Rusty Making Things

This installation includes the three types of homes available in Forkville:

(1) Woodland (engraved with forks to indicate that this is a Forkville house),

(2) Glass Homes (tine marks on the exterior), and

(3) Forkville Homes 100% forks,

as well as mirror with glass panel sandblasted with pine boughs incorporating forks, pools of melted forks, and forks dripping over the edge of the table.

What do we keep; what do we throw away?

What do we value?

The Forkville utensil box is a way of demonstrating visually how these choices would look in 2050.The box was shown next to the Forkville model installation.

As a commuter student who eats a lot of take-out food, I have been thinking about plastic utensils for several years. While some travel with their own metal utensils, or as I sometimes do, reuse the plastic ones, still the majority of people evidently don’t. Up to 40 billion plastic utensils are made, sold, used in the U.S. each year. In this installation, my premise is that because these utensils take 200 – 500 years to biodegrade, they are excellent building materials, and a way to strengthen plant life.

The installation assumes that by 2050 forks will be incorporated into buildings, including houses, will find their way into the branches of pine trees, and that the value of homes will be predicated on the percentage of forks included in the construction. The installation shows samples of model houses available.

Look for the forks in these pine branches

getting closer to shapes that look like forks

Finally experimenting with using a sandblast resist to create tines on a flat fork, and slumping it into the kiln.

The basic flat waterjet cut shapes needed work to change them into into forks.

First, using a belt sander to remove the process bump, then sanding around the border and beveling the edges of each piece, up to 600 grit.

Bradley’s, Hornell, NY used the digital template to cut flat glass into fork shapes. Next, the slump mold was carved from a piece of graphite using a CNC machine in Alfred University’s machine sh

To further explore ideas of what we keep, what we consider disposable, and what is precious, I created glass forks. These images represent digital files created to make a fork template and a mold for slumping the forks. 

Wednesday morning, November 9, at 8am,  Greg and I began casting, looking a little ragged so early in the morning, each of us having stayed up late to watch election results. I was interested in sandcasting “houses” based on the shape of 1 pint milk cartons, and also making a 2 to 3 inch thick slab of glass  to waterjet cut into fork shapes. I had already taken two thicknesses of window glass to Bradley’s, Hornell, for cutting, but since they were unsure about whether window glass would  shatter during the process, it seemed a good idea to provide a thick piece of glass. Here you see a “house” cast into the sand, and in the next image, sand-covered “houses” on one shelf and the slab on another shelf in the annealing kiln.

To display my Forkville installation, I used an old unclaimed Alfred table, painting and sanding it with three layers of primer and spackle, 1 layer of matte black, and finally 2 layers of glossy black.

Every display choice requires preparation – these pictures show steps in making a pegboard portable display unit. Alfred University has a terrific woodshop where I was able to make screws invisible by sinking them deeply, filling the holes with wood pegs, sanding the pegs smooth and painting.

This wonderful aquatint print is an inspiration for further explorations in sandblasting. http://www.re-printmakers.com/WhatsOn/exhibitions/142

Heating forks until they melt into a house shape

Added more material and heated the forks 10 minutes longer at 350 degrees - the results are very abstracted shape. This will stand if it is balanced on melted utensils that act as shims.

The proliferation of plastic forks makes them a great construction material. These utensils are ready to melt:

After 5 minutes at 350 degrees

After 10 minutes

After 15 minutes

Previously made melted house. Added more material and put into oven for 15 minutes to try to achieve a more conventional house look.