Mother Nature has graciously provided me with a bit of unencumbered time (courtesy of her latest Nor'easter blizzard) to get together a new posting. Of course, my time will only be unencumbered until the depth of snow necessitates my braving the elements to clear a pathway to the woodpile. Fingers crossed that the power stays on!
 Rubber molds | I have spent my time after the Christmas holiday getting a piece ready for the first show of 2018 at River Arts Gallery in Damariscotta. The theme for the show is "black & white" and I decided to use the occasion to put together a piece that I had thought about doing a while ago, but had never gotten around to actually doing it. My plan was to make a set of 8 plaster casts from four rubber molds that I made back in 2012 (see my blog posting for 12/12/12) and arrange them in a "square circle" with an open space in the center. The casts would be painted with a graphite acrylic and matted in white with a black frame |
After making 2 each of the four different molds, I dried the castings and then trimmed any irregularities on their edges. I also filled and sanded any surface imperfections. I then experimented with various arrangements of the 3"x3" castings, trying to get a composition that had an interesting distribution of circles, squares and the varying elevations. The next step was to paint each casting with the graphite acrylic, and then prepare the matting materials.
 Poured & de-molded |  Arrangement |  Painted |
I cut 3 different pieces of matboard (2 white and 1 red) and a piece of foamcore board to fit into a 14" x 14" black Nielsen metal frame. I cut an opening in the foamcore board that corresponded to the outside measurements of the casting arrangement, and an identical opening in the piece of red matboard. I used an angled mat cutter to cut a slightly larger beveled opening in a piece of the white matboard. Before I attempted to assemble the mats, I made one final change in the arrangement of the castings. I decided to reverse the order of the 2 bottom right castings, so that there wouldn't be a circular element in both of the righthand corners of the design.
| The first step to assembling the mats began with gluing the solid piece of white matboard to the back of the foamcore to act as a backing. After I epoxied the painted plaster casts into the opening in the foam core, I glued the cut red mat to the foamcore, followed by the white mat with the beveled opening. I then fit, cut, and glued a small piece of white mat into the center opening in the arrangement. The last step was to slide the matted piece into the frame and add the hanging wire. C'est fini! I was able to deliver the piece ahead of time and did not have to worry about traveling through a blizzard! |  Matted & framed |
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