A friend of mine, Caroline Parker, recently opened up her own hair salon, Hanh Solo for Hair, and commissioned me to make a hanging sculpture. We'll be installing it on Wednesday the 27th, and I encourage you to stop by to see it in person, and perhaps get your hair styled as well. This is "Abstraction[0]".

Abstraction[0]

[These photos were taken in my home, in different lighting conditions than will be present at the salon, but it will give you a good idea of what the sculpture is like.]

Abstraction[0] is made of wet-folded water color paper hung with brass hardware on a wooden base of maple boards and birch plywood. It measures 17W x 54L x 42H inches and will be hanging about 7-8 feet above the ground in the salon.

Detail. Paper wrapped around wooden dowels and held in place by brass wire wrappings.

Detail. The Sonobe icosahedron.

I hadn't done anything like this before, and the research and development process was quite an ordeal. I had to test fold a lot of different types of water color paper to get just the right look, and then made quite a few mistakes learning to create a billowing, wind-blown look. Soon there will be a blog post about the design process, including photos of the finished piece in place at the salon. For now, here are some additional shots.

P.S. Abstraction[] will be a series of sculptural pieces, hence the array-style name.