As an extension from the last project, mold making (see previous blog post), I began thinking about the Black Rock desert and what are the landmarks that represent the place.
The first thing that came to mind is the Black Rock mountain itself. Located on the north end of the desert, next to Black Rock Hot Springs.
View of Black Rock Point from above.
Nevada has the most hot springs in the lower 48, there are many surrounding the Black Rock Desert itself. These hot springs make up part of my relationship with my sojourns to the desert. As an homage to the land I created a platform to show the mold made in the previous project.
Referencing the desert and the mountain.
I imported the view of the black rock into Rhino as a bitmap. Once in the program I then used control point curves to trace the outline of the mountain, moving inward to resemble a topographical map.
I used the design for dove tail joints to create a second color for the desert floor. I did this by creating a parallelogram shape with polyline curve. I then copied the shape down the row. I mirrored one to generate even spacing between each dove tail. Once my 'zipper' was created I trimmed the excess curve lines that went beyond my border.
I created a border based on the size of the material I would be using.
The materials I selected were blue and black 1/4" thick cast acrylic. The right side of the piece I cut 1/8" coke bottle green and florescent orange. This allowed me to layer the two cut on top of each other to match the 1/4" acrylic on the left side.
I cut every piece the same, so every piece had the mountain shapes cut out of them. I layered these pieces on top of each other alternating thicknesses to allow for the mountain to start to protrude above the desert floor.
Title: 'Black Rock Desert, Nevada' Materials: Laser cut acrylic, resin, black rock (from mold project)
The piece work as a form of jointery themselves. They fit within each other and every piece that is removed changes the image of the art piece. The blue side and the pieces removed from the mountain become hot springs surrounding the Black Rock Desert.