Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Tesla/Edison Shadow Box

© 2012 Cathy Savage, 11.5 x 15.5 x .75
Here I am gluing the final layers of the shadow box.
(Isaac Newton is peeking through on the paper underneath! See him?)
Well I am finally finished with this dang thing. Basically I took a collagraph print that I made last year and made it 3 dimensional. It was a long haul tweaking the contrast and re-lasering parts again and again. The lasering isn't quick on large sections--think of a dot matrix printer going back and forth with the minutest of increments. Edison gave me the most trouble. Figures. I'm going to make a limited edition--I really have to make more in order to recoup my invested time and studio costs in the design phase. That is, providing there's an interest out there for more than one. I plan on starting another one today while I'm at MAKEatx. I want to at least see how much time it takes to laser one from scratch so when I calculate price I'm not factoring in design time but pure production. The painting part was loads of fun. I only planned on a few highlights but went crazy once I got started. I'm sure if I make more of these they'll change from puppet show to puppet show.

1 comment:

Preston Woodruff said...

Hard work and obviously fun... love the Isaac Newton riff (when you come to Brevard this summer, be sure to leave with my copy of "Newton & the Counterfeiter" if you haven't already read it. You'll love the personality profile it draws of IN -- one crazy dude). You seem to be overflowing with ideas lately. Working late and early, I'm sure.
Design time... yeah, it's hard to make that show up in the price, to say nothing of the materials you use up trying to get the design right. For me, that's particularly true with dulcimers. For instance, some of the inlay materials are $48 an ounce. Mistakes are costly. Same thing is true with ebony. Time is, of course, the most valuable material of all.