Tuesday, August 17, 2021

“The Workshop”: How It Came to Be

“The Workshop” took quite a bit of time to create.  Perhaps you viewed the minute long video I made of the finished piece.  If not, you can click here and watch it if you’d like.  But that was the end.  Here I aim to show you the process through photos I took as it progressed from an the beginning to completion.

I started with the idea in my head of an industrial warehouse space with a steampunk inventor designing a set of wings that would send his assistant aloft.  From there I began to construct the building.  I used foam core and styrofoam to eliminate excess weight.

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I wanted the warehouse to have the appearance of a brick exterior so I added it through the use of stencils and paint.  It was time consuming because in between applications it had to set.

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In the meantime, I worked on other details.  Here you see the beginnings of the shelves that will hold the various tools, trinkets and other things the inventor likes to have around.

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From the very beginning I wanted him to have a desk for his drawings and a desk lamp appropriate to the steampunk era.  Inspired by ‘real’ life lamps, I fashioned one from tubes and gears.  The tube allowed me to thread the wires for the light bulb – because it had to actually work, of course.

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Steampunk naturally has pipes and often rusted ones so I made some to hold the shelves and provide some interesting visuals to the back wall.  I especially loved creating this part, no matter how maddening and tedious it could be at times.

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This little font, which arrived as a kit, seemed like the perfect thing an inventor would have in his space.  Luckily the diameter of the opening was exactly right for the globe I happened to find afterword. Some things you just can’t plan and it makes the resulting lucky find all the sweeter.  This was also going to be lighted so I added a tube to the center to accommodate the wires.

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Painting, adding gears, more painting.

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A central feature of the workshop was going to be the lighted steampunk clock on the back wall.  I have done something similar in the past, and I learned that first comes the arrangement.  Then I document the design with a photos.  Then everything gets disassembled for painting, only to be reassembled with glue.

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Here’s my tentative layout before all the shelving boards were stained.  I used different kinds of wood and stain so they were all different in the end.

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I also created a guide so I would know how many pipes I would need, what shape they would be and where they would end up in the arrangement.

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Back to painting pipes!

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The clock has a subtle map which you can see if you study the finished piece. It is sandwiched between the interior and exterior walls with gears and cogs.

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The warehouse also needed some ‘steel’ beams that spanned the ceiling – and they had to be a bit rusty too.

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The room is lit during the day by natural light which comes through the skylight which I made from acrylic.  How my brain resisted the math needed to figure angles and cuts!

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A few more photos of details.  A steampunk telescope.

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The steampunk globe.

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The chalkboard for calculations, notes and such.

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A pulley – it is a workshop after all.

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A bulletin board for drawings and sketches.

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Tiny pencils – a necessity.

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The assistants wings under way.

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Here’s a photo of the inventor, Tiberius.

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His assistant, Anna.

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And “The Workshop”.

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This piece was part of the opening night gallery at TBAI, in Binghamton, NY.  I invite you to follow my adventures with bears – whether I am making them to exist on their own or in bears&boxes or in vignettes.  For Instagram, click here.  For Facebook, click here. Thanks for reading!

See you next time!

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