Sunflower #0

The sunflower design began years ago when I was teaching geometry at Claymont High School in Uhrichsville, OH. I always enjoyed the compass and straightedge constructions we would do in class. I would expand on them outside of class and I remember doing some cool patterns by recursively repeating constructions. For one of my first cast pigmented concrete art pieces, I reached back to those ideas for a concept that would layer nicely. Playing around with Inkscape, this design arose.

Making this sketch, I had to think In terms of depth, rather than color, so the lightest parts (the outer petals) are the thickest parts of the artwork, while the darkest parts are the deepest parts of the piece.

I liked the concept, and I thought some depth would make this fairly simple design even more interesting. I played around with colors to see how it would look in different versions, and I liked what I saw.

Once I settled on my design, I figured out how each layer should look, and I made a drawing of each separate layer. Since this would ultimately be used by a laser cutter, a simple black and white drawing would be ideal.

To test my layers, I had my Cricut cutter cut the layers, and I glued them together.

Satisfied with the result, I had the individual layers laser cut by my friend Tracy at Brewtifully, here in Canton. Tracy invited me to be the exhibiting artist at her shop last November and stocks some of my jewelry and décor pieces.  I used colorful acrylic sheets to make the layers and bonded them with acrylic. Unfortunately I never got a photo of the individual layers, but here is the final result.

I made a silicone mold of my shiny, colorful template.

Once I had my mold ready to go, I started filling the layers with colors of pigmented concrete. Keep in mind that this method is a lot like painting on glass. The visible portion of the art is the surface that is actually touching the mold. What you see below is the interior and the back of the artwork. Just like me, you have to wait until it’s complete to see if it came out.

In the final step shown above, I filled in the rest of the mold with a fiber-reinforced mix to give the piece some extra support. I also embedded some D-hooks that I can use to add a hanging wire to the back so it can be displayed without a frame.

For me, the wait to de-mold the piece was about 8 hours. Eight hours in which I mostly avoided peeking. Disturbing the concrete before it’s ready can lead to the whole thing being destroyed, wasting time and supplies. Trust me, I learned this the hard way.

Here’s the final piece…

Not bad for my test casting. I see that the yellow bled into the blue a bit, which happened because I was rushing a bit towards the end. The material has a limited amount of time that it is workable, and I started to feel like I was running out of time. I will sand the back of the piece with industrial diamond polishing pads and apply a sealant to the entire work, but this is pretty much what it will look like if you come see it in person.

I am happy with the result and I have learned a lot from working on this piece. I will use this mold to do a series of pieces. I might, at some point, do four of them and combine them to make a full sunflower, like so...

Each quadrant of this would vary from the others, since they would be made one at a time. I would probably lean into that and accentuate the differences somehow.

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Thanks!

Eric at Funky Designs