Ignorantly Wondering Around in Sol Lewitt's House (Week 1)

A couple days after Christmas my two way mirror plexiglass arrived from Plaskolite.  They donated two full sheets to me to prove my concept.  Thanks Molly for the help pushing that forward.  Since then a ton of work has gone towards completing my goal of having a cube air borne by critique on Wednesday the 25th.  Along with that progression I spent a lot of time photographing and videotaping the work I completed last semester for inclusion in an application to Skowhegan artist residency.  I still have a few more of those application to complete.  Photographing the group of leaning cubes allowed me to play with their possibilities as an installation piece.  They remind me a lot of Legos.  I stumbled ignorantly into Sol LeWitt’s universe.  I'll be posting a professional album soon.

The other work that I documented was the square wheel.  I completed this in video form.

Wheel (Phase 1) from Zane A. Miller on Vimeo.

Wheel (Phase 2) from Zane A. Miller on Vimeo.

Both of these explorations through documentation allowed me to think more clearly about the relationship that each of these works have to one another.  I’ll discuss this more after critique when I can’t place any ideas in people's heads.  It also allowed me to think about showing more than just the cube for my thesis.  Before I go forward in pursuing the 8 foot version I will be thinking long and hard about the value of my exploration as a hole.  I mean to say that I really like the potential of the leaning cubes to overwhelm a space along with the 4 foot cube and a wheel.

The progress towards the 4 foot cube has been a test of focus and design.  I have never done “finish” work with steel.  I had to be precise and to be honest I won’t know if I did it all right until I attempt to hang plexiglass monday morning.  Everything is prepared and ready for installation except for the plexiglass sides.  I have to drill holes in exactly the same place on each sheet.  Below is a visual narrative of how it has all gone down.

Cable swaging.

Below is the image sent to facilities in my proposal.

Below is a stress test video created to display the strength of the hanger when glued to plexiglass.  This demo failed at 40 pounds.  Four feet of plexi weighs way less then that and I am using four pegs.  Thanks for the video Bruce.

The wood frame is being used to find the correct length of cable required to hang the cube.  It is much ligther then the steel frame that comes in at just over 40 pounds.  I'm looking into aluminum.