and get a pretty decent tack with the TiG welder to glom them together. This was by far the most labor-intensive sculpture I've made so far.

As the strips went on, they gradually forced themselves into the desired egg-shape. I did have to tweak and clamp and swear and complain to compensate for small erors that grew larger over time, but it actually formed up pretty well.

This one was a real learning experience, forcing me to come up with all kinds of new techniques and procedures to get the job done. In other words, I loved it.

The frame you see in the top picture above is just for displaying "Beginning"; I envision this as a hanging piece in an atrium, stairwell, or foyer. The same techniques I empoyed here could be used on a much larger scale. I'd love to give it a whirl.

Backed the trailer under the piece, removed the crossmember, picked up the top end, and rolled the sculpture to the fromt of the trailer. Wah. La. All that was left was strapping it down, slapping some hazard flags on it, and loading up the tools for the install the next day.

My little Tacoma did a fine job of hauling this rig, despite the weight - "Wellspring" tips the scales at just 850 pounds, but the trailer is a beefy one at around 3K. (Thanks go to fellow Guild member and all-around good guy Denny Haskew for the use of his trailer.) An hour and a half later, and National Sculptors' Guild honcho John Kinkade and I were on site, getting ready and waiting for our crane. It was a beautiful day, a beautiful crane, and a beautiful installation - we were done in less than an hour.

So, there you have it. Done.

Rhino includes some really powerful tools for "unrolling developable surfaces" - flattening out the curvy bits so they can be cut from sheet stock. I usually try to color code the parts so my simple mind has an easier time figuring out what goes where, which can become problematic when you're dealing with over two hundred pieces like I was here. I also model the footing and whatever anchoring hardware are called for by the engineer. This way I can at least pretend I've planned for any possible issues that might pop up regarding clearances and installation logistics, plus it makes accounting for a bill of materials a lot more accurate.

Once I've got that all squared away, I export a file of the pattern in a format that the cutting job shop can use to drive their cutting machine - in this case, a water jet.

I also modeled the internal superstructure of 3" stainless steel square tubing. Again, doing so insures that it fits properly within the base's envelope, plus it allows me to produce most of the sketches needed by the engineer directly from the 3d information.

Once the modeling, unrolling, and pattern making are done, I get to sit around nervously while the parts are all cut out. Any mistakes can be costly at this point, and I did manage to skip a couple pieces on this one. Sorting and identifying all the parts can be daunting and confusing, especially if many of them are just slightly different from one another. I should probably implement a better part labeling system at some point, dontcha think?

Now it's time for the real work to begin. I started with the 12 gauge parts of the base. One of the difficulties presented by working with stainless is temporarily holding the pieces in place in order to tack them together with the welder - 300 series stainless (this is 304) is non-magnetic, so the usual magnetic clamps are useless and mechanical ones have to suffice. They often don't, requiring some fancy gymnastics, some Rube-Goldbergian jigs, or a combination of the two.

The surface of all that stainless also needs to have a nice handmade swirl applied. Below is the top of the base, which is 1/4 inch plate.

Here is the superstructure being welded up, and then with the 1/4 inch top included:

 I then welded the aforementioned 12 gauge base sheets to the superstructure. Somehow, I've neglected to get a picture of the finished base before attaching it to the rest of the piece. Oops. With the base done, I moved on to the "frame" part of the sculpture, which is the outline of Adams County itself. I came to regret including all those jogs - which, BTW, is the part of the county that got chopped out to make Denver International Airport.

Next came the grass blades. I always like working on the curved parts, as they magically form themselves into the correct shape as you draw the edges together. Not so magical is the tranformation of the raw welded seams into nice clean corners. HOURS of grinding and honing, all by hand, all by yours truly. Weeeeeee.

After each blade is finished, it is added to the frame. The design is such that the grass blades act as stiffeners and reinforcements, adding lateral inegrity to the structure. In the pics below you can also see I'm test-fitting the mounting system for the acryllic circles - which represent an aerial view of center-point irrigation.

After attaching all three blades and welding up all the connections that were easily accessed from the top side, I needed to flip the whole thing over so I could do the same on the other side.

With all the welding and chasing (foundry ratspeak for grinding) done on the main upper portion of the sculpture, it's time to attach the base. This was by far the most technically challenging aspect of the fabrication, as the alignment of the frame to the base determines the attitude and verticality of the whole works. PLUS, the base outweighs the rest by 2-to-1, throwing the center of gravity way off from its previous location and making rigging and picking the thing much more complicated. PLUS the welded connection between the two is structurally critical. Lining it all up:

Once the alignment is good and the top side welded, I needed to flip it again to access the base/frame connection on the other side:

And then weld that up:

With the welding, grinding, and swirling completed, I needed to attach the acryllic circles. I'd fretted a bit about managing this without scratching the material, but it ended up taking about an hour to finish up.

At this point, the fabrication is finished. Ta. Da.

Thank you, Steve.

I've been having good results with 3d printing some of my designs for proposals. It definitely helps in understanding the form. The shitty iPhone picture - not so much.

A fantastic piece in a stunning space. I'd love to make it to France to check this out.

Co & Isa's photostream contains some of the best shots I've seen of Kapoor's new knockout.

With a whole bunch of help from Russ with Martino & Luth Structural Engineers, this is the internal structure that will hold the whole thing up.