We have had so many setbacks in the process of actually forming the wave and the supporting structure. We have had contradicting advice in regards to building an armature, the best materials, whether it would stay up and be safe.
Not having experience with creating a sculpture this size before we have been unsure of which is the best advice to follow! In the end we went ahead and ordered one sheet of welding mesh, as this could be used in most of the possible ways of creating the wave, and we are running out of time and have to start the construction. (we can’t wait to get past all the struggles and actually see the installation coming together!).
We figured it would help us to see if the form would work, and be steady enough, by bending the welding mesh back onto itself and holding it in shape temporarily with rope and thin wire. (pictured.)
It was a real relief to return to our original idea for the armature and see that this structure resembled a wave!
As this design requires less plastics, the welding mesh makes up a lot of the form, it would save us a lot of time in trips to the recycling centre and washing of bottles. The mesh also creates a strong base for the installation.
As we were all happy with this structure we had to weld it together! I (Rachael) was a bit tentative at the initial thought of welding myself as was Bethan, but I wanted to give it a go, and I figured it would be much more satisfying if we did all of the required tasks to form our wave, and welding was one of these things! It turned out to be so much fun and was exciting to see our wave coming together! Below are the images of us preparing to and doing the welding, along with the settings of the welding machine.
(Note from Bethan: The welding has been my most memorable part of this. I was also feeling a bit freaked about welding, but it was empowering and lots of fun! A skill hopefully we will be able to use again in the future.)
Images are our own. In preparation for Light Nelson 2016
synthetic nature 