Going Beyond Stripes - New Work

Ever since going to a retrospective exhibit of Sean Scully's at Dartmouth's Hood Museum in the spring, I've had a growing respect for stripes. I wasn't as enthralled with his work as I was enthralled with the idea of making something similar in wood, especially curly maple -- with curls perpendicular to the stripes adding another dimension to the work. So my recent work has all been stripes.

With the new new work, however, I've started cutting the stripes into smaller sections and filling the gaps with either opaque black epoxy or clear tinted epoxy. With the clear epoxy pieces I'm thinking of either building a metal stand around the piece so that it can sit in the middle of a room, or back-lighting them with an LED light box. The metal stand idea would require figuring out a way to polish the front and back - I'm not sure that I can polish one side without ruining the polish on the opposite side; and the light box idea will require finding supplies, box designs, and materials (metal?, wood?). Not sure which way to go yet.

Here are some examples. The first one is made from the same board that I made Silk Ribbons and Cherry; the second one is the same board as "641" (earlier post); the rest (a total of 10 - not all shown) are made from the same board of curly/wormy maple (originally 2 inches thick so I was able to get 2 pieces by resawing them once they were glued up).





This one above, and the one below are the front and back of the same piece, I think it is the best candidate for getting a metal stand for middle of room display because the grain patterns are great on both sides.

This one is the other half of the one above it. The pattern of cuts is almost the same but it is filled with opaque black epoxy because they aren't through cuts.