Ok, here is another project that I have been meaning to add to the page for quite some time. I am currently working on 4 more- all different, and some that are much more complex. It was based off of one of my sketches, but I will have to go digging for it.
I had an idea for my next project, but my idea started evolving with an image from Seed magazine, April 2008, p. 34, article- "Why I do Science" by Jon Bardin. There is this image of a energy efficient light bulb in the article.
Energy Efficient light bulb- John Bardin
This bulb looks very organic, like a seed, a pollen, or what I imagine a spore looks like. So I researched further. This bulb and my original idea started to morph together. I noticed that my idea was starting to look like a large graph layout. One center entity with patterns radiating out from it. Individual bubbles connected in space by lines or cords. A series of questions started to form. What if my bubbles were magnifying glasses? The lines could be small cast bronze pieces held together by cast ball hinges and found brass screws and thumb nuts- this way everything could be posed and recalculated. The sculpture could move or be repositioned. My center bulb/spore could be cast bronze with a bubble of distortion in the middle. I could chase and repousse the distortion bubble so that everything would seem to emulate from that origin point. So I begun working in microcrystaline wax and figuring out the sizes of everything to be cast. This took a few days. Once I had the major pieces in wax I called up some old friends and drove to Oshkosh Wisconsin to do some casting. A few days of sprueing and dipping my ceramic shell molds and we were ready to have my bronze pour. Here is a picture of us taking the crucible out of the furnace.
Bronze foundry casting
So I had my casting cleaned up- if people want to see how I sprued it - let me know and I'll add the pictures. I started building my arms from the body out to the magnifiers. I decided on the size that they needed to be and then made plaster molds of a few wood dowels. These plaster molds could then be used in a wax injector and quickly duplicated. I played around for awhile and got a few that I thought could work in wax and cast them with centrifugal. From this I took the best and made a vulcanized rubber mold. Then the real injecting started. This also took a few days.
I finally got an arm cast and fabricated and I wanted to see if my design was going to look the way that I envisioned that it would. I took a few pictures and cropped and twisted the one arm around in photoshop until it looked a bit like Frankenstein. Here is the picture.
sketch "This Idea Shall Too Evolve" by David Barnhill
So I had Frankenstein, I knew where I was headed and all that remained was fabrication, some occasional casting, and finding out what colors I wanted to patina the main body of the piece. I chose orange. It looks a bit like cast iron, but it is bronze.
"This idea shall too Evolve" by David Barnhill
And a close up-
"This Idea Shall Too Evolve" by David Barnhill
Anyway, I hope that you all enjoy the work. Like I said way back in the beginning- I am working on four more and they are all much more complicated. I should have them posted within the next three weeks. Take care.

If you would like to see any additional pictures just drop me a line and I'll post them as soon as I can.

Sincerely, David Barnhill