Desert Design Lab

New England furniture maker/designer, recipient of the 2013 John D. Mineck Fellowship.

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Finished and photographed. Suspended Landscape bench is the first casting I’ve done in a long time!

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Finally finishing the bronze desert bench!

[vivianbeer]

From small paper models to 300lbs of bronze it took a group to make this project happen. It was great to work with the graduate students in the foundry. Now the parts are on their way home, as am I, to fabricate and finish. Excited for the next stage!

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Sand mold casting the newest desert bench during my residency at University of Madison Wisconsin

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In my residency here I’m casting a positive in rubber from the desert molds for a bronze desert bench! I had the pleasure on modeling out my ideas and making a substructure for the rubber here in the wood shop and using the CNC router. We will be spending the week building sand molds around this for a big pour on Sunday. The flexibility of the rubber is pretty impressive, and more than a little inspiring! I already can’t wait to make the next one! Glad to have the help of Grads here at UW-Madison, Justin Playl and Keenan Lampe this week to make the molds.

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Going to do some metal casting here in the Madison residency. Desert bench prepare to meet bronze!

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Desert Impressions: Salt Girl 2015     18x65x1 in This image was builton/with the salt flats of Nevada in collaboration with Jen Anderson and Hannah Vaughan during the Desert Design Lab Project. We directly sculpted the salt to create the figure, captured in this photograph during a rare time when the flats are covered in just inches of water. It has sharp portraiture meaning for Anderson, as many generations of her family are from this region, but we leave it open to interpretation as the next level of collaboration is between the piece and its audience.

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Desert Impressions: Door A

2015             16x47x1 in

UV printed photograph on aluminum with clear automotive finish

This image was built on/with the salt flats of Nevada in collaboration with Jen Anderson and Hannah Vaughan during the Desert Design Lab Project. Using a trash pile “found” door and local clay we made this sculpture in collaboration with the environment, letting the sun dry and crack the piece as it had the flats themselves, captured in this photograph.

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Tracks North and Tracks South

2015

UV printed photograph on aluminum with clear automotive finish, 96x20x1 in

I found these tracks in the desert particularly powerful as they spoke to the passage of time and the relationship between people and this hostile/fragile environment. I would like people to experience this photo in relationship to the Desert Bench no. 2 which is made from the same textures as the place caught in this photograph.

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Finally one of the first benches is done!. See it in person at my solo show at the Metals Museum in Memphis TN opening March 13.

http://www.metalmuseum.org/

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Final step. Clear coating the prints with automotive paint, both for durability and to make the colors "pop"!

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UV printing images of the salt flats onto Aluminum

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A new desert bench peeped for casting

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Printing photos of tracks in the desert.

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Last welds on a new desert bench. We will be casting tomorrow!!

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If you are in Seattle this weekend come say hello... and get a first peek at the Smithsonian Fellowship during my lecture. 2014 Northwest Jewelry & Metals Symposium www.seattlemetalsguild.org

[vivianbeer]

Here we are racing against the sunset to capture this entire arch with the gigapan. It took a while to hike in with the equipment, but it was defiantly worth it.

One of the most interesting visual phenomenon in Moab area was the way the sky’s intense blue was constrained in these arches. I wanted to flip that around by making the arch the center of the photo rather than the frame. It ends up being a different sort of horizon. I feel like most of the large photos we made in this project are about horizon, and that much of my attraction to the desert is exploring that complex horizon for myself!