Typography in the 3rd Dimension
My Steel Sculpture Project
This project was spawned from a smaller class project in which we were given the task of researching and creating a budget for a sculpture project in later life. I came up with an idea for a large scale typographic sculpture that I wanted to execute and ended up liking the project so much I wanted to make a smaller version for my final. After a lot of trial and error, I came out with my first steel creation.
The sculpture itself is a play on how we view typography. Everyday we see these symbols in front of us in a 2 dimensional state. What I tried to do with this sculpture was to take symbols that help us understand the world around us, and to put them in a context that not only conveys nothing, but is in the third dimension as well. Its an almost exact opposite.
Process
I began the project by stenciling the desired form on to the mild steel with a sharpie. The shapes were then cut out the a plasma cutter, and the edges were ground down with a hand held axle grinder and a touched up with a dremel. I then proceeded to cut the 71 connecting bars from pencil rod with a bolt cutter, and ground them down with the larger axel grinder.
I slowly began to weld the pencil rod to the form of the body, and afterwards weld the entire structure together. After welding together, I clean up the edges with the dremel tool and axel grinder one last time, sand blast the entire sculpture, and spray paint it black.
The Sculpture is then prepped for painting. I watered down acrylic paints and using a brush squeegeed the pigment on the edge of the shape to make it drip down the surface. Using paper as a kind of stencil I blocked off each of the different characters in turn as I dripped a different color on each one. The shape’s inside was then re-spray painted for the cleanup touches and was completed.
I slowly began to weld the pencil rod to the form of the body, and afterwards weld the entire structure together. After welding together, I clean up the edges with the dremel tool and axel grinder one last time, sand blast the entire sculpture, and spray paint it black.
The Sculpture is then prepped for painting. I watered down acrylic paints and using a brush squeegeed the pigment on the edge of the shape to make it drip down the surface. Using paper as a kind of stencil I blocked off each of the different characters in turn as I dripped a different color on each one. The shape’s inside was then re-spray painted for the cleanup touches and was completed.
Stenciling the shapes onto mild steel
The shapes are cut out and the pencil rod has been cut and ground down.
The pencil rod is fixed to the face of the sculpture with the TIG welder.
The sculpture is finally welded together.
The sculpture after being sand blasted and spray painted.
Prepping the sculpture for painting
The sculpture mid painting process.
