SEEING THE LIGHT

Our assignment was to make a luminaire based off of the "light phenomenon" photo we took previously. Who knew it would be such an undertaking?!

My phenomenon was of the sun setting behind mini blinds. You could see just a peek of the sun between the blinds. I wanted to capture this peeking of light in my light fixture.

While looking up ideas I stumbled upon the work of Vicente Garcia Jimenez. His use of layering laquered materials and varying the amount of light shown inspired me.

I first made a little sketch model of what i was kind of thinking of doing with mylar. Then i made a prototype out of cardboard.

When I went to make my final piece I discovered that plastic sheeting wasn't as easy to glue as cardboard was. Because it's clear I had to be very careful with my glue choice. I decided to score the sides and use much bigger pieces just for ease.

After playing around with different ways of gluing/attaching pieces I came to the conclusion that if I could paint glue on evenly and apply lots of pressure it would be nearly invisible. I sanded the sides to make them less transparent and glued everything together. The glue took FOREVER to dry so I spent plenty of time at the middle table waiting.

After everything was dry I made a smaller box to cover the bulb because it was still pretty bright. I drilled a hole in the bottom of the box before attaching that piece (also scored) onto the box. I then put the socket through and glued it to the hole. I made little standing pieces to insert in the bottom so that the box was raised and wasn't sitting right on the cord.

with inner box

without inner box

from top

I experimented  with putting mylar between sheets of plexiglass 

I almost used wire but it was too bulky

I almost used brads but they, too, were just bulky

We then had to do technical drawings of our piece along with an expressive drawing. The technical ones weren't hard to draw at half scale but my one regret is that I didn't look closely at my light effect in a dark room before drawing it. I think it would have been much more successful had I done that.

I had some serious challenges with this project (expensive materials, FRAGILE MATERIALS, materials that required much patience, etc) but I really think it turned out well.