Sand Castle Video Cabinet and Play Tables

A Great artist once said "Castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually". I say, not if they're carved from EPS and coated with an isocyanate polyurethane resin...and installed a fair enough distance from the ocean. Immediately upon the completion of the Dolphin Sofa for SFDS, I went to work on these sand castles. While the basic geometry of these pieces seemed simple enough, their textures demanded a lot of time and attention.

Once the basic shapes were assembled, and the television monitor was properly fitted, all 3 pieces required staggered block patterns. This represents a lot more work than many would guess. The patterns were first measured and drafted over the majority of the surfaces. In the case of the tables, all sides required detail, where as the video cabinet has a smooth back. The drafted patterns were then hot scored into the surfaces and all of the pieces were tied together and further textured with joint compound before hard coating and paint treatments were applied.

The play tables center spaces were filled with sand and sea shells and topped with glass and plexi. The video cabinet was not only fitted with a 52"monitor but an Xbox and other ancillary digital goodies. The sunglass on the far end of this shot sport double monitors (the shades were cut on the CNC machine, I merely glued the parts together and rounded the edges). All of the wonderful stools and beach ball chairs were designed and fabricated by SFDS. In the end an incredible childrens play space was created, one that will host and inspire much joy and laughter for many years to come.

I'd like to further thank Eric Winston and SFDS for providing me with and allowing my use of their images of the pieces installed in their intended environments. Every aspect of working with this fine studio was a pleasure and a privilege. I happily look forward to my next projects with them.

Dolphin Sofa

This first image is the Zbrush model rendered with Keyshot. The following 4 images show the 10"long Shapeways SLS 3d print. As you can see, it's a remarkably true to the model. It does however, have a bit of a tooth to it. Shapeways offers this material polished in a tumbler but, that process is reserved for print outs that are 200mm (about 7.5") or, less. 

 Sofas and couches come in all shapes and size but, this was a new one for me. I was contacted by Eric Winston, owner of SFDS, a fantastic, 15,000 square foot scene fabrication/design studio in the heart of Greenpoint Brooklyn. Eric needed among some other wonderful elements, a 10’ long, hand carved dolphin sofa for the Marriott Vacation Club in Newport Coast CA. I jumped at the chance. I’d been wanting to do a crazy sofa for as long as I could remember. I’ve done all sorts of crazy chairs, tables, cabinets and beds for as long as I’ve been sculpting but, in all of the that time, never a sofa. Eric cleared a huge room for me to sculpt it in. His excellent fabrication staff built a hotwire table for me from no more than one of my napkin sketches and boom, it began.

Half way into the carve, Eric's studio was visited by Mario Marsicano from Jellio. I've worked with Jellio on a number of interesting projects. I knew that Eric did projects with Jellio but, I didn't know that the sofa was one of them. There were so many diverse projects going on in the studio at the time, 2 major stage sets, a big job for instagram, giant wooden dinosaur assemblies, all sorts of different furniture designs, as far as I knew I was sculpting Eric and the Marriott. Finding out that this was for Jellio once my hands were already deeply into it was an additional bonus. For more with Jellio, click on the following links.
Gummi King
Ice Cream That You Can Sit On
King Kong

Eric's 5 year old angel, Ella.

 The above images show the sofa from various angles, carved, filled and ready for hard coating. The project progressed at a very fast rate due in largest part to my having figured out the sculpture in Zbrush. I have always done models in the past for larger sculpts. The luxury of doing models in Zbrush, as opposed to a more traditional clay approach is that you end up with a model that is not only more easily editable but, all of my build elevations were derived from it as well. The elevations were simply projected onto the block from different sides and the sculpture was immediately roughed out, top to bottom, side to side, front to back.

An astute eye may notice that the sofa against the grid only measures 9'. In order to increase the seating area, during the projection, the length of the sofa would be stretched to 10'. As a result, everything changed a bit but, all for the better. In a very long career, this was well worth the wait. In the wonderful world of fanciful furniture, this is an example as fabulously fun as you could hope to fathomably find.

