Folding Sculpture

Back in the 1990's I was exploring the basic geometric shapes, Square, Circle, Triangle, and limiting myself to those shapes, experimenting on what I could do with them. This was two-dimensional work on paper, canvas and wood. It was an exercise. Experimentation. Severely handicapping oneself, to force creativity.
Moving that idea into the three dimensional world, I experimented with the Cube, Sphere, Cone (or Pyramid) shapes. These creative experiments were interesting exercises which did bear fruit occasionally. At one point I focused on the Cube for a while. That's when I started developing my folding sculptures.
I began by exploring how I could fold flat, square shapes into a Cube. This led to a series of Folding Cube sculptures. (You can read about a few of them on my art web site: Cube Sculptures). Those in turn led to other folding sculptures series.
I'd always liked Origami and enjoyed folding all kinds of things I came across in books. I liked being able to make three dimensional things out of a flat sheet of paper. This may have laid the foundation for my moving in this direction. But this folding sculpture of mine was different, though I got some good ideas from Origami. As I built my first Folding Cube sculptures, I realized I'd stumbled onto something very interesting. The first Folding Cubes I made had a delightful tactile quality about them. They folded and unfolded nicely. They felt good in the hands. And they made a pleasing clacking sound when they closed into the folded cube shape. In short, they were fun to play with. Instead of just painting them with plain colors or decorating them just for the sake of decoration, I chose to paint them in a sort of abstract, Modern Art style, with a bit of wear, as if they'd been around, and handled for a while. Now I had something that would look at home in the Museum of Modern Art. An executive desk toy.
That's the thing. It was like a toy, but it was a serious piece of art at the same time. That's subversive. It's not mocking Art. It is liberating Art from its ivory tower. You're not allowed to touch sculpture or a painting, let alone play with it (unless you own it). It's also a piece of sculpture that might look different every time you put it down. It's a piece of sculpture that, though it might be rearranged, it never loses its essence.
By treating the surfaces of the the Cube and its folding components as a painting I was blurring the distinction between a painting and a sculpture. Was it a painted sculpture, or was it a sculptural painting?   Also; is that a single painting, or several paintings, or some kind of morphing painting? I love that these sculptures have the qualities of a painting and those of sculpture without being completely either one.
The whole idea with the Folding series is that the pieces look like sculptures, and that you then discover that you can manipulate them. They should look good just sitting there on a shelf or a table. They should feel good and be fun to play with. When you put the piece down, you can choose which state, or position, or "pose"  to display the piece. Which, in a sense, makes the manipulator of the sculpture a collaborator.

Two more small boxes

Here are a couple more boxes I made. The one on the left is 5" x 4" x 2.5", has walnut sides and mahogany top and bottom. The one on the right is 4" x 3.5" x 2.25", made of teak wood.  Both have 1/4" finger joints and lids with brass hinges. The final finish on both is linseed oil followed with woodworkers wax.

3 more small wooden boxes

Still trying different kinds of wood, different size boxes with different size finger joints. Starting from the left, the first box is about 10.5" long, 3" wide and about 2.5" high. The bottom is white oak, sides are spruce, and the sliding top is redwood. No finger joints on this one. The corner joints are 45 degree glued joints. Natural finish with a couple of coats of wood worker's wax. I'll use this box to hold some of my old artists paint brushes. The small box in the center is 2.5" square and 3/4" high, just to see how small I could do a finger joint box; in this case, with 1/8" finger joints. The sides are white oak, the top and bottoms are pecan wood. I haven't cut the top for this one yet. I'm thinking of making it on one of the ends. The box on the right has 1/4" finger joints. The sides are made from redwood I milled into strips from an old 2x4 and glued the strips together. Redwood is difficult to work with at this scale because it chips and splits very easily, though it is really nice looking wood. The top and bottoms are inset, made from mahogany. This one has brass hinges. None of these are stained. They are polished with a couple of coats of woodworker's wax.
I hardly ever buy new wood anymore for small woodworking projects. I use found/recycled/reclaimed wood only. Some of this wood is over 30 years old and has already been used to make one or two things before I got my hands on it. Best of all it's free!

Two more small boxes

Here are two more small boxes made with my home-made box joint jig. Both are roughly six inch cubes. Both are made from Oak wood. Both are stained; one with walnut stain, the other with cherry bark stain. The only metal used are the small brass hinges. The one on the left has 1/2 in. finger joints, the one on the right has 3/8 in. finger joints.
I'm making these boxes as tests for the box joint jig, trying different kinds of woods at different thicknesses, different size boxes. All made with scrap wood. I've a sliding lid box on the workbench, along with another small box like those shown here, with different wood. I'll post 'em as I finish them.

Boxes from branches.

Here are a couple of boxes of a different kind. These are made from sections of tree branches (eucalyptus on the left, western cedar on the right). Each is about 4 inches high. I cut the branch sections, then cut off what would be the tops of the boxes. Then I clamped them into my drill press and bored them out with Forstner bits. The big one is stained with black walnut, and has a raised section on the inside of the lid to keep the lid from sliding off. The smaller one has a top which pivots on a pin. A mixture of stains applied one after the other was used only on the outside of the smaller one.The texture on the smaller box comes from insects which burrowed under the tree bark; and killed that tree.

A jewelry box for bracelets.

This is another of the box joint jig tests. This one with 1/2 in. finger joints using recycled lumber. Ellen didn't want a fancy jewelry box, so we decided to go with a look of something that's "been around", looks old, and with a simple design.
The box measures roughly 12 x 14 x 4 1/2 in., old plywood top and bottom, the sides are pine, brass hinges and latch. (in the first photo, the lid is slightly open. it's not a bad fit.)
To hold the bracelets, I used four 13 in. long, 2 inch thin-wall PVC pipe which slide into staggered U-shaped cut-outs glued to the inside of the end boards. You can take the bracelet holders out to put the bracelets on them but you don't have to, at least for the top row. I was going to cover the holders with velvet or felt but Ellen likes it just the way it is.

I finished the wood with a mixture of stains to get the look I wanted. I applied different colored stains, rubbed on, to get a semi "sunburst" coloring. I topped it off with a clear finish. I'll take a little bit of the shine off with some steel wool and re-buff to a satin finish. Ellen's happy with it.That's what matters.

A box made with my box joint jig

Working with scrap lumber, I've been trying out this box joint jig I made. I've tried it with different kinds of wood of various thickness, as well as trying three different router bit sizes. There's a custom door manufacturer about a mile down the road from my house. They get all their lumber as salvage and reclaimed timber and they further mill it themselves. Just about every day they put their trimmings and cut-offs in a bin in their parking lot for gleaners like myself to pick through. I get some really nice wood there, and that's what I used for these boxes. No nails were used to build these boxes. (click on a photo to see a larger version of it.)

This first box measures about 4 1/2 by 5 inches and has 1/4 in. finger joints. The light colored wood is 1/4 in. white oak, the dark wood is redwood. The hinge at the rear of the box is incorporated into the redwood trim. Here we see the front view; the horizontal redwood bar is the latch handle to lift the lid. The second photo shows the open view. Just a light coat of clear varnish to finish it off.