Sunday, August 14, 2011

experimental silk media paginator

By way of India, Michael, and his collaborator Santosh a group of paintings on black saree to adorn our house before our tentative voyage to CLEVELAND last year. I wanted to create a paging mechanism for the work, kind of like a book.









Sarah and I brainstormed the idea a while back for the living room. The main challenge was how to create a light weight framing mechanism that can handle the forces involved. the beams are split lengthwise for the length of the painting. this slot then receives about 1/4" of fabric, and the two halves are pinched together with some brass screws.

Turned out to be pretty difficult to achieve when all you got is lap-n-plaster to mount the device to. We jammed a trimmed wine cork underneath the lower extremity of the mounting shoulder to help support the assembly when the "pages" are turned.



I tested the mechanism out in my garage, but without the weight of the cloth, still not sure how things would work out.



Project began with some reclaimed doug fir that I ripped with the band saw, shaped with the spokeshave and a sander



The blade mounting harness was also shaped from fir, using a hollowing plane from Lee Valley to get an interesting final texture to the surfaces



A drill press was essential in positioning the paging axes





I joined the shoulder support to the wall mounting bridge using a few 1/4" dowels. This whole shooting match will be attached to a dovetailed cleat affixed to the wall. Some very shallow dados help orient things