Chinese Dragon

The Chinese Dragon pictured here is easily the largest single foam carving that I'd ever had my hands in. It was created for the Fun Town Splash Town amusement park in Sacco Maine. I based the design on a China town bit of kitche, a small, resin dragon statuette with exceptionally good details. The back was perfectly arched so as to serve as a portal through which park goers would enter the attraction. Aptly named Dragon's Descent,  you're strapped into it's specialized seats and harness system and the 220' tall tower slowly begins carrying you aloft to one of the highest and most majestic panaramas in all of Maine, before brutally hurtling you downward at speeds greater than the gravitational pull of the earth could achieve without the colossal, maniacal mechanical assistance of this terrifying towers sadistically concocted inner workings. I cut off the statuette's head and turned it inward to face the guests whom would be passing under it's belly. Once the model had been modified, it was photographed and 1/12 scale drawings were made from those photos. The drawing were then projected onto 3/4" plywood. The shapes would be cut from the plywood and the plywood was scabbed together and joined by flanged steel pipes to serve as 2' wide hollow, structural core, upon which would be mounted a total of 36 2' x 2' x 8' EPS foam blocks for carving. The dragon was so large that it had to be designed in 4 sections that would be craned together on site. In fact, it required 2  40' flat bed trailers to safely transport its separated components to the park. The full sculpture would be 18.5' tall, 32' long and 12' wide. It's eyes and throat glowed crimson red with inner lamps as smoke would billow out of it's nostrils and mouth via Rosco smoke machines and an inventive PVC plumbing system. The dragon also had a sound box with a proximity switch inside of it, allowing the dragon to growl as guests approached. A lavish Chinese garden was planted as the attraction's setting to complete the visual spectacle.

This story wouldn't be complete without a word on Maine lobster. Everything that you've heard is true. It is orgasmic. We were tied to the installation for the better part of that week and enjoyed lobster rolls every day for lunch. There was simply nothing better. On our last day we went to a local lobster shack right on the water. The lobster was so fresh that we had speculated that it was being pulled in fresh from the shack's kitchen window. I had a lobster bisk, velvety red with roe, so thick and rich and chock full of lobster that my spoon  actually stood up in it. That course was followed by a "Lazy Man's" lobster, which consisted of 2lbs. of shelled lobster claws and tails in an earth ware bowl that had been broiled in a bath of butter and bread crumbs to beyond what mere mortals could describe as perfection. There is a heaven. My taste buds call it Sacco Maine.

Horton

Being my age, I had the luxury of growing up with Suess & Sendak. So did my daughter and it's my hope that children do for as long as there are children but, I grew up as these books were just hitting the book store shelves. At that time most of my toys were made out of wood or metal. I think that the quality of a toy may have been determined by how much injury it could inflict upon another child if it should be used as a weapon. I remember my father telling me that when he was a child he knocked out his little sisters front teeth with a toy fire engine. Those were the days, when toys were toys and child psychology didn't exist. If I'm to believe my pop's story, my grandfather put his cigar out on my pop's prepubescent nose for his dastardly dental deed.
 Of all of Dr. Suess's characters, Horton was the one that most impressed me. To my young mind he was as big as a T Rex but he was gentle and kind and generous to a fault. He meant what he said and he said what he meant and his mind was opened to possibilities out side of his norm, 100 percent. Imbued with those fine qualities, I thought that he would make a great sample and studio mascot. I carved Horton using a tiny Christmas ornament as my reference. Ear to ear he may have been an inch and a half across. As he hangs on my wall he's five feet wide.

Little Airstream

A seriously fun project for an amusement park attraction, entirely carved from 1lbs. EPS., including the wheels and tires. It was very easy to dream variations on these happy simple shapes. I would have loved to have built a mold of this and cast a Fiberglas shell that could be bolted to a landscape trailer. In the bottom photo, I wanted to present the door both opened and closed. When the 2 photos were together, they were so close in terms of color balance and exposure that I couldn't help but, to join them as one.

Kong's Noggin

Above, Shape ways SLS 3d print 8" tall.

