Hello friends, welcome to my studio.
We have a different kind of studio log this week! Instead of spending the day at the studio table in my little purple room, I visited Leaman Signs (and wonderful fabricator Greg Leaman) to see an update on my commission for the St. John’s International Airport.
I pulled up to the shop and was faced with a gorgeous, shining aluminum sculpture in progress! It was really exciting to see. The last time I was here, we had a wooden prototype and I thought that was impressive, so this really blew me away. It’s huge (10’ tall!) and has such a dramatic presence. There is still lots to be done, like welding, sanding, and of course adding colour, but I’m already in love.
Speaking of colour, that’s where I come in. I brought with me the mini prototype I made while at my Fogo Island Arts residency and started to do some colour matching to decide the colours for the final work. At Greg’s helpful suggestion, I looked at the colours outside so they would be the most accurate (the sculpture is going to be outside, after all). A few were hard to choose because there were so many possibilities, but in the end I found colours that I think will be a perfect fit. Each aluminum panel will have a different colour on the front and back, and the real magic is when you move around the sculpture and see the colours change. I am so excited to see the shift happen on this large scale.
Then I headed back to my studio to write each colour choice on an artwork proof, with arrows pointing to the front and back of each panel, to help make sure there’s no confusion on which colour goes where, which was then sent of to Greg and his team!
This sculpture has been one of the wildest, scariest, and most exciting projects I’ve ever taken on, and I can’t wait for it to be installed. Today’s session was short and sweet, but it was a big step on this journey. That wasn’t so scary, now was it?
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