Red Lotus - Construction and Creation

This post covers Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Brian agreed to help me with the construction phase since he has welding experience. We had a number of 3/8" round stock delivered by Paul Vigne, Cosanti Foundation's purchaser on Friday. Then we got onto laying it all out and welding.



Cutting to size.



Brendan and Brian at the bender to get the curve we want. It took us a few tries to get the kind of grade we wanted.









The base laid out.



Brian welding.





I will have to hold the pieces into place while he welds the tri-pieces onto the base.



I gave the camera to Segolene, who got a couple of pictures of me in a facemask (makes me look really short).



Cutting the crosspieces to secure the sculpture from the inside.





Welding the top.



Finished product.



That same weekend the grandparents came down and it was great to see them. This is my grandfather taking a look at where all my time is being spent.



That same night, we begin laying out the first layer of muslin.





Next morning, Caberia was nice enough to come along and sew the whole skin on, which turned out to be a much better method than my idea of hot glue and pins.







Sewing the top.



From the inside.





For fun, we put a light inside it at night to see what it would look like.



That night, I begin on the paper mache stage. The light proved to be very popular with bugs, including one tarantula that happened to be on the side.





I got lots of help on the mache stage. Thanks to Andrew, Rebecca, Carri, Crystal, Brendan, Amanda, Zeb, anyone else I'm forgetting.



During the day.



It progressively gets more covered as the hours pass.





Carri last night working on the top. The sculpture is almost entirely covered now. This morning will take care of any more detail paper mache—and then onto wood glue and shellac.



It's starting to come together…