I've just spent a fair amount of this week revisiting this project. I thought that I would do a little detailing and build a nice simple base in order to get it to print, instead, I ended up rebuilding the model entirely. The fur texture was a mind bending amount of work but, I learned a lot about re-topology and controlling the orientation of the mesh. This model at it's lowest geometry is around 35k polys and nearly 30 million polys at it's highest. As I look at this models revision, I'm almost embarassed by the earlier model but, such is progress. Rome wasn't built in a day and skills take years. In this instance 3 years past between the original and the revision.

In defense of the original model below, It was created to emulate a a 14' tall carving that I had just completed and as such, the amount of detail wasn't over the top. It also represents one of my first forays with poly painting.

This is another case of Zbrush vs hand carving. I was brought in to carve the head and body of this beast and make sure that they fit the hands, teeth and eyes. Those components were being fabricated by other artists. There was a thumb nail and some free hand marker drawings on foam core. There were some photos of gorillas but little else, no model or, elevations of any kind. In their absents this was a much more arduous task than it had to be. When the sculpture was installed at Madame Tussaud's it did look splendid however.

 Once the project was completed, I considered the 3 weeks that I had just spent with hot wires and wire brushes and decided to revisit Kong's noggin with Zbrush. In the good old days, you'd build a model out of clay or foam and make your working drawings from it. From there you'd begin the sculpt and continue using the model as reference. With Zbrush, the model becomes the drawings and all the data necessary for the finished sculpture. For this application, the face and hands would be milled in higher density foam in order to preserve details. The body would be milled in lower density so as to save weight and expense. The interior of the mouth would be rapid prototyped. In that, all of the delicate ridges of the teeth, fine bumps on the tongue and other contrasting surfaces would be well represented. A while later I would be called upon by another studio to create Zbrush models of both the Chrysler Building and the Empire State building for SLS out put. Having done this and those I'd say that this whole project could have been sculpted in it entirety, in side the computer and ready for the robots in just over a week.

 I love the last photo in this post. In white, Kong looks more like the Abominable Snow man. How cool would it be to cover a sculpt like this in white synthetic fur and have him swatting at a machine gun Santa with flying sleigh and reindeer? I'm sure that I must have seen that somewhere. I just can't put my finger on it.

Google Image Search

Since I've started this blog under my full name, I've been delighted to find that a fair pecentage of images from every posting finds it's way to this page. It doesn't seem to sellect images by date for some reason but, in that, it presents a lovely scrambled mosaic of my recent work and of course, every image in this veritable wall of work is a link to descriptions and stories and the rest of my body of work that is presented on line. To visit my Google image search page please click HERE.

Sofa/Work Bench/Storage

Finding a sofa that is not only just the right size but, one that does all that it has to above and beyond merely being comfortable, is easier said than done.

I needed a sofa that could seat 4 at the same height as the rest of my chairs (a guitar thing) and sleep 2 when the need arises. I had a tick over 6' to work with, meaning a sofa with arms was out of the question. I also was and always am in need of storage. Further, I didn't want the black shadowy dust trap that is comonly the big gap between the sofa and the floor. Lastly, sofa's tend to project further into the room than this room could afford. Every square inch of floor space is at an absolute premium. That meant that the back cushion would have to move as close to the wall as possible. In that I realized that if hinged, the sofa's back could serve as a work table. A mirror would solve my black gap issues, visually extending,the carpet beneath the sofa and in so doing, camoflage 12 cubic feet of storage.

Painted Floor

When I first saw the apartment, the floors were covered wall to wall with a brown high pile shag carpet that did not appear to have been shampooed in many a year. When the carpets were removed the acutely dilapidated, planked floor beneath it would be painted battle ship grey, as it had apparently been many times before the shag. As the apartment evolved and carpets were chosen, the grey began to represent a design void. It seemed dreadfully bland and incomplete and obviously the cheapest of all refinishing solutions. I decided to take the abstract geometric motif's of the carpets and apply them to the painted floor from one end of the apartment to the other. It not only tied the place together very nicely, it created a playful contrast between the saturated colors and their monochromatic counterparts. There's a bit of Tromp'e L'oeil to it. By varying the thicknesses of the black shapes, an illusion different shadow weights is created, suggesting a staggering of plane heights. the border around the living room carpet narrows at it's furthest end in order to force perspective and, in so doing, subliminally suggest that the room is longer than it actually is. There also seems to be a Wizard of Oz thing going on in the floors transition from black and white to full Technicolor and in the black and white, some 50 Shades of Grey. Over all, I might describe the floor as Modern Deco Fun House.

