Floating Sculpture
During my semester abroad in Italy, I was tasked with creating a floating sculpture that encapsulated my personal feelings about a longing for home. The project requires students to make a 1/4th scale mockup that precedes the final 48x40 in project.
“An Overall Success”
The items and concepts I used to express my longing for home were overalls and my house. Overalls give me a sense of comfort and support that reminds me of home. However, I couldn’t bring them along on the trip, as they took up a remarkable amount of space in my tightly-packed bag. I constructed a strong four pillared structure as a symbol of home and attached overalls sewed from a lightweight fabric to their frame to act as sails for the vessel.
Process and Construction
The first step of the process was to attach the floating canisters to a standard size palette. After this, I cut a large circle out of plywood and attached it to the palette. I cut lengths of wood from 2 x 4 planks at the appropriate angle to support the plywood pyramid, then screwed those into the circular board. The overalls were created using a sewing machine. Afterwards, they were attached to the top of the pyramid using eye hooks and to the bottom of the circular board with nails. The method of attachment gave the overalls enough freedom to ebb and flow with the currents of the wind. I stained the structural elements and painted the palette and pyramid a light blue to match the color of the sea
