Artwork Development

Paul and Brian have been developing ideas independantly of each other over the New Year holiday period.  We met up today (Wed 13 Jan) to ‘show and tell’ and to find if there was any common ground.  Thankfully our ideas joined togther seamlessly and took our collaboration on this project effortlessly into the next phase.

Basically our ideas explore different aspects of life on The Rochdale Canal, its history, it’s transport links, the engineering and boat building that made it such a phenomenon.  Without going into too much detail (as I want to keep the details for the ‘big reveal’ during our presentation at the end of the month) we have decided to create a design that:

•  uses2 contrasting materials
• has layers of symbolism for those who like to ponder the deeper meaning of life
• is easy to read and learn from for those people who are in a hurry to get on with their dog walking or cycle ride
• is bold and striking to attract some attention from the car drivers
• uses techniques & design methods  that the Fairbridge Team will remember from the silhouette project
• uses images that the Fairbridge Team originally introduced during the 3 mini-projects last year
• looks back at its history and acknowledges the variety of current uses today

Paul and I are now working to bring these ideas a step closer to reality.  Meeting material suppliers to seek advice on the integrity of our chosen materials; discussing our ideas with fabrictors to ensure they are feasable and can be accomplished within budget and time constraints; ensuring installation can go ahead without any hiccups and lastly getting confirmation that we can have use of a work boat to install the artwork as without that key piece of the jigsaw – ‘that concrete wall aint gonna have no artwork on it!’

I was going to put up some of our developmental sketches but have now decided otherwise – I really do want to keep the idea fresh for the presentation.  Instead here is a photo of Paul and Brian hard at work discussing our ideas.

April 2010

Last week paul and brian spent some dedicated time developing the designs for the laser cut panels to the next stage.  Getting the shape, size and rotation points of the wooden cog correct was the first step before we even started the designs for the steel panels.  This took some serious maths (for artists) which challeneged us to our limits!  But we persevered and conquered!  Here we are figureing things out.  (photo to follow)

Paul has since been working on the finished design for the first of the steel panels.