Ceramic shape studies

Some of the earliest artifacts left by man have been clay pots. They mark the beginning of civilization and stand as a testament to man's constant quest for industry and technology. As such I thought that this would be a good exercise, not so much for turning shapes as these are all fairly elemental but, more for extracting shells with determined wall thicknesses for the purpose of manufacturing. I also wanted to explore the use of gray scaled photographs as alpha masks through which I could extract mesh and raise the brick and weathered wood textures in order to contrast the smoothness of the ceramic. Further experiments with deformations led to near hallucinatory variants.

Cephalopod

An 18 foot long, 24 inch thick, polyurethane hard coated, carved, spackled and sanded, EPS foam cephalopod, painted with purple polka dots, a perfect complement to any Christmas window display.

Family Life Masks

Some 30 years ago my mother commissioned Willa Shalit (daughter of Gene Shalit) to make life masks of the immediate family. The masks are low resolution plaster bandage casts as opposed to higher resolution casts achieved by molds made from alginate or silicone. In these, every detail and pore are not revealed but, in that something somehow is gained. As fascinating as medical grade surface information can be in it's portrayal of every nuance, crease and crevice, it sometimes distracts us from the underlying geometries and those beauties and truths therein. A good friend of mine had described it as the difference between a sketch and a highly finished drawing. Sometimes the sketch is more beautiful.

As time marched on the masks had discolored, 3 decades of dirt had settled in unflattering ways. My mother asked me if I could restore them and give them a scenic bronze finish. The masks were lightly spackled, primed and given a quick deliberately rough faux bronze paint treatment as they would be mounted high on a wall over a bay window and need to be read at a distance.

There was a strangeness returning to these masks. Children are a frightening clock. In these masks, my mother is approximately my age and I am my daughters. As I moved the masks around my studio, looking for interesting settings and light, I posed my mothers mask with the cast of Sonia with here eyes opened. There's a startling "Back to the Future"effect in that suddenly Bubby's the same age as Pops and Sonia's the same age as my youngest sister, Nikki.

My father's mask is conspicuously missing from these photos. My parents divorce was particularly bitter and my mother no longer wanted it in the house. My fathers face now finds it's self in my younger sister, Alisa's home.

These masks also signifiy my introduction to life casting. Shortly after these masks were cast I would serve as Willa's assitant for a series of classes that she taught in plaster bandage and alginate life casting at the New York Accadamy.

New Michael Ferrari-Fontana Website

Finally finished...for now. The new website is pretty comprehesive. I've taken all of the best images and information from all of the sites and blogs that I've built in the past and combined them in one place. It's full of new artwork and stories. Everything is explained, linked, easy to navigate and for the first time in my art career, I'm using my full name. Please click HERE to vistit michaelferrarifontana.com

MakerBot and Me

I've recently purchased MakerBot's Replicator 2. I've followed MakerBot's progress for a number of years. I was always fascinated by it but, never overly impressed by the crudeness of it's output's striations. As soon as I learned that the resolution has increased many fold, I bought one. "Pull it out of the box and watch the magic happen" has not quite been my experience so far but, I am beginning to figure it out and my prints are getting better. June will mark 2 years of  my sculpting inside of the computer. As a result I have a lot of models that have only seen the virtual light of day, It's my hope by this purchase that I will soon be printing models daily. For large and or more detailed models and sculpture, I will still need the services of my extraordinary vendor, his monster Zprinter and his 7 axis carving robot but, for smaller, faster proof of concept models this desktop 3d printer should prove very useful.